Indiana Jones and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Movie

Not too long ago, in a movie theatre just down the road, I wasted two hours of my birthday watching Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Perhaps the best assessment of the film I ever came across was a simple statement from a kindred spirit in an online review: "George Lucas pooped on my childhood again."

To be fair, you can't lay blame for the horrendous awfulness that was Kingdom of the Crystal Skull solely at the feet of George Lucas. After all, Steven Speilberg directed it, Harrison Ford agreed to star in it, Cate Blanchett should have been jailed (or at least assigned several hundred hours of community service) for her over-acting, and poor Shia LaBeouf was left a broken shell of his former self by oppressive guilt over his participation in the violent wrenching of an iconic film franchise from the hearts of lifelong fans.

I won't waste your time reviewing the myriad things wrong with the movie. Well, okay, maybe just a bit of your time, but I'll be quick about it:

• Ridiculously bad script;
• Over-abundance of CGI-enhanced gimickry;
• Lackluster performances;
• Under-developed subplots;
• Overwrought action sequences.

It's as though Lucas and Speilberg thought all we wanted was a clever MacGuffin, as Hitchcock called it, and to see stuff blowing up; that we were interested only in the spectacle (which is important) and not at all interested in the slow, character-development moments (which are equally important). They haplessly flung a few meager scraps of actual storyline at us like lazy waiters tossing around undercooked food. 

The two have often spoken about how Indiana Jones was always intended to be a riff on the fun adventure serials of early Hollywood, and I can appreciate that as an inspiration, but it isn't a defense for low-quality story telling. Story and character development, along with a heaping helping of spectacle, are exactly what made Raiders of the Lost Ark and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade so much better than either Temple of Doom or Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. The two superior installments in the franchise allow us to glimpse the emotional motivators driving the characters and leave us feeling connected in some way, unlike the other two installments that come across like bloated video games.

Recently, it was confirmed that a fifth Indiana Jones movie will soon crest the horizon and the news has filled me with dread. I'm not talking about a the-Hobbit-wasn't-nearly-as-good-as-the-Lord-of-the-Rings-because-it-strayed-too-far-from-the-source-material kind of dread, but rather a sincere, heartfelt and oppressive dread brought on by the possibility of witnessing yet another nail being driven into Indiana Jones's celuloid legacy.

Perhaps I, as a fan of the series since elementary school, can offer several suggestions to all at LucasFilm:

1. Build all the sets you can afford and skip as much of the CGI as possible. The audience really can tell when an actor is standing alone in front of a green screen reacting to a scale-wage handyman waving around a mop instead of a sword-wielding bad guy.
    
2. Put the characters in the correct year. Raiders of the Lost Ark took place in 1936 and was released in 1981. Thirty-five years later, Indie should be taking part in moon landings, the Vietnam War, or the opening of Walt Disney World.
    
3. Apologize to Karen Allen (and John Hurt, while you're at it) for completely wasting her time in Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Bring her back and give her more to do. I still say the MacGuffin of the movie should have been Marion's son and his true identity -- not aliens.
    
4. Forget the fourth movie ever happened. None of it. Not a stitch. Write it off as a delusional head trip brought on after Indie experimented with acid at a Steppenwolf concert in 1968.

If you can accomplish any one of those things, then you might succeed in getting me to the theater to see the next Indiana Jones movie. Otherwise, it might be time to hang up the fedora.

A Nerd Rambles About Star Wars

A long, long time ago in a theater far, far away, I watched the first Star Wars movie and was enthralled. Not quite so long ago as that, in a movie theater just a few miles away, I watched the fourth Star Wars movie and was thoroughly unimpressed.

Why the different reaction? Two reasons: (1) George Lucas; (2) CGI.

Let's start with CGI.

Computerized artistry in films can be remarkable when applied with a deft hand and only when it is needed. CGI becomes problematic when it is used for no other reason than the producers can afford it. In the first three movies, the actors might have been acting against people in crazy masks and costumes, but at least they were acting. In the second set of films, the actors were largely delivering dialogue to imaginary creatures that would be added later by some guy at a computer, and their performances come off like they were delivering their lines to propped up brooms.

But the biggest problem, in my estimation, was George Lucas didn't understand why most people loved the original films. Somehow, somewhere, at some point between the 1970s and the 1990s, Lucas forgot how to make a movie that is fun to watch.

Visually stunning? Yes.

Epic? Yes.

Fun? No.

There was a swashbuckling, space pirate, nerdy machismo to the orginal films that was nowhere to be found in the prequels that followed. You couldn't help getting caught up in the action of the first three movies when everyone looked like they were having such a great time. The cast of the more recent movies all looked like they had volunteered for experimental proctological exams.

The same exact problem befell the last installment of the Indiana Jones franchise. It was loaded with CGI effects instead of the in-person stunts and complex sets we loved so much from the original films, and the actors were left dangling in the wind (or in the CGI trees with CGI monkeys) with crappy dialogue and wasted opportunities for developing their characters. I feared Harrison Ford had forgotten how to be interesting, but have since seen him in films in which he disproves this fear. Therefore, the fault must lie with Lucas and and his partner in crime Steven Spielberg. As one online reviewer wrote at the time: "George Lucas pooped on my childhood again."

So, when it was announced this week that Disney is buying Lucasfilms and the rights to Star Wars and Indiana Jones, among other holdings, I was thrilled. Oh, sure, the good folks at Disney have been responsbile fror some of the most notorious stinkers over the years, but with the influx of Pixar leadership the prospect of quality output is stronger than ever. And the sad truth is Disney really couldn't do any worse a job on the proposed new Star Wars movies than Lucas did on the last three.

Here's hoping...



© 2012 Mark Feggeler