Thoughts on Indiana Jones IV

There were good things to Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. There were more not so good things. I'm going to go point by point and be relatively brief on each one, because that's going to be the best way to do this. First, the good.

Harrison Ford still gets this character. He was fun to watch, and the escape from the warehouse at the beginning was (mostly) classic Indy. When it worked, the banter was fun. Unfortunately, it didn't always work.

The first part of the movie in general (I'll be generous and say up to the point where the titular Crystal Skull is found) was a solid experience that mostly remembered what made the series great. There were a few missteps even in this portion, but they fit into broader categories and will come later.

Kate Blanchet and Karen Allen were both great. Obviously, Allen's Marion Ravenwood was nowhere near as feisty as in Raiders, but that's to be expected; and the new tone of the banter between her and Indy worked about as well as possible. Kate Blanchet needs to play the villainess more. She seemed to enjoy the opportunity, even if her Ukrainian accent occasionally allowed a bit of British to slip in.

Now for the bad:

The whole issue at the beginning of Indy being a security threat is never really addressed. I mean, at the end of the movie, everything is fine, but why? They didn't prove a damn thing about his involvement. There's no evidence at all of what happened in South America, and even if there were, it's largely unrelated to what got him in trouble. The whole issue was stupid in the first place and didn't even serve as a catalyst for much of anything plot-wise.

Mutt was just a poorly defined character. The ridiculous greaser moments with his comb or switchblade were distracting; and he just seemed to fall into the adventurer role too naturally - noticing things or making realization he shouldn't have the experience to notice; things that Indy is allowed to do because he has the background. Obviously, they're trying to make his status as Indy's progeny as blatant as possible, but it just doesn't work. Not only did they actively take what could have been bad ass Indy moments and instead make them stilted Mutt moments, they didn't make him a likable enough character to legitimize the sequels that Lucas has already stated a desire to make with him.

Speaking of George Lucas, WTFCGI? Ground hogs? Monkeys? Where the hell do these things come from? What purpose do they serve other than to be blatantly computer generated frustrations that detract from the goings on by breaking the mood for no reason? Dammit, Lucas, stop being so enamored with technology and learn to use it as a tool, not a medium.

The Crystal Skull itself was ridiculous. Instead of being a fun, religious MacGuffin, it was just an omnipresent Deus ex Machina. Sure, I'll admit that the artifacts in the original three movies did act as Deus ex Machina come the end of the film; but Spielberg and co. just kept on attributing random powers to the skull for no good reason. Also, while it makes sense that the Russians wouldn't be seeking religious artifacts the way the Nazis were in the previous films; it still felt a bit that by using an alien relic for this film instead, they were equating religion with science-fiction.

Bringing us to the final point; the entire alien thing seemed contrived in general. The scene in the antechamber was, like much of the film, awkward and even more nonsensical than was necessary. The utter confusion of the proceedings made it amazingly anticlimactic at the same time.

All in all, the film was still fun, but I think I was expecting a bit too much when I went in hoping for another Temple of Doom at the worst. There are fun action sequences all around, and the character of Indiana Jones is still very much alive, even if not everybody remembers how to tell a story around him.