Indiana Jones

Man, this is hard. I really want to say good things about the new Indiana Jones movie, and I will. There’s just a few things that tarnish my view of this pretty good movie.

I am writing this having just gotten back from a midnight showing of the new movie. Overall, it was a pretty fun time (except the dullness in my mind from it being midnight and all). The movie has some great throwbacks to the previous ones (including a glimpse at the Ark) and some great action. Just like we expect from Indiana Jones. It does, for the most part, feel like a brand new Indiana Jones film.

(More after the break, including SPOILERS [Ark doesn't count as a spoiler, it's not a plot point], so be warned!)

Now to the problems, and they begin a mere few minutes into the movie. The first sign of trouble begins when the Russian woman tries to read Indiana’s mind or something. OK, I can get down with that, I played a little Red Alert 2. Then we get to the aliens. Yes, there’s aliens. In hanger 51 of all places.

Then we get to the nuclear explosion. Oh yes, there’s one of those also. Indiana finds himself in the middle of a nuke test in a model community. He survives by sealing himself in a lead lined fridge (just in the nick of time, of course). That’s all within the first, oh… twenty minutes, maybe 30. That is also the majority of memorable footage from the trailer.

Now we set off in search of the crystal skull, which it turns out is actually an alien’s cranium. That can stimulate your brain to tell you stuff. And holds all sorts of mind control mystical powers. And made a guy (temporarily) crazy. At the end, we even get to see the alien in his full, alien-tastic interdimensional beingness. (Told you there’d be spoilers.)

This leads me to the major point: it seems like Lucas and Spielberg did some bargaining with each other. Lucas got to do some giant special effects explosion, while Spielberg got to do some alien stuff. Frankly, I don’t like it. Lucas, get back to your typewriter. Spielberg, get back behind that camera. This Indiana Jones film got a little too close to “science fiction movie” territory for me, when it should have been firmly in “action-adventure” territory. Indiana Jones has had spiritualistic elements in the past, but they were always rooted firmly in reality. This went into the world of supernatural and lost some of its touch with reality in the process.

There’s another big issue that needs to be dealt with though. At the end of the movie, Shia LaBeouf’s character sees Indiana’s hat on the ground and picks it up. He goes to put it on, but Indiana walks by and grabs it from him. When this happened, there was applause in the theater. BUT: was this applause at what Indy did, or that Shia isn’t going to become the “new Indiana Jones?” It almost felt like there was a collective sigh of relief when Shia didn’t get to wear the hat.

The final big issue is that there is a lack of discovery. The reason for most of the stuff in the movie: “the skull said so.” Really. In Last Crusade, there was “clue leads to other clue.” In this sense, even National Treasure 2 was a better movie (I just saw National Treasure 2 today too). It doesn’t have the joy of discovery that the others had. For this reason, it feels more bland that the previous outings.

Overall, there’s some big BS you have to swallow, but there’s also some completely awesome action sequences. Basically, you could do way worse (but you may just want to pop in the old movies instead). I will give it 3 1/2 out of 5 stars. Or puppies, or whatever. 3.5 out of 5.