Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

Disclaimer:

The movie I’ll be reviewing this week is rated: PG-13

All content is unsuitable and too dumb for children and adults.

Well we knew this would happen at one point or another, but it doesn’t make it any easier to get through. Let’s just get right to it and not waste any time. Despite the fact that the public and critics considered the first three Indiana Jones films to be a perfect trilogy that need not be added onto, 19 years later Lucas and Spielberg thought it was necessary to give us Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Suck, I mean Skull. Nobody knew they wanted it at the time and as it turns out: yes, they didn’t want it. To this day the film boasts a 77% fresh critical rating on Rotten Tomatoes, but audiences are still heavily torn on it even with how much people seem to universally loathe it outside of online movie-rating sites. With the return of characters, plot threads, and action scenes we’ve all seen several times before in this franchise, Kingdom of the Crystal Skull almost seems proud to regurgitate all these things while also offering absolutely nothing original. You could practically do a complete listicle on how many moments in this movie were just straight-up lifted from past films in the series it’s so uninspired.

Say what you will about Temple of Doom, it at least took risks and gave us something worthy of holding the Indiana Jones name, this turns out to be just a bland action-adventure movie of the week. I’m practically bored just thinking about it, but let’s see if tearing into this movie detail by detail can result in more entertainment than what’s contained in the film’s entire runtime. Surely something of value has to come out of this hunk of junk and I understand that might be a bit too optimistic considering the circumstances but just let me have this okay!

Grab your fedoras and hitch a ride on the back of Shia LaBeouf’s motorcycle whether you want to or not because this is Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.

So remember how in each of the previous Indiana Jones movies the Paramount logo faded into a shot of a mountain even if it was a mountain engraved on a gong? This movie opens with the Paramount logo fading into a shot of a gopher mound. I immediately hate this movie. A new record! The point of fading into a shot of a mountain was to get the audience excited for the sense of adventure the movie was about to offer them (even if Temple of Doom immediately threw that out for a song and dance number), but what am I supposed to do with this?! The gopher isn’t a main character (big duh on that one) and there’s ultimately no point in showing this scene since it doesn’t have any of the other characters we know in it. Sure the intros in the other movies tended to not have a connection to the main story of the films, but they at least included characters that were major players in them. Here we have a car driven by snot-nosed teens who immediately run over the mound. They’re blasting one of Elvis Presley’s greatest hits, ‘Hound Dog’, and challenging the military vehicle next to them to a race. As young idiots do. There’s a lot to hate about this intro which, much like I said in the Temple of Doom review, does not in any way match the spirit of Indiana Jones. In fact, I could probably make this entire review about how this intro is trash, but I’ll try to keep it concise.

For some reason, when the driver of the military vehicle next to these kids takes them up on their offer for a race he doesn’t get reprimanded and the officers don’t threaten the kids either for interfering in military business. Eventually they leave each other behind and we discover these officers were driving into Area 51 of all places which makes you question how the hell those kids were even able to get that close to Area 51 in the first place considering the fact that it’s Area 51. As it turns out though, those officers are actually Russian infiltrators who quite easily make it past Area 51’s defenses and we see that they’re keeping a guy named Mac (played by Ray Winstone) and the man himself Indiana Jones (played by a half-awake Harrison Ford) in two separate car trunks. This movie conveniently also takes place 19 years after the events of the previous movie in 1957, and I think now is as good a time as any to talk about Harrison Ford’s acting in this. Of course we’ve seen him pull off the suave, rugged, misunderstood action hero before even within this same franchise, but here he just seems…off. Especially watching this movie immediately after Last Crusade, it’s hard to believe that this is the same guy in both movies. In every scene he’s in it’s like he’s a goofy dad trying to do an impression of Indiana Jones as opposed to actually playing Indiana Jones. Maybe it’s his age or the fact that chronologically he’s been away from this character for nearly two decades, but he never feels quite like Indiana Jones, almost as if every direction he received in every scene was just “act cool”.

After Jack Sparrow-ing himself by crawling out of an embarrassing situation in the first few minutes of the movie, Indiana and the rest of the audience are introduced to this movie’s villain Irina Spalko (played by Cate Blanchett). Being a well-trained and skilled actress herself I don’t think Cate Blanchett was a bad choice for this role, but they just don’t write her or direct her in a way that’s interesting so she comes off as standard. Don’t get me wrong, some of the past Indiana Jones villains could be hokey or have their awkward moments, but they were not standard. Belloq as the shadowy reflection of our hero and trying to create a radio to God, Mola Ram and his desire to destroy all of the other religions leaving only the Thuggee, Donovan and his insatiable hunger for notoriety and rare antiquities to show off at his country club, and Spalko just wants to…know things. Yeah, that’s her entire character motivation: she wants to know things. They try to give her the slightest bit of development by explaining in a later scene that she was part of a Russian psychic science initiative, but it never plays any part in the movie outside of giving us an awkward moment of her trying to read Indy’s mind which doesn’t work (and is also incredibly stupid) and that’s it. In the end she has about as much staying power as Ford from the Godzilla remake in which she’s so memorable you forgot she even had a name.

She’s trying to find a box in Area 51, which for some reason is home to the same warehouse they put the Ark in at the end of Raiders, and this box’s contents are a complete mystery except to Indiana Jones. Less talking and more doing Indy, go find that box. As it turns out, the box she’s looking for has something in it that is so incredibly magnetic it’s able to attract gunpowder and shotgun shells from across the warehouse which is around the size of at least one football field. Why it doesn’t attract everything else magnetic in the warehouse such as the ceiling lamp parts, the guns the soldiers are holding, the crowbars they use to open the box, Spalko’s rapier, the armored trucks’ metal chassis, any metal glasses frames the soldiers may have on them, and several other magnetic objects that are likely being held in the warehouse including the Ark of the Covenant itself is anybody’s guess. Regardless, they find it, open the box with the crowbars I mentioned, only now do the crowbars get magnetized to the box after it’s already been opened, and Spalko takes it away. Before she can leave, Indiana Jones does his best Indiana Jones impression and fights one of the soldiers’ guns away from them and threatens to shoot Spalko. But uh-oh, it looks like Mac is a traitor! Oh good, I forgot I don’t care.

Essentially what they’re doing here is trying to create a sidekick that’s sort of a combo of Satipo from Raiders and Wu Han from Temple. Of course having Indy’s sidekick betray him is ripped directly from Satipo and Raiders (you could argue Elsa from Crusade as well), but they try to make it sound like they have this long, complicated history together. We never see it though, much like Wu Han in Temple, so why are we supposed to care about this? This doesn’t make me feel concerned for Indy’s well-being or the conflict between these characters, all it does is make me feel annoyed that I could’ve chosen to watch one of those movies instead of this. Indy escapes, of course because of the whole Indiana Jones thing, but briefly on his way out we get treated to a shot of a broken box revealing the Ark of the Covenant inside. This offers no narrative purpose other than reminding you that Raiders existed.

I hope you’re looking forward to where this *doesn’t* go.

After this bit of action we’re treated to most people’s biggest issue with this movie. While Indy escapes from the Russians, he makes his way to a small town where it appears that everyone is more wooden and fake than the rest of the actors in this movie. Or that might just be because they’re mannequins. Yeah, as it turns out, Indy found his way into a nuclear testing site and a bomb is about to go off very soon. First he tries to make it out by hitching a ride in one of the Russian’s cars which doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. Weren’t you trying to get away from them anyway, why would they help you in this situation? With nowhere else to turn, he’s forced to hop into a fridge to save himself. Which works. What makes it even worse is that Indy makes it out without a single scratch on him despite being thrown miles from his starting point and he bypasses the same car he tried to escape in earlier while they get fried in the blast. Okay, so there’s elevated logic for the purposes of giving us an unforgettable adventure and there’s Wile E. Coyote cartoon. This is a Wile E. Coyote cartoon.

At least after this bit of ridiculousness we’re treated to charming and likable characters that will last us throughout the rest of the mo- No we’re not. Much like with Mac earlier we’re introduced to these people in a bunker that Indy has supposedly known for years but they have absolutely no on-screen chemistry together so they leave no impact on us. It only makes it better when we cut back to Barnett College where Dr. Jones is teaching his class again (because this movie wants to remind you how good Raiders and Crusade were) where he once again gets interrupted by faux Marcus Brody: Charlie (played by Jim Broadbent). This movie’s favorite pastime is to introduce characters that have no bearing on the story and leave no impact on you whatsoever. I give the movie some credit because they couldn’t bring back Denholm Elliott to play Marcus in this role since he had actually passed 3 years after the release of Crusade from tuberculosis, but they don’t really treat his passing that honorably because they essentially replace his character without a second thought and with someone who’s about as bland as everyone else in this movie.

Charlie tells Indy that since the FBI is looking for him after the incident with the Russians, he has no choice but to give him an indefinite leave of absence until the matter is resolved. On his way out of college town, a young man interrupts him while his train is leaving the platform. This man is named Mutt (played by Shia LaBeouf) and he’s so cool that he rides a motorcycle, has more hair gel than every boy band member, carries a switchblade, and is decked out in leather. It’s not so hard for me to say that I instantly don’t believe that this kid is from 1957. Every time he’s on-screen I’m not so much prepared to see how he adapts to the world he’s about to be thrust into as opposed to prepared for him to scream at me:

It’s him that reveals to Indy how his mentor/father figure Dr. Harold Oxley has been captured alongside his mom on the quest to find the city of Akator also known as El Dorado. I don’t know, to me it just feels weird having Indiana Jones being thrust into a position like this as opposed to actively seeking it out like in the other movies. It feels less archeological and more mercenary like. They share some shoddy character development until they’re interrupted by a gang of Russians trying to steal Indiana for his expertise again, but Mutt punches a random guy in the face allowing them to escape kicking off another chase scene in a Jones film, but this one feels particularly off for one main reason: there isn’t as much of a sense of danger like in the other chase scenes. All of the previous chase scenes in the previous movies felt tense because they took place in areas where Indy was outnumbered and at a loss for support. Here it takes place in Indy’s college town which massively dilutes the tension and sense of urgency since it’s a place he’s familiar with and a place he could easily find backup in. That and they come across one of Indy’s students who he tells to “Get out of the library” which goes against what was mentioned in Crusade where Indy mentioned in his class that 70% of archeology is done in the library. Not the main reason to hate this scene, but it definitely doesn’t help.

In the end they make it to a safe place where Dr. Jones decodes the letter that Mutt gave him from Oxley saying that the pathway to Akator starts in Nazca, Peru. They fly their way there but the movie pauses briefly in the middle of their flight to highlight how Indiana Jones fell asleep on the plane. Why did you show that? Even in Temple when they paused the transition from Shanghai to Delhi they showed it was because there was something important to the story that took place, falling asleep is not exactly pertinent for the audience to know! Once they’re there though, they pick up the trail from where Oxley left off and partake in more dialogue that makes me question even more why the filmmakers thought this was a necessary follow-up to make. Mutt reveals how he left school several times and Indy questions him on his life goals which no one cares about. It will come back into the movie later in a weak twist that no one asked for, but we’ll get to that when we get to that. That and once they do pick up Oxley’s trail, it isn’t really that fun.

Everything the characters are discussing at these points are verbal dotted lines on a treasure map which I might be able to forgive if the actors were more invested in what they were saying like in the previous movies, but here it sounds boring and it feels boring. Back in the first three movies the characters talk about the things that they’re looking for with awe, excitement, delight, and wonder. It helps to build up these artifacts as something truly special and worth searching for, but that’s not here. The only reason the characters are searching for this thing is to save characters we don’t even know and it’s not even fully clear what they’re searching for. Are they trying to find the city of El Dorado or this crystal skull they mentioned in only one scene so far? Since the focus is so unclear, why should anyone care about what’s happening?

Anyway they make it to some burial ground where they’re attacked by tribes people and Indy manages to defeat one of them by blowing a poison dart into the back of his throat. Because these tribes people thought they might be facing Indiana Jones so they decided to make their poison darts double-sided, jeez this movie is stupid! They carve their way deep into the burial site, Mutt gets stung by a scorpion and doesn’t die which makes the audience cry, and they finally discover the majorly built-up crystal skull which continues to make every scientist watching this movie fuming with rage with how inconsistently magnetic it is. After taking it out of the burial site they’re cornered by the Russians and Mac who capture them and somehow managed to find their location despite not having any way of following them without any clues from Dr. Oxley. Let’s be real though, if it’s making this movie go faster I’ll take it, and they’re taken to the Russians’ campsite.

The skull is of course stolen from Indy and Mutt and they try to give Mac a bit more of a motivation here, but it’s just every 90’s Disney villain motivation: money. In fact, much like Elsa in the previous film, Mac’s character really doesn’t make a whole lot of sense here and often goes back and forth between good and evil on a whim, but unlike Elsa in the previous film Mac leaves way less of an impression than she did and offers an emotionless performance making us care about him even less. We also find out what the skull is: an alien skull! Isn’t that just what you wanted out of an Indiana Jones movie? Sci-fi? Was anyone thinking when they wrote this?! We liked the previous Indiana Jones films because they dealt with legendary and religious artifacts that were grounded in folklore and ancient history, not alien invasions!

Despite my complaints, the movie continues and Spalko tries to manipulate Indy with the skull which also ends up going nowhere and we finally are introduced to Dr. Harold Oxley in person (played by John Hurt). I’m just gonna say what everyone’s thinking too: John Hurt has a tendency to be the kiss of death for modern cinema. Don’t get me wrong, he’s a great actor and I’ve loved him in other movies back in the 70’s and 80’s, but for some reason if anyone casts him in a movie from the year 2000 onward, it’s pretty much guaranteed to be crap. Oxley is under some kind of skull hypnosis or whatever and isn’t thinking clearly, but don’t worry, Marion Ravenwood is also here (played again by Karen Allen)!

Just like Harrison Ford, Karen Allen doesn’t seem to know how to play her old character from 27 years prior, because she’s just as awkward as everyone else yet they still try to make her a badass. The only reason we’re still able to recognize her as Marion is because of John Williams’ score which plays her theme from Raiders whenever she’s on screen. Considering that, this is also as good a time as any to mention the music in this movie. Usually even if John Williams scores a terrible movie I can still hold on to the only good aspect in it which was his amazing orchestrations. In this movie though, it sounds like complete autopilot. While there are original songs conducted for this movie, all of them sound like generic action music that any other composer could’ve written outside of when the movie wants to remind you of which characters are on screen like with Indy, Marion, and Henry Jones’s brief cameo. Outside of that, none of them are anything I’d be itching to put on my Spotify playlist.

With Marion revealed and Indiana as horny as he usually is for any woman he’s ever met in these movies, he decides to help the Russians to find Akator as quickly as possible and decipher Ox’s cryptic messages. In the process though, Mutt decides now is a great time to mount an escape which ultimately goes nowhere since they’re recaptured less than 5 minutes later. Why was that even in the movie? Then we have a Twister-esque argument between Indy and Marion since it was revealed that Mutt is actually Indy’s son and Indy tries to insert himself into Marion’s parenting of Mutt. It seems like the movie is trying to play this for laughs, but much like in Twister, it’s just annoying as hell and drags the movie out which is the last thing I want in this movie. Their argument eventually culminates in the beginning of another chase sequence much like what happened after Henry was introduced in the last movie, and of course they capture the crystal skull for themselves again along with Oxley. Not before a completely unbelievable sequence of Mutt getting separated from the group and rejoining them by meeting up with a bunch of monkeys and swinging on vines as if his real parents were Kala and Kerchak. Oh, and also the side antagonist dies. Since Spalko is so standard and forgettable in this, I bet you can imagine how much of an impact this guy left. I don’t even know what his name was and I don’t care to look. I guess his death is kinda cool though. Maybe even cooler than Spalko’s eventual death, but we’ll get to that.

Mac rejoins our heroes (Does it really matter?) and they find the entrance to Akator. He’s secretly dropping trackers though because he’s still not entirely on their side, but they make their way in by beating the crap out of ancient artifacts. Remember when the slightest movement in an ancient temple could result in death? Now just go ham on it like it’s a Street Fighter bonus level. The circle of alien skeletons awaits them there but Mac betrays them again and Spalko walks in with her team of Russians. After taking the skull from Oxley she reattaches it to the one skeleton missing its head and they spring to life. It was explained earlier (poorly) that after the circle is completed it’ll grant one wish, and Spalko wishes to know everything. Again, solid motivation for a Jones villain. Upon activating the alien circle the city starts to fall apart around them so Jones and his compatriots escape, except for Mac who the movie gives a weird exit to. He ends up dying, but before being crushed by the disintegrating city they try to give him a sort of emotional moment with Indy which falls flat because we have no idea what his character is supposed to be and in the end nobody cares. Spalko on the other hand is practicing her early 2000’s CG effects.

Okay, so we’ve had iconic death scenes in the past ranging from face meltings, to explosions, to aging, what’re you gonna do this time?

Umm, did she just turn into a fart?
How epic…

On their way out we’re treated to even more mind-blowing effects of a UFO rising from the ashes of the city. It’s about as stupid as it sounds, but that’s pretty much this whole movie in a nutshell. Apparently this also clears up whatever was going on with Oxley because he’s now back to normal (I know it was eating you up inside if he would return to normal) and he says that the UFO didn’t make its way to space, but to the “Space Between Spaces.” Honestly, I’d be surprised if the movie didn’t describe it like that, but the only thing I can think of whenever I hear that is just the space between your couch cushions which should not be the big takeaway from your Indiana Jones movie. Anyway, they make it back home, Marion and Indiana get married because they’ve proven in the past hour that they’re totally going to be a great couple, and we wrap up what’s, in my opinion, the worst Indiana Jones movie ever made.

Much like what I said in my Temple of Doom review, that movie wasn’t good, but it at least stood out amongst the other Indiana Jones films and had it’s own sense of creative passion. This movie has no passion in it at all. It plays it completely safe by just rehashing everything the previous films did, offering nothing creatively stimulating or intriguing, and is just a boring soulless mess. That’s also why I feel comfortable calling it the worst Indiana Jones movie ever made, because while the previous movies had some parts that didn’t make sense, awkward character moments, or over-the-top action, they still had a unique identity and style that made people enjoy them. This movie has no identity, and unlike Temple of Doom, deserves no place in the Indiana Jones lineup. I almost feel uncomfortable even calling it an Indiana Jones movie, because it doesn’t deserve that title.

I suppose if you never really got that invested in any of the previous movies this one would just seem like ‘par for the course’ to you which is also how I assume this movie managed to get a 77% critical score on Rotten Tomatoes, purely from the perspective of a mindless action/adventure movie. I’m sure if you’re a fan of those kinds of movies and don’t tend to analyze character, story, or the size and scale of the journey you’re watching you could enjoy the film fine, but for mine and Indiana Jones fans’ money, this is an ancient artifact that deserves to stay buried in the ground until the end of time.

And for this reason, I feel compelled to give this movie my lowest rating of any other film: 0.5/5 gophers. While occasionally the size of the shots and cinematography can be pretty, there’s absolutely nothing else to appreciate in this film.

Other Indy Reviews

Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark

Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom

Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny

(I make no claim of ownership for any of the images used in this post)

(Each of them are owned entirely by their respective copyright holders, which are not me)

(I am just a humble blogger who talks about movies, I do not make them)

(Yet)