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Right, I'm a long time Indie fan, loved the whole series from Raiders through to Last Crusade, so when I first heard about a fourth Indie film is was pretty happy... but then, having seen how old Harrison Ford is, I was also pretty dubious that he'd still be able to make an action film to the level that we've come to expect from Indiana Jones.
And guess what? Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull falls way, way short of any of the previous films.
Without revealing any of the ludicrous plot, here's a quick run down of what, to my mind, are the films main flaws:
The pacing, frankly, is so slow you have to wonder if Spielberg wasn't on serious amounts of Valium. Right from the start the whole film just drags... the action sequences in particular aren't anywhere near the fast paced non-stop stuff we've come to expect from and Indiana Jones film, let alone anything more recent.
One example is the car chase through the jungle, which one hopes will be akin to the superb truck fight in Raiders or the tank/truck/horse sequence in Last Crusade, but there's less fists thrown here than at a CND love-in... and the set-up for the very brief set pieces is so obvious that you can guess what's going to happen way before the film eventually gets to showing you.
Speaking of getting to the point ahead of the film, I guessed the ending within the first five minutes, as anyone with half a brain will too. The entire film is littered with supposed 'hints' but Spielberg sure as hell isn't M. Night Shyamalan... so his plot devices stick out like a pork chop at a bar mitzvah. And worse than that, they're often only in the movie to justify some bit later on... such as Shia LaBeouf's character, despite being a prep-school drop-out moulding himself as James Dean, he still mastered fencing... a fact we're told early on, and then of course he puts his skills to use against Kate Blanchett's evil Irina Spalko.
Actually, I say Spalko is evil, purely because she's not on Indie's side, so she must be the baddie, but I've not seen a more two-dimensional baddie outside of a Disney cartoon. Even her musclebound henchman comes across as being no worse than any office worker with a Sunday morning hangover... and of course they all meet a gruesome, unfortunate demise.
Indie himself is well, less like Indie than River Phoenix's portrayal of a young Indie in Last Crusade... he just sounds tired and old, besides looking tired and old. And Karen Allen, who is easily recognisable in her reprise as Marion from Raiders, is showing her age too...
The music score is at best non-existent and at worst, which is most of the time, completely unsuitable to what little action is taking place on the screen. Where's the score timed perfectly to match the horse's hoofs as it prances down the hill in Last Crusade? Where's the stirring the march as Indie pulls on his last reserves to finish the job? We all know music in a film sequence makes the scene all the more exciting, but Spielberg has missed all of that this time around. He might as well have had Blue Danube playing most of the time.. perhaps he even did... as time sure as hell seemed to take a long time to pass as Blanchett and LaBeouf laboriously swung swords.
I'm left wondering if Spielberg was thinking that Indie fans might be slipping into the same old age that is claiming Harrsion Ford and perhaps we're not as able to keep up with the pace of a fast action film... and maybe we can't always figure out plots as well as we used to? It certainly seems that way as Indie, (both the character AND the film) plodded along to an unsurprising and completely unbelievable 'climax'. Throughout the entire film we're spoon-fed information, just in case we hadn't sussed it... and in case THAT fails, we're normally shown what's coming up as well, just to be on the safe side... watch the car chase sequence along the cliff, you'll see what I mean.
To be fair to Spielberg, the crappy editing might've thrown a few slow-witted viewers off the plot for perhaps 30 seconds or so, but with this many holes in the plot and the heavy smattering of stupidly obvious plot devices, it's hard to see how anyone can have been wondering what was going on, other than where the hell an entertaining Indiana Jones film had gone... and no, I haven't figured out why they run through a bunch of cogs crushing the stairs whilst water pours down... or why a savage tribe entombs itself in ancient statues which handily crumble when they want to attack... or how Ray Winstone can't walk even though nothing in the room is being dragged into the void...
In short, having just taken the family to see this, I've certainly wasted my £28.... I'd probably even feel hard done by if I'd saved this for rental... but at least having seen it now, I won't waste my cash buying it on DVD. It was only the fact the popcorn and two drinks cost me a tenner that I didn't hurl them at the screen!
Indiana Jones will be a huge success, but only because of the reputation of the previous films... most people will come out and realise they've just seen a big fat turkey.
Sorry Indiana, but you should have listened to your father and let it go.
Originally Posted by Dareos
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