This movie threw me into a cinematic crisis. — 19 weeks ago
Wow. I don’t have words for how much I didn’t like this movie.
First of all, the first few minutes are screaming something. Namely something along the lines of, “Hi, I’m Steven Spielberg and I’m making the fourth installment of Indiana Jones. Look, it’s a fedora! Indy wears a fedora! And he doesn’t like snakes! Hilarity ensues! Also, America in the 1950’s was full of squares, greasers, and commies!”
The whole film was much too intent on winking at the audience, which made it hard to take seriously. Were any of these good choices:
Surprised prairie dog shots? Doubtful.
Aliens? No thank you.
Nuclear explosion? Nuh-uh.
Shia LeBouf getting repeatedly hit in the nuts? No.
Cate Blanchett as a Russian? Absolutely not.
Not to mention the crystal skull that everyone is carting around looks like it’s made of cheap molded plastic and stuffed with balls of Saran wrap. What was the budget again?
Also, George Lucas, we need to have a talk about CGI monkeys. They made no sense when you edited them into THX-1138 years after you shot it, and they don’t work here either. Please quit it.
My father thinks I’m being too harsh. He said, “You don’t understand. Old people like me like having the closure.” But don’t I understand? Didn’t I grow up loving Indy, too?
Yes, the film has some great fight sequences, I’ll give you that. But what’s missing is a good story, and without it it’s just another action movie. Indy deserves more than this campy send-off. As one of my friends said, “For me, Indiana Jones ends with he and Sallah riding off into the sunset,” and I have to say I agree.
What is this recent trend with reviving characters that we have no business reviving? Are moviegoers so nostalgic about old heroes that they need to see them struggling past their prime? What about new heroes? What about new stories?
Leaving the theater, I had serious doubts about the future of Hollywood. Perhaps that’s melodramatic, but upon returning home and finding that Sydney Pollock had died, I gave it some more thought.
There are still many great living directors—Spielberg, yes, and Lucas. There’s also Scorsese, Coppola, Woody Allen, and even Sidney Lumet is still making films three years after receiving his Lifetime Achievement Oscar. But films like Indy 4 say to me that the great directors of the 1970’s and 1980’s have really had their moments in the sun, they’ve made their masterpieces, and they’re beginning to fade out. There are young directors that I really like—Wes Anderson and Steven Soderbergh just to name two—but I don’t feel that any of them are quite ready to take over yet, and I fear for Hollywood until they are.
