Indiana Jones and the Franchise Killer

Indiana Jones was the first action movie i ever enjoyed. As a dweeby child i had to be escorted out of the cinema when Alan got a nosebleed in Jumanji (I think that's somewhere around the 10 minute mark) but when a propeller blade tore up a Nazi's back splattering blood all over a jet's window i was glued to the screen.

I proceeded to rent out the entire trilogy and fell in love with each of them and they remain in my favourites to this day. So naturally when i heard they were making a sequel, i met it with a mixture of excitement and heavy scepticism. At first I denied it could possibly be made with how old the actors were and the Internet rumour mill eager to spout ridiculous tabloid speculation but when i finally saw the first stills of the film i began to get giddy.

The trailer did nothing to quell this. Everything about it seemed like it was going to be as perfect as the rest.

But come opening credits things were already starting to go sour.

When i started this blog two years ago for the sole purpose of releasing all my pent up frustration for the movie i saw that fateful day, there were typos galore, swearing and confusion. Now that i have had time to deliberate and revise my points, i feel it only fitting to post an edited version of my earlier critique on the day that actor Shia La Beouf became the first person to apologise for the travesty that sauntered on to the screen to violate my childhood.

Hopefully this full and frank analysis of the movie will also stop me assaulting people on the street who happen to mention it but i sincerely doubt that.

1. The Start

Each Indiana Jones movie has had an action filled opening. In Raiders of the Lost Ark, Indy is trampling through an exotic jungle which leads up to the iconic boulder chase scene. In Temple of Doom, Indy is in a bar in Hong Kong and has to scramble to find an antidote on a panicked dance floor. In The Last Crusade, a young Indy runs across the top of a moving circus train encountering snakes and lions.

In Kingdom of the Crystal skull... a gopher pops out of a dirt mound and a convoy of army trucks are overtaken by a bunch of 1950's teenagers playing "Hound Dog" to set the time period.

You keep thinking,"Oh is Indy in one of the trucks? Is he going to bullwhip his way out? Is he crawling underneath the convoy right now and latching himself onto those joyriding teenagers?

No.

In fact the first shot we even get to see of Indy, he's a bloodied and beaten old man being kicked around by communists.

It's like the movie is taunting us. The old franchise is those kids driving in their car having fun and leaving the bulky, linear mess of Crystal Skull in it's dust.

And as an extra little twist of the hilt for die hards, they reveal the warehouse where the arc of covenant is kept. It's Area 51! A place which is surprisingly easy to break into if you have a shit load of guns.

2.Nostalgic nods
Each Indy movie has been an isolated movie. Like the very character he was based off of James Bond, each of the films have had romantic leads never mentioned again in future installments as well as characters and settings that are mentioned only when is appropriate.In Kingdom of the Crystal Skull all bets were off.

The Star Wars Prequels, Die Hard 4, Rambo, Rocky Balboa and Transformers had shown there was money to be made in digging up the corpses of mid to late 80's and early 90's franchises and tying strings to them for one last puppet show. Especially since the kids of yester year who begged their older brothers to sneak them into movie theatres were now grown up with fists full of cash and kids of their own. This would also awake a new concern in our favourite filmmakers. Of course these are stories that bridge the divide between the ages, so it's important to have as much for the kids as there is for the adults. Maybe a few nut shots here, a few cheeky monkeys and an important message to take home at the end of the day.



So every possible reference to the previous movies was taken out of the bag to whet the appetites of reminiscing red necks. Who cares if the story is in shambles as long as people are reminded they're watching a movie based on a movie they liked?!

So they tot out a statue of Marcus, a picture frame of Sean Connery (Didn't expect him to retire lads did you? Maybe you should have done the right thing and left him guarding the Holy Grail like you meant to. Would have saved you the embarrassment of trying to account for his absence and saved him the embarrassment of having his visage associated with your piece of shit movie), the arc of the covenant is wheeled out for a spell too. BUT by far the worst addition, MARION.

An obvious favourite of Indy's love interests, brought back for every anorak to cream his jeans over, she does little in the movie but grin in blissful ignorance to anything that is happening around her, rolling her eyes occasionally as Indy whips his way out of a truck. Huh! MEN! *shakes head in amused disapproval*

The first time we met Marion she owned a bar at the top of the fucking Himalayas. She drank a Nazi under the table and escaped snake pits. She was tough as nails.

In Crystal Skull she's a soccer mom who does next to nothing except following the men around waiting for her obligatory wedding to a man she hasn't seen in what must have been 20 years. Although maybe her submissive housewife routine is just setting the period again. WOW! It really is the 50's!

Of course maybe I'm just bitter that in all this remembering they forgot to bring back my favourite character...

3. Aliens but not in the way you'd think.

The Indiana Jones trilogy always based itself on a more spiritual subject matter. I mean he was an archaeologist and a treasure hunter so of course he'd be finding ancient religious artifacts and stuff that contained untold mystical powers preceded by ancient traps and puzzles. So already it's a place where aliens aren't really welcome.

That being said however i have no problem with aliens. The franchise was based off of 50's serials, like Flash Gordon. It's based in 1950's Roswell, a perfect setting for science, government conspiracies, saucer men and communists. The only problem came when they tried to mesh the spiritual and the scientific together.

This links back to my previous point, a good follow up for an Indy movie is something that throves new ground without disturbing the path it's already laid itself.

An alien spacecraft crashing to earth in the time of the Aztecs creating a super advanced race upset the balance of the entire trilogy before it. Now everything is suspect. Did aliens make the arc of the covenant, is it like some highly advanced martian jack in the box? Is the blood of Kali just an alien rape drug?...Was Jesus an alien too?

This is the thing that REALLY grates me about the whole movie above all else. If they had started off with aliens then i could have accepted that. It somehow feels fitting. But making this bland unimaginative, cut out aliens, these teachers buried under the rubble of an ancient civilisation is just awkward and unfitting with the series. Especially denying that they are aliens through out. Transdimensional beings travelling in the space between spaces. Yeah whatever you want to call them.

People complain about the fridge, they complain about the sword fighting, about the vine swinging. People complain about Shia. About how he can't hold a mantle to Harrison Ford. Well at least he apologised (Harrison, I'm waiting). But all these are mere sprinkles on the chocolate sundae of abomination they dared called a motion picture worthy of wearing the Indiana Jones moniker.

It's a movie so bad, that you just wish that they'd make two more movies even if it was just Harrison Ford twanging his dick for two hours on a pile of money, just so that you could have the GOOD trilogy and the BAD trilogy and the two would never have to meet under the same banner.

I don't blame the actors, i don't blame the writer (though good writing would have hurt none Koeps). I don't even blame Spielberg that much either (I mean at this stage he's just a handy man. He does the job he's hired to do. He doesn't rock the boat. Just makes solid average uninventive, derivative films.) If there is anyone to blame it is George Lucas.

For a while, his name meant nothing to me in regard the Indiana Jones franchise. I was aware he'd helped with the conception of it. I was aware of his name as producer but beyond that i figured that's where his involvement ended.

But when a franchise gives itself a bewilderinglingly terrible revival after years of silence and beelines straight for my nostalgia jugular while making a child friendly clap trap of new characters and setting as well as pulling out old favourites to be made into marketable toys...well i sense his fingerprints all over it. Not to mention, when his veto is enough to drop Frank Darabont as screenwriter you know that somebody's got more authourity than previously divulged.

Surely your bank balance isn't as empty as your creative well George. Can you Stop taking the things we all love and ruining them?

Shia apologised but that's just the start. The real challenge will be getting George Lucas to climb out of his own giant ass and apologise for the last 20 years of his life. Until then you'll find me outside the Skywalker Ranch polishing my rifle and waiting for a spot of beard to poke out from behind the curtains. Ta-ra!

Gareth Lyons