Review of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008) by Ben L — 13 Jul 2014

After 6 years of anger and frustration with this film I decided to revisit it when I saw it was airing on TV (at least I didn't pay for it this time.) I wanted to view it with fresh eyes, now that I have accepted the fact it is not on par with the Indiana Jones films I love. I thought, maybe if I can set aside the awful anachronistic feel of aliens then perhaps I could just enjoy some of the action sequences and subplots. Instead I found myself simply amazed at the layers of awful you can find in Crystal Skull. To start with there is virtually nothing in the film that makes any sense. From perfectly cleared paths for cars to drive through in a rain forest, to random swords lying around just in case the hero needs to fence someone. Then there is the horribly thought out action sequences. There is a way to pull off over-the-top unrealistic action and have it be both tense and occasionally funny (see the tank fight in Last Crusade for an example.) But when you have stupid things happen for no logical reason, like a guy surviving a nuclear bomb because he was in a lead refrigerator, it just becomes farcical, which is the wrong tone for an Indiana Jones film.

One of the big issues that really surprised me upon re-watching this movie is how horrible the CGI is, and how poorly it is integrated into the live action. It seems like if anyone could afford to get top of the line CGI work it would be Spielberg and Lucas. The animals were obviously made in a computer, the aliens look like they came out of a cartoon, and the traditional horrific deaths of the villains don't have the same impact because they look artificial. One of the hallmarks of the Indy franchise was the amazing practical effects. Watching documentaries about the making of these films was entertaining because you could see how they made a man's face melting look so real. Instead we get the ant attack and eyes burning up that look like they came from a video game. Even the writing lacked any creativity. For instance, Indy chose to take the name of his dog so let's have his son take the name Mutt. It's just terrible, and even though I'm only a fan of a couple of the original films it was still sad to see the character drug through the mud by such a halfhearted production as Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. There were moments, too, where I held onto hope that this could be fun. The scenes in the diner and on the college campus between Mutt and Indy worked quite well. It felt like it fit right into the franchise, but then they would follow it up with a completely moronic scene of Indy forced to do a staring contest with a big block of crystal. Just a horrendous film, and I hope to never watch it again, unless it's a MST3K type of thing.