Emerald City Video

One of the most bittersweet aspects of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, is its musical cues. There are moments in the picture where, no matter what you may feel about it, as a viewer it’s hard not to get choked up. By and large, truth be told, the score is pedestrian and a little dull…but when Indy puts a hat on and the trumpets play that old theme…! Visually, with Henry Jones Junior (he is rarely called “Indiana” or “Indy” in this film) swimming in his baggy grandpa pants and shocks of grey-white hair peeking out under an ever-crisp, rarely-dirty brown fedora, you really don’t get the feeling that you’re watching anything historic–but a few of the old John Williams refrains drive something primal bubbling to the surface of those of us who grew up idolizing Indy.

The reason that the music is the first thing to be examined here, is that it’s one of very few things that evoked that sort of reaction in The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. A movie frought with missteps and an obvious misunderstanding of its own audience, it’s exactly the type of summer blockbuster developed to make money at all costs: things blow up; there’s aliens and Nazis–well, not Nazis so much as Russians with grey shirts and jackboots; an unnecessary youthful sidekick (to bring in the teenagers, you see); and a little something extra borrowed from Bryan Singer’s abominable Superman Returns. To ascertain that you know it’s a Spielberg picture, the Russians are never subtitled (see also: every Arab in Munich or about 90% of all Germans in any film except Schindler’s List); this way, the “evil” characters can be thoroughly and literally dehumanized.

The film oozes 1950s–Russian spies, nuclear testing, a screening of Howdy Doody and Dr. Jones on a sort of academic blacklist all take place in the first ten-or-so minutes of the picture (as does—sad to say the high point of the film for me—a cameo appearance by Neil Flynn, a friend of Ford’s from The Fugitive who is best known for his portrayal of The Janitor on ABC sitcom Scrubs). The filmmakers have discussed at length how, while the earlier Jones films were an attempt to capture the magic of ’30s and ’40s adventure films with a contemporary feel, The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull will be a ’50s-style action romp with some science-fiction sensibility thrown in for good measure (a questionable choice to start, as many of those films eventually ended up as Mystery Science Theater 3000 fodder). In an attempt to capture that feel, you have some campy dialogue, some stock characters and Shia LaBoeuf as Arthur Fonzerelli. There’s a fairly generic soda fountain brawl, initiated by LaBoeuf and set to the tune of Shake, Rattle & Roll, which solidly plants this film in its era. This is an interesting artistic choice because in the previous Indy films, even with their date stamps, the adventures that took place were largely relatively timeless.

The other aspect of the film that is bound to turn some heads–it already has, both in pre-screenings and on the Internet as eagle-eyed fans dissected the trailers–is the role that extra-terrestrials play in the picture. As in Spielberg’s classic Close Encounters of the Third Kind, there is no dialogue, as such, shared between man and his visitors…but their presence is strong and pervasive, particularly in the second half of the film. Using Roswell as a jumping-off point, it is revealed that the good Dr. Jones has been used as a government agent in a variety of capacities since we last caught up with him–he is a Colonel in the Army, apparently, and also has worked with the CIA, MI6 and as a spy against the Russians in the time since Hitler autographed his father’s diary for him in the early ’40s.

How this film and its continuity jives with The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles is an interesting question–not much was revealed about Indy’s post-Last Crusade life in that show, but the implication is clear that he continued adventuring well into his old age. Born in 1900, Indy was revealed in Chronicles to have lived at least into the Clinton Administration, as a 92-year-old, one-eyed Indiana Jones narrated. Here, the implication seems to be that he’s ready to settle down a bit at the end and–if comments by Spielberg are to be taken at face value–leave the adventuring to young Mutt Williams (LaBoeuf’s greaser character who, while Indiana Jones is habitually rescuing his hat from danger, spends a good portion of the film combing his hair).