Indy’s Whip Still Snaps, but Lacks Crack of the Old Days

By Adam Pope June 12, 2008 Issue

There are a few components key to the success of any Indiana Jones film. Whip? Check. Weather worn fedora? Check. Amusing but irrelevant sidekick? Check. Well-developed villains and side characters? Skip that one for now. Plot grounded in historical fact? Uh-oh…

Steven Spielberg and George Lucas shake the dust off of their iconic fossilmonger after nearly two decades in the franchise’s newest effort Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Fans of the first three films will feel an all-too-familiar quickening of the pulse and tingling in the extremities when the theme music kicks in. Harrison Ford reprises the greatest role of his career, still demonstrating his precise ability to fight off adversaries with quick quips and slow, looping haymakers. Spielberg also went out and recruited Shia Lebouf in order to attract the attention of those who were in Pampers the last time Dr. Jones was abroad. Rounding out the cast are Cate Blanchett as a frigid and intense KGB agent and Karen Allen, who returns as Raiders’ plucky and tough Marion Ravenwood.

The year is 1957 and instead of Nazis, Indy is squaring off with Russians in the middle of the Cold War era. The film opens with Indy being dragged deep into the heart of Area 51 by Blanchett’s task force of sinister Red menace. The target of the Soviets’ attack is a highly mysterious and powerful artifact known as the crystal skull. We soon learn that the skull has limitless powers and that this power is multiplied when combined with the other skulls which are somewhere in the Peruvian wilderness. Indy hops aboard his patented streaming red line—after picking up a Marlon Brando cloned greaser, Lebouf’s Mutt Williams—and is knee-deep in artifacts, tombs, and booby traps faster than you can crack a whip.

Spielberg maintains his knack for building action sequences as well as anyone in the biz, and there are a number of scenes—particularly a spectacular motorcycle chase through a college university—that bring back the excitement of the 1980s. Unfortunately, these moments are crammed between terrible CGI effects and a story by George Lucas that is so fantastic that it feels like Han Solo and Chewy should be investigating it more than Professor Henry Jones, Jr. One of the best parts of the old Indy films was the emotional investment the audience felt for Indy’s well being. He wasn’t a superman. If he got hit in the face, he fell down. If a wild-eyed Hindu child with a voodoo doll was torturing him, he screamed. The 2008 Indy is more like a physical manifestation of Wile E. Coyote as he zooms around on rocket sleds and survives atomic blasts by climbing into lead-lined refrigerators. At no time does Indy ever appear to be less than superhuman, except for one scene with quicksand and a painfully obvious rubber snake that you have to see to believe.

In their intense efforts to modernize the franchise, Lucas and Spielberg have effectively stripped it of its charm and panache. The special effects are overused and underdeveloped, a true disappointment considering that Lucas basically invented the world of special effects 30 years ago. Harrison Ford is spot-on and one of the true saving graces in the film. He masterfully brings Indy back to life and even succeeds in making him a little grizzled. In the end, the film relies on too much Hollywood glitz and glamour and not enough of the whip cracking and relic hunting that made the franchise such a success.

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