Indiana Jones and The Final Insult

If memory serves, the last time I felt moved to write about a film on this blog was about a year ago after I saw Spiderman 3, where I only just managed to prevent myself walking out after about ten minutes. Well, last night a group of us went to see Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, and I have to say that I practically cried at what they'd done to one of the most iconic of film franchises.

There was only one single redeeming feature of the film, about five minutes in where they kick Indiana Jones out of the boot of the car at the US base and as he stands up (after picking up his hat) he's silhouetted against the car door wearing his fedora. If the film had ended there it would have been perfect, but sadly everything from there on just served to make it worth less and less.

Apparently the original title for the film was 'Indiana Jones and the Saucer Men from Mars', and in a way it would have been a whole lot better if they'd stuck with it. It captures the awful B-movie nature of the film perfectly. Clearly they had fun making it, but it might have been better if they'd spared a thought as to whether the audience would have fun watching it. Just before release, Lucas remarked: "We're all going to get people throwing tomatoes at us. But it's a fun movie to make." And therein lies the problem he apparently didn't spot - what does it matter if it was fun to make, if it's not fun to watch? I can't imagine the Monty Python crew, for example, being so short sighted.

Honestly, the audience were laughing at so many points at the ridiculousness of it all. It's almost as if the us of computer effects has killed the industry - what was with the beavers and the ants? Older films didn't suffer for not having animals do what we want them to do, precisely because animals don't do what we want them to do. As soon as computer effects make the impossible possible, then the whole effect is lost. The splash of mud from the car chase on the camera breaking the fourth wall was a case in point - what was the point in that? It's not as if the film was believable enough that we actually thought it was real in the first place.

The best thing about the first three Indiana Jones films was that there were intentionally funny, but this one wasn't funny when it should have been, and was painfully awful when it should have been funny. Calling a character 'Mutt' who then swings through the trees with monkeys? Having Indiana Jones, who ends up in a nuclear blast zone, survive by getting into apparently the only fridge strong enough to withstand the blast and then emerge unscathed after a trip several hundred metres through in the air while still being hopelessly close to the blast. The magnetism that seemed to come and go as it became useful. The laughable falls down three waterfalls. The fact that the plinth on top of the Aztec pyramid fell much further down than it could have done given the fact that it rested on the sand that poured out. Oh, and yes, did I mention the aliens?

What on earth? I'd hoped that a night's sleep would have let me cool down a bit, but I'm actually angry about this film. How two people as well known and apparently as sensible as Lucas and Spielberg could ever have thought it was a good film, a fitting compliment to the first three, is completely and utterly beyond me. They waited almost twenty years to make this film to get the script right. I suspect there are plenty of people out there, like me, who wish they hadn't bothered.

But at least it confirmed one thing; going to the cinema is much more about who you go with rather than what you go and watch.