Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (to this day an excellent title for a film) was a lot of things for me when I first saw it in 2008 - my, that was fifteen years ago! It was the first PG-13 movie I ever saw in the theater. It was my first exposure to Indiana Jones the man. Years later I would find myself walking the streets of New Haven near Yale University, where they filmed the famous motorcycle chase, and wondering what it must have been like on set. Revisiting it fifteen years later, I struggle to see why Crystal Skull remains so reviled in the fanbase, because I liked it as an 8 year old in 2008 and I like it as a 23 year old now rewatching it for the first time since then.
I like that at this point in their time in the franchise that Steven Spielberg and George Lucas set out to do something different with the icon that is Indiana Jones while keeping to the IP’s pulpy and sensationalized roots. Indiana Jones - now much older, this being the first Indiana Jones film in quite some time - still kicks as much ass as he did in a film like Raiders or Temple of Doom or Last Crusade, but I think that the alien plotline was interesting and creative. This is, after all, the same archaeologist who went out and sought Atlantis and the Holy Grail - why are aliens, therefore, such a stretch?
Of course, this also means addressing the elephant in the room - the fridge. Everyone’s big complaint is that Indiana survives the nuclear blast by being bounced around in a lead refrigerator and that this is “unrealistic.” Well, truth be told, I’m not expecting realism from this franchise, and I don’t think Lucas or Spielberg did either in their vision of the adventure serials they watched as children; once again, this is the same archaeologist who drank from the Holy Grail, would that not protect him? I have not heard a valid response about this.
And then, of course, there’s Shia. Shia LaBeouf was really shaping up to be a major star by this point in his career, and with the Bay Transformers films under his belt and their evident success it seemed that the endorsement of two Hollywood giants would have boosted his career even further and, admittedly, Shia is not bad at all here. He plays Mutt convincingly and handles the action sequences so well. Had he stayed on the right path he probably would have led with a phenomenal film career. Alas, it was not meant to be, and my grandfather’s suspicion that Shia would become Indy’s successor remains unfounded to this day.
Of course, Crystal Skull does have its own pitfalls beyond the basic and somewhat vapid criticisms I mentioned before. The blockbuster-ism of it seems more reminiscent of Spielberg’s War of the Worlds than it did to earlier Indy films with its lens flares and special effects, but the heart of the franchise is still there and this feels competent as an adventure film in the same style; it’s got your intelligent foreign enemy, your folklore-esque treasure, and the horrific ways the bad guys die. What more in an Indiana Jones film do you need?
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (to this day an excellent title for a film) was a lot of things for me when I first saw it in 2008 - my, that was fifteen years ago! It was the first PG-13 movie I ever saw in the theater. It was my first exposure to Indiana Jones the man. Years later I would find myself walking the streets of New Haven near Yale University, where they filmed the famous motorcycle chase, and wondering what it must have been like on set. Revisiting it fifteen years later, I struggle to see why Crystal Skull remains so reviled in the fanbase, because I liked it as an 8 year old in 2008 and I like it as a 23 year old now rewatching it for the first time since then.
I like that at this point in their time in the franchise that Steven Spielberg and George Lucas set out to do something different with the icon that is Indiana Jones while keeping to the IP’s pulpy and sensationalized roots. Indiana Jones - now much older, this being the first Indiana Jones film in quite some time - still kicks as much ass as he did in a film like Raiders or Temple of Doom or Last Crusade, but I think that the alien plotline was interesting and creative. This is, after all, the same archaeologist who went out and sought Atlantis and the Holy Grail - why are aliens, therefore, such a stretch?
Of course, this also means addressing the elephant in the room - the fridge. Everyone’s big complaint is that Indiana survives the nuclear blast by being bounced around in a lead refrigerator and that this is “unrealistic.” Well, truth be told, I’m not expecting realism from this franchise, and I don’t think Lucas or Spielberg did either in their vision of the adventure serials they watched as children; once again, this is the same archaeologist who drank from the Holy Grail, would that not protect him? I have not heard a valid response about this.
And then, of course, there’s Shia. Shia LaBeouf was really shaping up to be a major star by this point in his career, and with the Bay Transformers films under his belt and their evident success it seemed that the endorsement of two Hollywood giants would have boosted his career even further and, admittedly, Shia is not bad at all here. He plays Mutt convincingly and handles the action sequences so well. Had he stayed on the right path he probably would have led with a phenomenal film career. Alas, it was not meant to be, and my grandfather’s suspicion that Shia would become Indy’s successor remains unfounded to this day.
Of course, Crystal Skull does have its own pitfalls beyond the basic and somewhat vapid criticisms I mentioned before. The blockbuster-ism of it seems more reminiscent of Spielberg’s War of the Worlds than it did to earlier Indy films with its lens flares and special effects, but the heart of the franchise is still there and this feels competent as an adventure film in the same style; it’s got your intelligent foreign enemy, your folklore-esque treasure, and the horrific ways the bad guys die. What more in an Indiana Jones film do you need?
