Reviewing - The Adventures of Indiana Jones
These are an absolute blast - all three of them.
The Best - The Last Crusade
The Worst - Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark (****1/2)
In which the U.S. government decides a sacred supernatural relic should just go in an old warehouse somewhere
This movie is instantly iconic. From the opening sequence where Indy runs away from a giant rolling rock to the fight on a grounded Nazi airplane to the Egyptian ruins where Indy says “Snakes – why’d it have to be snakes?”, every scene is filled with charm and old-school fun. Harrison Ford is charismatic without being snarky and he’s traditional without being obsolete. What’s really remarkable about this movie are the action scenes. They’re choreographed in an exciting way, where Indy has to improvise a different strategy every time he comes up against a new foe. He’s consistently thrown into dangerous circumstances where he tries something out, things go awry, and then he’s forced to pivot even further in an attempt to regain the upper hand. There’s a particularly impressive bit where he literally climbs along the underside of a moving vehicle.
As leading ladies go, Marion Ravenwood was pretty great too. She reminds me of Princess Leia in the sense that she refuses to conform to the traditional damsel-in-distress archetype, and she does her part to be an active part of moving the plot forward. There was a head-scratching moment for me where a bad guy wanted to put her in a particular dress, and I didn’t really get what the significance of that was supposed to be. Do you have a crush on this girl? Isn’t that a bit weird to try pretending that you’re just on a date instead of in a hostage situation? And I get that she agreed to put on the dress to lull him into a false sense of security, but to me it just seemed like no one in the scene understood the fact that it was really weird for this guy to ask her to change.
One last thing before I wrap this up. I think it’s pretty neat that the forbidden treasure in question is the Ark of the Covenant. The treasures are so often totally made up (think of the cursed Aztec gold from Curse of the Black Pearl), so to pick one that’s common knowledge to Western audiences is fun. It’s just that you can’t pick something your audience knows about and then make up rules for it. The burning of the swastika on the Covenant’s box was a nice touch, and the fact that the Nazis all got deep-fried for opening it actually makes a tiny bit of sense biblically, but nowhere in the Bible does it say that lightning zapped out of the Ark to kill Israel’s foes. In fact, the Bible specifically says there was a time where the Israelites brought the Ark as their good-luck charm into battle and the bad guys decimated them. Get your facts straight!
All in all, this is a great old-fashioned swashbuckling adventure. The hero’s great, the set pieces are terrific, and every scene is loaded with fun.
Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (***)
In which a kid gets whipped while a bunch of men watch - no seriously
Where did Marion Ravenwood go? And why is everybody okay with this?
That’s what I thought when I first watched the film – but then I realized that this movie is actually a prequel to Raiders of the Lost Ark. So technically Marion didn’t need to be in this...but why did they do that? Why not just make this a straight sequel and keep Marion in?
I know, I know. It’s “Indiana Jones”, not “Indy and Marion”. But come on, she was great! And they ended the last movie on a note where it seemed evident that the two of them were going to stick together going forward. To top it off, she doesn’t come back for The Last Crusade, so they really have no excuse.
That’s not to say that I don’t like the new leading lady Willie. She’s basically a polar opposite of Marion. She’s incompetent, stuck-up, and she hates every second that she’s moving through some forbidden temple or something like that. And yeah, she’s a caricature damsel-in-distress, and that’s not exactly a female figure to look up to, but it’s hard not to laugh when she’s screaming hysterically while being forced to stick her hand in a dark insect-infested hole to save Indy’s life. Think of the nerd guy from Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom. The trope of a fish out of water can be a lot of fun, and Willie nails it.
There are parts of this movie that I love, all the scenes with bugs in particular. They really upped the gross factor for this second film, and I thought it was great. On the downside, some of the ‘grossness’ is attributed to Indian culture. There’s a dinner scene in an Indian palace where all they eat is really gross stuff – and while it’s a fun scene, it paints India out as a place full of really really gross people. There’s plenty of normal stuff they eat over there, guys. And anyway, the whole chilled-monkey-brains thing comes from China, not India – and even then it’s more of an urban myth than a present-day common occurrence.
All the fun aside, there’s a portion of this movie that gets real dark real fast. I’m all for making the bad guys really bad, and to that end, the set design for the Temple of Doom is terrific. There’s skulls and fire and horns and chains and it really sets the mood. It’s stuff like this that makes me love genuine set design as opposed to computer-generated backdrops. But where this movie goes a bit far is in the moments where we see the enslaved children. There’s a whole bunch of kids, and they’re screaming in agony – literally screaming – as they’re whipped and tormented by their captors. Indy’s new sidekick Short Round gets whipped too. We literally watch a grown man whip a poor innocent little kid. Where does that get fun?
On that note, I’d better say something about Short Round. I don’t know how most people felt about him, but I thought he was terrific. He was charming, funny, and genuinely involved in the plot. They should make a spin-off where he’s grown up and doing his own adventuring. I’m not sure how much I actually mean that...my point is that I loved him. Go Short Round!
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (****)
In which we named the dog Indiana
This was terrific! So many times, the third film in a trilogy is bloated, over-the-top, convoluted, or significantly darker than its predecessors. This time, it seems like there was enough backlash about the dark nature of Temple of Doom to make Spielberg change gears for Jones’ third adventure. This film has everything the original had – thrills, laughs, awesome set pieces, and an overall feel of fun. Speaking of which, chasing after the Holy Grail was more fun for me than going after the Ark of the Covenant - mainly because the Grail is wholly myth whereas the Ark is a certifiable thing. The movie says the Grail is the cup Jesus drank at the Last Supper and the cup that Joseph of Arimathea used to catch Jesus’ blood during the crucifixion. The only problem is that there’s no biblical mention of Joseph being present at the crucifixion or at the Last Supper. And why would you go up to a dying guy – much less Jesus Christ – and put some of his blood in a cup? Why do that? And why would that turn the cup into a fountain of youth? I don’t ask these questions out of frustration like I usually do. My point is that there’s a lot of creative license going on here, but given that the rules of the grail are relatively straightforward (unlike literally any supernatural rules in The Mummy trilogy), I’ve got no problem with it. The Holy Grail is basically the Fountain of Youth with a Christian sticker slapped on top of it. That’s fine with me!
Okay, I lied. I do have one gripe about the Grail. So if Joseph caught some of Jesus’ blood and it turned the cup into the fountain of youth, why does the cup only work when it’s kept in this secret temple in the middle of the desert? What use is a fountain of youth if it only works there? Wouldn’t it be more useful as a plain-old ordinary artifact? Having Jesus’ cup from the Last Supper would be a really cool archaeological find. As Indy would put it, “It belongs in a museum!”
Alright, enough of that. There’s too much to love about this movie to get bogged down with little details like that. The opening flashback that shows us ‘the birth of Indiana Jones’ (more or less) is more than just a bit of exposition. It’s a great action sequence in its own right, where characters battle their way through a circus train with spectacular results. Sean Connery plays an instantly lovable father to Indy, with every line becoming instantly quotable due in no small part to the iconic nature of his voice. Their relationship is actually what sets this film apart from other films that close off a trilogy. Where other franchises have doubled down on action and villains, Spielberg decided to up the ante with regards to the emotional tension of the film. Watching father and son try and work out their relationship against the backdrop of the search for the Holy Grail was really heartwarming. You can see two men who don’t really understand each other trying to work through years of disappointment in the way that all men do – with forced cynicism and light banter. The moment when Jones Sr. is holding onto Jones Jr. for dear life gives us a whole lot of meaning in one little word – Indiana. Wow, could I write a paper on that. The whole movie, Connery’s character’s been viewing his son through a lens that Indy is incapable of using himself. And in the climactic moment of the film, when Indy is inches from holding his father’s greatest treasure in his hands, Jones Sr. finally acknowledges his son as the man Indy is rather than the man Connery wanted him to be. It’s a moment where all the cards are laid on the table. When the Grail is closer than ever, Jones’ dad realizes that his son is far more valuable – even if his son turned out differently than he had anticipated. I love that!
To finish here would’ve been fantastic. What better way to say goodbye to the man, myth, and legend of Indiana Jones? But sadly…oh so sadly…there was another film to come. So before it’s too late, stop here. Don’t go any further.
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (*)
In which I scream profusely and pray that this is all a dream
This is the Indiana Jones movie that shouldn’t exist. I really think this is on par with the Mummy movies at best. There’s one or two cool things, but this is definitely not what any of us were hoping for.
First, let’s talk about the alien in the room. Aliens? Seriously? You can’t put aliens in an Indiana Jones movie. You just can’t. There’s a thing in narrative called ‘genre’, and it’s what separates different kinds of stories from each other. We do this because it helps us classify commonalities in different stories, but also because it helps us know what to expect. A closed door at the top of a staircase in a scary movie has a monster behind it, but a closed door at the top of a staircase in a romance movie probably has a secret or surprise about one of the main characters. Indiana Jones falls into the adventure genre – The Mummy, Tomb Raider, Jurassic Park, or Romancing the Stone all fall into this category. Aliens are decidedly from the science fiction genre. Plenty of films can fall into multiple generic categories at once, but there are some things that just don’t mix. Asking an audience to get on board with ancient forbidden cursed treasure and inter-dimensional aliens at the same time is a bit much. What if there was time travel in Pirates of the Caribbean? What if Terminator showed up in Lord of the Rings? Everyone suspends their disbelief in these kinds of movies, but everyone also has a breaking point. For a legend like Spielberg, he really should’ve known better.
Secondly, this film kind of got a bad rap for the now-infamous nuke-proof refrigerator scene. If you somehow missed hearing about it, Indy finds himself at ground zero for a nuclear bomb test. He simply hops inside a refrigerator, pops the door shut, and then the bomb goes off. The bomb doesn’t incinerate the fridge – it just sends it skyrocketing through the air a few miles before it crashes to the ground and Indy rolls out virtually unscathed. If that’s hard to believe, would it help if I told you the fridge was lead-lined? No? That’s odd, because the movie took a nice moment to give us that information like it was supposed to help. It’s a nuke, guys. A fridge is not gonna save you. And by the way, why are there aliens in this movie?
Thirdly, no one can blame the casting team for giving us Shia Labeouf as the up-and-coming heir to the fedora. At the time, Labeouf was one of the most-talked-about stars in the media, due to the success of Transformers. They didn’t know he’d kind of go nuts a few years later. What we can blame them for is the vine-swinging sequence. Do you honestly expect me to believe that this guy is just suddenly able to figure out how to swing on vines? And that there are enough available vines for him to swing on for a considerable distance? And that he can do this at a speed fast enough to catch up to a moving vehicle? If Indiana Jones himself had done it, it would have been a stretch. Having this guy do it tasted too much like absolute lunacy. Oh, and have I mentioned how they threw aliens into this movie?
The ant scene was pretty cool, I guess, and I liked the action sequence where everyone was scrambling through the jungle fighting over the skull (apart from the vine-swinging). I also thought they worked hard to make this movie feel like it was shot a few decades ago. The cinematographic style felt very reminiscent of the originals, and that was a nice touch. But there was way too much green screen and CGI. A big part of the charm of the originals has to do with the elaborate set pieces and the exotic locations they filmed at. There’s not enough to make this film worth it. Also there’s the whole bit with the – you know – I think I’ve said it before –
You know the aliens
This post was originally published January 27th, 2020.