| F E A T U R E S T H O U G H T S R E V I E W S N E W S e v e n t s d i r e c t o r y | |
By Jeremy Grand Nineteen years we waited, all of us fans of the Indiana Jones trilogy, left, of course, wanting more after the fantastic Last Crusade. Nearly two decades in between, with George Lucas distracted with Star Wars, and Steven Spielberg flopping back and forth between sci-fi fantasy and historical epics, the two cinematic powerhouses finally came together again to add to the Jones franchise, which had already earned them millions at the box office. It made perfect sense that another film would put money right into the bank, but the sad part is that the audience, waiting all this time, reading about aborted script after aborted script, is left with a big pile of Nazi shell casings. Crystal Skull takes place in the midst of the Cold War era. This time, instead of Nazis, the bad guys are a bunch of red flag waving Russians. It all starts with some power mad, wannabe psychic chick named Irena Spalko, played by the often brilliant Cate Blanchett, who is after something in that big warehouse where the Ark of the Covenant is held. It's not the Ark, although there is a brief cameo, but something else. Let's just say it's a relic from the famed Area 51. Action scene, getaway, same old scenario. After the big escape, Jones finds himself in a town inhabited by dummies and fake houses built to be destroyed by A-Bomb testing. One of the most useless and unbelievable scenes, it's also probably one of the best, only because of its humor - Jones is confused by the dummies, then later finds himself thrown across the desert inside a refrigerator. Then it gets boring for a while. The lack of action scenes is sometimes unbearable, and the usually likeable Shia LaBeouf as the kid whose mother was kidnapped by these crazy Russians, is just kind of there. The mom turns out to be Marion Ravenwood, Indy's liquored up old flame from Raiders of the Lost Ark, who is also, dull and pretty pointless. The scenes we all want to see are those famous and wild action scenes and the wacky sets, old archeological ruins and tribesmen. They're all there, except the tribesmen are so ridiculous and once again, pointless, and the ruins sets are really nothing to write home about. They just looked fake - like Halloween prop store fake. There's a giant alien head-shaped crystal skull that they carry around the whole film, which just adds to the lunacy of it all, especially during the scene with the man-eating ants, who are terrified of the skull and create a ring of empty land for Indiana and some Russian baddie to fight to the death. In the final sequence, we all kind of hoped and expected to see something similar to, but not quite, the trial scene from Crusade, but it was lacking, to say the least. And to make matters worse, the treasure, or whatever they were looking for, was enough to say, "You can't be serious. This is how it's going to end?" It was so laughable and insane, that it made the rest of the fairly crappy film look like it belonged in the on-set port-a-potty. That being said, Lucas and Spielberg have had their heads in the astral clouds for way too long, and it seems that they have forgotten how to make a good, old-fashioned, non-CGI, worldly, religious artifact romp. There was no heart or soul involved, and Indiana Jones should have kept to his wise choice and rode off into the sunset without another sequel in mind. |
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| c o n t a c t s / c r e d i t s c o n t r i b u t e |
