Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
I propose a new rule: George Lucas is no longer allowed to write or direct any movies, and any creative input he has on any production he is funding needs to be approved by someone who is not senile.
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Suck is a new low for the series. If you thought that after the next installment of the series could not possibly be worse than The Temple of Doom, oh boy, you are in for a ride brother. George Lucas outdid himself this time, and managed to make a movie that is not only silly, improbable, over the top, and infantile but also disjointed and incoherent.
At least in the Star Wars prequels he made some small attempts to create some sort of a plot continuity - with little success of course, but he tried. In retrospect perhaps, what little continuity was there in these three horrible movies that raped my childhood, were influenced by the natural constraints of making a prequel. The story had to lead to a logical conclusion that would set up the events we knew from the original trilogy. And the Star Wars universe was already fairly well fleshed out and established so he had only so much wiggle room.
In Indiana Jones all the common sense and continuity concerns don’t seem to exist. I really think that the way Lucas writes movies these days is by jotting down notes for random special effects sequences. Once he has these set pieces, chase scenes, explosions and stunts done, he writes bunch of segways that loosely connect them.
But don’t take my word for it. I will tell you some of the components that create the swirling vortex of suck that is The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull and you can tell me whether or not it is stupid and infantile. And no, these are not spoilers. I’m not going to reveal how these elements are worked into the story, or what is their significance. I will just list them here. I don’t think I will reveal any plot twists by doing this because to have a twist, first you need to have a plot and as we established this movie has none.
But if you really paranoid about spoilers, just skip the list and go to the end of the post.
The following elements can be found in this movie:
- CGI prairie dogs that look as if they are about to break into a song
- Silly Russian accents
- Lady Galadriel in a ridiculous wig:
- Experimental Jet engine
- Nuclear explosion
- Indiana Jones surviving nuclear explosion by hiding in a refrigerator
- The Jannitor From Scrubs
- This guy:
- Roswell UFO crash conspiracy
- Alien corpse
- “Luke, I am your father” scene
- A car chase in a warehouse
- The Ark of Covenant
- A motorcycle chase in a library
- Quicksands:
- Indy is still afraid of snakes
- A car chase in the jungle
- Sword fighting while standing on two speeding jeeps parallel to each other
- CGI Monkeys beat up bad guys
- CGI killer ants eat the bad guys
- Indy beats up guys who are like 10 times younger and 10 times bigger than him:
- Driving off a cliff onto a tree which then gently lowers the car to the ground and then snaps back and kills some bad guys
- Mind reading
- El Dorado
- Savages with blow darts
- Savages with slings
- Savages with spears:
- A greedy guy stays behind to collect treasure as everything collapses around him
- Oh no, this shrine is really a flying saucer
- Actually these are not space aliens, they are extra-planar aliens
- Hi, I know I was insane, and incoherent for all the movie but I just got better and I’m fine now
- Galadriel gets “exactly what she was asking for” and it ain’t pretty
- Incredibly cheesy happy ending
Now tell me, do you think all these things should be put in a single movie? I didn’t even tell you about the atrocious, crippled plot - but just look at the above, and tell me if there is any possible way to write a coherent, engaging and intelligent story that ties all these components together in a meaningful way?
The script of this movie has as much finesse, and subtlety as the script to Scary Movie 4. Bad film making doesn’t even cut it. If I was Steven Spielberg I would request that my name was removed from the credits of this piece of shit, and then deny up and down that I had any involvement with it.
In the end, I kinda feel bad for poor Harrison Ford. This was supposed to be his big comeback into the action movie genre. This was supposed to be a return to one of his most memorable characters (other than Han Solo of course). But instead a great comeback, he gets thrown into this horribly embarrassing mess of contradicting plot elements, paper thin characters and crazy space alien bullshit.
I really wasn’t expecting much from this movie. I know George Lucas is going through some weird stage where he insists on completely destroying all the good movies he made in the past. But I kinda hoped that perhaps Steven Spielberg and the other 4 people on the writing team will inject some sanity and common sense to this project. I was mistaken. This is possibly worst movie George Lucas has written so far.
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June 2nd, 2008 at 7:03 pm (9207) [Quote]
zOMG r u 4Seruz? … NO CAN HAZ REVIEW POWER!
But seriously, I didn’t think the movie was all that bad… I watch a movie for entertainment, not plot… I was entertained…
Posted usingJune 2nd, 2008 at 8:16 pm (9208) [Quote]
The only good part of the film: the prairie dogs! Too bad they only had 2 shots. :-/
Lucas needs to call it quits. He has enough money. WTF.
Posted usingJune 2nd, 2008 at 8:17 pm (9209) [Quote]
Best (and only) part of the film: the prairie dogs.
Lucas needs to call it quits. He has enough money. WTF.
Posted usingJune 2nd, 2008 at 8:35 pm (9210) [Quote]
Oh, man, that was hilarious! I enjoyed the movie, but everything you wrote above is true. I laughed so hard reading this. In fact, I quoted you twice on my tumble log. Thank you.
Posted usingJune 2nd, 2008 at 8:38 pm (9211) [Quote]
True, but I believe that serviceable plot, and believable characters are important for any movie.
So is suspense of disbelief. I know that action movies are generally very unrealistic, but there is a point at which I just go - “how stupid do you think I am”. At that nuke scene I heard like two 10-12 year old kids two rows behind me go “yeah, right - like he would survive that”. It’s just silly - and completely unnecessary. It wasn’t really crucial to the plot or anything.
I also believe that once you establish a brand, you should not deviate from it. When I think Indiana Jones I think tomb riding, ancient mysteries, riddles, booby traps and ancient magic and mystery. Nukes, Roswell and flying saucers are definitely the last thing I expected to see in this movie.
Posted usingJune 2nd, 2008 at 8:50 pm (9212) [Quote]
Eilleen said:
Actually, they kinda annoyed me. LOL I thought they are gonna start singing or something.
@Jason - lol, thanks!
Posted usingJune 2nd, 2008 at 9:17 pm (9214) [Quote]
Perhaps Lucas is aiming for the dizzying accolades given to Uwe Boll?
Posted usingJune 2nd, 2008 at 9:17 pm (9215) [Quote]
I just liked the movie.
Oh btw, have you read my post on economies in video games yet?
http://www.travismccrea.com/2008/05/31/please-let-us-create-an-economy /
let see what else I have to tell you:
Chuck Norris is now a columnist http://www.creators.com/opinion/chuck-norris.html
and I made this, I assume your not much of a fan, but I will show you anyway:
Posted usinghttp://www.travismccrea.com/images/oreilly.gif
June 2nd, 2008 at 11:05 pm (9216) [Quote]
Great comment! I am so intrigued about the movie.
Posted usingI’ll make it a point to watch Indiana Jones, maybe tomorrow. I’ll be a critic for an hour or so… then I will be sharing my opinions too.
June 3rd, 2008 at 8:34 am (9221) [Quote]
I enjoyed the movie. I think a lot of people are holding it up to their childhood memories of how cool the earlier ones were when they were kids. I have accepted that my 35-year-old brain will never again see anything through the eyes of a 12-year-old. That said, the atomic-bomb-accelerated refrigerator survival was lame, even by the standards of the actual 12-year-olds in your theatre.
What was the last movie you saw that you would call great? Or even good?
Posted usingJune 3rd, 2008 at 9:52 am (9224) [Quote]
I didn’t think it was that bad, really, but I can see your points. The prairie dogs were probably the silliest bit in the film aside from the refrigerator of course. I quite enjoyed the movie, actually, but only probably because I liked the first ones, plus I have a huge crush on Harrison Ford even though he’s totally too old to be doing this shit. I also like movies that don’t really require too much brain power to enjoy. God, what does that say about me???
Posted usingJune 3rd, 2008 at 10:00 am (9226) [Quote]
Ah, but the difference is that Uwe makes horrible movies on purpose. He is funding them in Germany via private investors. The German law then allows him to write off 100% of the investment as a tax deduction, but only if the movie losses money. Boll probably gets to pocket the change and creates a safe way to move large amounts of money for his investors. It’s all shady as hell. Oh, and notice how he is primarily interested in popular video game franchises - and he always secures the rights to future adaptations. Meaning that if someone wants to make a real adaptation at a later time, or if the game company wants to take back the movie rights he can sell at premium.
George Lucas is a different case though. He actually produced few good movies, but then at some point he forgot how to do it. It seems that the bigger the budget he has, the worse movie he produces.
Chuck Norris doesn’t write columns. He roundhouse kicks the keyboard and a well thought out article is automatically sent to his publisher.
Well, I watched these movies many, many times. The way I felt about them as a kid, changed on subsequent viewings. The point was that while the early Lucas movies did have spectacular (for that time) special effects, they also had an engaging story, and this sense of mystery, and adventure. The had that specific feel to them that made us all fall in love with them.
The new installments don’t have that. There are complete departures from the old model, re-made to suit whatever the fuck Lucas things is cool these days.
Oh, and there is another strange pattern here - he always seems to lose it around the third movie and then it all goes downhill from there.
I saw Memento the other day. It was good. Not perfect, but good. There are good movies out there. So it’s not like Hollywood is churning out total shit all the time. But it seems that all the major blockbusters with big budgets are turning out horrible these days.
Posted usingJune 3rd, 2008 at 4:17 pm (9234) [Quote]
OK, definitely will wait till this comes out on video. Thanks for the thorough and extremely entertaining review. When I read it, I couldn’t stop laughing (and I was in a seminar so it was really hard to hide that I wasn’t paying attention to the speaker!). I can’t believe that practically every hollywood cliché was woven intertextually into the script. Sometimes less is more…
Posted usingI wonder if this was Lucas’ test to see whether his & Ford’s loyal fan base would come out and make them a few more bucks. I think another comment had it right…you would like to suspend your beliefs, even if only for the briefest and most innocuous reason.
If you want to see a movie where prairie dogs do sing, watch James Gandolfini in Romance & Cigarettes
June 3rd, 2008 at 10:29 pm (9239) [Quote]
You said it. It’s funny how most good movies have somewhat limited budgets, and the multi-million dollar productions are usually really bad. Why is that?
Posted usingJune 3rd, 2008 at 10:36 pm (9240) [Quote]
because they are forced to be innovative… of course
Posted usingJune 8th, 2008 at 6:44 pm (9291) [Quote]
I think that the movie was funny.. Althoug the movie confused the prehispanic civilizations in America.. for example the Incas in Peru not is the same that the Aztecas in the center of Mexico or Mayas in the mexican caribbean .
Posted usingJune 9th, 2008 at 3:19 am (9297) [Quote]
Nice man, I’ll make sure to catch it in the cinemas…
Posted usingJune 9th, 2008 at 12:51 pm (9305) [Quote]
Looks like the movie has spawned a new phrase: “nuke the fridge”. As in, “Star Wars didn’t really nuke the fridge until Jar Jar Binks was introduced.” It is the movie version of jumping the shark. Ouch.
Posted usingJune 9th, 2008 at 1:36 pm (9306) [Quote]
LOL! Nuke the fridge! Brilliant! I will be sure to use it in movie reviews from now on!
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