Geriatric Indy Movie is Immature

The opening shot of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull told everything. Paramount pictures' infamous peak flickered familiarly on the screen to the beloved anthem of the Indiana Jones series. I settled down into my seat and prepared to bask in the two hours of Indiana Jones glory at an opening screening in midtown Manhattan. As is traditional in Indiana Jones films, the Paramount logo entered a gentle cross fade which would lay out the opening scene of the movie. I waited to see which mountain it would be, Peru, Nepal, Nevada, Ukraine... a gopher hill in New Mexico? They probably thought it was cute, but it set the tone for the entire film. The Benedict Arnold of film making, George Lucas, once again turned a mountain into a mole hill.

In the 1980's the name Indiana Jones was synonymous with adventure, I grew up on the whip cracking, gun slinging archeology. My love for the Indiana Jones adventures made me want to study Egyptology (my dad even printed out an Egyptian Book of the Dead for me once), and I always found myself playing something along the lines of Indiana Jones. I remember turning my basement into a haunted tomb or foreboding rain forest, swinging from green hoses tied to the rafters. I remember shooting invisible foes defending ancient treasures, they never managed to phase me, I always walked cooly through the darkness shooting from the hip. There was no rhyme or reason to how things would unfold, I just imagined things that seemed adventurous and acted out things from the three movies. My experience with the Indiana Jones trilogy helped to shape me as a child and in the way that I played and imagined the world. The sad thing is, the plot of the newest entry into the "trilogy" seems no better than what I came up with in first grade.

The film seems intent on copying the other three, it is steeped in nostalgia of the nursing home variety. There were not any lines which stuck out to me which were not simply perversions of old classics delivered by the "real" Indiana Jones. The plot leapt around without much development, Russians convince Indiana to help them find an alien's body in a warehouse which apparently he excavated once. Then they jump around inserting an entirely new back story to Indy, having him working as an American spy against the soviets for the past ten years (not the Indy I know) and with a bizarre and horrifically acted British side kick who comes literally out of the blue. Brody is apparently dead, so they had to just make up characters and then have them awkwardly stumble through the story like the kid who is only allowed to play with the big kids because their mothers will yell at them if they send him home. Long stretches of the movie are spent in pointless sappy dialogue between Indy and the other characters, who apparently has become quite the ol' softy since the Last Crusade. He treats young Henry Jones like he's the best thing since sliced bread, lavishing copious praise on the kid at every potential moment, instead of with the sarcastic tough guy attitude that defines Indiana. Sometimes I felt like I was watching a Jane Austen film, the way that Indy treated people like Marion who reappeared in the movie. Rather than with the tension that made their relationship in Raiders so interesting, she seems like a soccer mom and the two cannot stop doting on each other despite the apparent perils which face them.
I say apparent because there really wasn't much peril in the movie. Occasionally some random perils would occur but they didn't seem very sincere. A nuke goes off and Indy hides in a refrigerator and survives, apparently a Nuclear weapon isn't that big a deal and should start off the film. Randomly some 1000 year old Mayans climbed out of the wall and attacked them, but it didn't seem to concern anyone. They had a horribly rendered chase scene through a jungle which did not look very central American at all (really it looked plastic).They fell into quicksand and had a conversation in the meantime, acting like people who know that they are on a sound stage and not in mortal peril. Indiana Jones is brave, this Indiana Jones was indifferent. It was like he didn't even notice that these things were a problem, there were none of the exasperated ejaculations which define key moments of the real trilogy. I actually fell asleep for parts of the jungle chase scene. The closest to moments of peril was when he was thrown a long snake to help him get out of the quicksand and he freaked out. But the scene fell on its face and didn't seem like it could get back up, but it kept dragging on, like they expected us to realize it was funny once we'd seen it long enough. There didn't seem to be any real reason for a lot of things in the movie, it all seemed to be made up as they came to it.

Everyone seemed pretty aware that it was just pretend, and so no one acted in the least bit worried about any of the outlandish perils which overcame them. Plot lines which were begun, such as where did 1000 Mayans come from, seemed to die out because everyone got bored of it and came up with something else. The only thing they maintained was the one plot line that they should have dropped when it was first proposed, an alien crystal skull that will activate a space ship in a city of gold? What?

All in all this movie felt like a very tired old attempt at pretending to be Indiana Jones. It was a lot like my childhood games, probably a lot of fun to play and make up, but not the standard from which other kids should base their imaginings. It would be cute as a fan film, but this was made with Harrison Ford and Steven Spielburg. I am a huge fan of Indiana Jones, and this was probably one of the worst films I have ever seen. Don't waste the money.