Review of Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

I am not, as someone with a graduate degree in anthropology who has participated in archaeological digs and taught archaeology courses, going to run all over Indy for not being a realistic archaeologist. For one thing, my limited experience doesn't make me an archaeologist, but more importantly, I go to the Indiana Jones movies because they are entertaining, not because they are hyper-realistic. There are plenty of National Geographic and PBS specials about real archaeology. I recommend them and some of them will show you that real life archaeology can sometimes be cooler than its big-screen fictional counterparts. But all of that aside, I was a little disappointed in the latest adventure of the whip-wielding Henry Jones, Jr.

The first thing I felt was a bit of a let down was the dramatic tension. In the other flicks, Indy and friends kept globe trotting all over the place. In this one we go from New Mexico to New England to Peru and Brazil. And that's it. In the other films I sensed more of a build-up as the clues to various puzzles were uncovered in dramatic fashion, leading up to exciting scenes of awe-inspiring revelation. The momentum just didn't build very well in this one. In the other films, there were extremely tense scenes where Indy and pals had to face imminent danger and we felt their panic, but in this one, not so much. The closest it came is a scene near the end running down a disappearing staircase. They did have the long fight scene near a dangerous location with a big lug and some other formulaic elements, but the overall dramatic tension just stayed a hum rather than an urgent buzz.

The second thing and third things go together. In past films, whether it was the Ark of the Covenant, the Sankara Stones, or the Holy Grail, there was a suggestion that Higher Powers and miraculous interventions may be real after all. But not just for their own sake. There was a sense that Indy was a reluctant, somewhat agnostic agent on the side of Good in a conflict with the temptations of Evil. In other words, whether it was an artifact from Judaism, Hinduism, or Christianity, there were indications that some Greater Good, either God or the collective good will of the human spirit or something, was at work behind the scenes and that Indy was instrumental in keeping its presence from being overwhelmed by those who would use the power of the artifacts to harm. This also created a dramatic tension in the series which is most explicitly brought to a head in the third film when Indy has to finally decide what he believes with his father's life hanging in the balance. In the latest movie, the religious artifact is in fact a piece of a living alien being whose morality is ambiguous at best. The subtle but insistent hints at some larger spiritual truth are replaced by a weak transplantation of an X-Files/Star Gate mythology.

Which brings us more directly to the third thing. By having the villains be high-ranking Nazis or murderous demonic cult leaders, the clarity of Good versus Evil was fairly easily maintained. How ironic that a bunch of Nazi officers are melted alive by the holiest artifact of the Jews, or that someone who rips the hearts out of people's chests while they are still alive is ripped apart by crocodiles. Clearly Indy's age meant that the story would have to be placed well after the fall of the Third Reich, and in a way the idea of making the bad guys out to be Soviet "Commies" makes sense. But for all of Stalin's atrocities, the Soviet Communists from that immediate post-Stalin era don't generally have the same "pure evil" image or cache that the Nazis managed to generate and maintain. Surely a better villain could be conjured somehow, perhaps a new wannabe Hitler attempting to stage a coup in Africa, South America, or Asia and who wants the artifact to fuel his or her insane ambitions? Perhaps even based on a real failed dictatorship or coup?

Overall, then, I just felt that the things which really made the other Indy films so interesting and exciting were just lacking or mishandled. While superficially a lot of the standard plot elements were there, they just fell flat. We'll have to see whether the new archaeologist adventurer, Alex O'Connell, can keep his mojo going in the latest installment of The Mummy series later this summer.