August Archaeology: Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008)

With the 40th anniversary of Raiders of the Lost Ark this year, the release of the 4K box set (finally!), and the franchise’s omnipresence on Showtime the past few weeks, The Cinema King has come down with a bad case of Indy Fever. Having already reviewed the films some time ago, let’s try something a little different this month. In the tradition of the “Grand Marvel Rewatch,” let’s dig around the Indiana Jones franchise and see what comes up.

Finally, from 2008, it’s Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. After an unfortunate encounter with Communists at Area 51, Indiana Jones (Harrison Ford) meets up with Mutt Williams (Shia LaBeouf), who asks for help following the mystery of a crystal skull in South America. An old mentor (John Hurt) and Mutt’s mother (spoilers!) have gone missing, and Indy’s Soviet foe Irina Spalko (Cate Blanchett) may be responsible. 

1. Color me interested. If you’ve had a conversation with me in the last few months, you’ve probably heard me say that the 4K transfer of Crystal Skull fixes the film’s color palette and in so doing remedies a lot of the problems with the theatrical release. In 2008, everything in the film had a green/yellow tint, which made all the digital effects look a bit fake. For a franchise founded on practical effects, that’s no good, so fortunately the 4K version color-corrects so that the film takes on a warmer, more natural visual tone. The digital effects aren’t as noticeable, and it finally looks like a proper Indiana Jones film, not a tint-rinsed nostalgia trip.
2. Nothing wrong with nostalgia. Steven Spielberg was born in 1946, and it’s pretty clear that he looks back on 1957 with fondness. The earlier films were all set before Spielberg was born, and so they inhabit a kind of timeless past without many particular historical markers. The first act of Crystal Skull, though, is all about the late 50s, with greasers battling straightedges while Bill Haley blares from a jukebox; meanwhile, Indy declares, “I like Ike” before implying he was present at the Roswell crash. Spielberg is closer to this material than he was to the preceding trilogy, and it shows; Crystal Skull is very much of its time.
3. Passing the torch. Flash back to 2008, and you’ll recall that there seemed to be an anxiety that Indiana Jones would retire and cede the franchise to Shia LaBeouf’s Mutt Williams, who (spoilers) everyone rightly predicted was actually Indy’s son. (Like his father, Mutt too named himself after the dog.) The film does seem to be walking away from the earlier ones, with allusions to the deaths of Marcus Brody and Henry Jones, Sr., in the interim, but all the same it keeps an eye on the past when it revisits Marion Ravenwood (Karen Allen), the only possible and eminently welcome choice for Mutt’s mother. The film’s closing gag, in which a gust of wind tempts Mutt with donning his father’s fedora, becomes a beautifully self-aware moment when Indy snatches the hat at the last possible second. We don’t want that, either.
4. Up in the sky! Fans are so torn on the extraterrestrial McGuffin, with many (rightly) pointing to Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind as an influence. I’ve always liked the idea that Indy’s adventures are themed around the pulp stories of that day, and having him chase aliens during the sci-fi Fifties feels almost inevitable. An alien is a far cry from the deep and preexisting mythologies of the Ark and the Sankara Stones, but the fact that Indy never makes contact with the aliens (“interdimensional beings, in point of fact”) keeps the film from verging too far beyond the realm of the plausible. Put another way, if Indiana Jones never meets an alien, does it really exist?
5. Some Indy is better than no Indy (or: Toxic Fandom, I hate these guys). It’s not necessarily a new phenomenon – Star Wars had been through it a decade earlier (and a decade later) – but Crystal Skull was marked by scads of online discourse about how terrible this movie is, what a betrayal it was for the fans, and how “real” fans can’t love it. And while I don’t love Crystal Skull, I don’t think it’s as bad as people claim. It’s certainly not an appropriate reason to start gatekeeping fandom, either; it’s not Raiders, but so what? Few films are. This one is plenty fun, with enough exciting action to justify its own existence. It’s always amusing to see armchair critics insist they know Indiana Jones better than Spielberg, Lucas, and Ford.

Sound off in the comments, and tell me your favorite part of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. If there’s a moviegoer more excited for the fifth Indiana Jones film (set for July 2022), I’d like to meet that person. But I promise you won’t need to wait that long for the next review on this site. The Cinema King will return!

August Archaeology: Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989)

With the 40th anniversary of Raiders of the Lost Ark this year, the release of the 4K box set (finally!), and the franchise’s omnipresence on Showtime the past few weeks, The Cinema King has come down with a bad case of Indy Fever. Having already reviewed the films some time ago, let’s try something a little different this month. In the tradition of the “Grand Marvel Rewatch,” let’s dig around the Indiana Jones franchise and see what comes up.

This week, from 1989, it’s Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. Indiana Jones (Harrison Ford) is hired to find the Holy Grail and his father (Sean Connery), who has disappeared while in search of the lost artifact. At the urging of hobbyist financier Walter Donovan (Julian Glover), Indy connects with his father’s expedition partner Elsa Schneider (Alison Doody) before discovering that the Nazis too are on his father’s trail. 

1. The ultimate McGuffin. They don’t call it the Holy Grail for nothing. Perhaps more so than the Ark, the Grail is immediately recognizable as an item of unspeakable value, even without the mysticism of eternal life. What’s more, Steven Spielberg and a passel of writers (including George Lucas) reframe the quest for the Grail as a quest for knowledge, not just for power. When Henry Jones, Sr., remarks at the end of the film that he has found “illumination,” he ties together the entire story in one word; amid deception and missed opportunities, the search for the Holy Grail is the search for truth. It can be tasted, but it can never be possessed. 
2. Sean Connery is a gem. Indiana Jones was born after Spielberg was unable to direct a James Bond movie, so it only makes sense that Indy’s father would be played by the best 007 there was. Once Connery comes into the film about halfway through, the movie practically bends around his gravity, and it becomes a centerpiece for his magnetic personality. He’s charming, funny, and so delightfully out of his element in the action scenes. I said two weeks ago that we deserved more movies with Marion Ravenwood; we certainly missed out on more father/son adventures like this one.
3. Friends in every town. We met Marcus Brody (Denholm Elliott) and Sallah (John Rhys-Davies) in Raiders, but they become full-fledged members of the adventure in Last Crusade. What a delight it is to see these two bring their special brands of levity to the film’s heady action sequences! While some have bemoaned the way these characters become comic relief, I think it makes them more likeable, not less. While Sallah counts camels, Brody gets to star in what might be the best joke of the film, in which Indy talks up Brody’s skills before cutting to Brody, hopelessly lost in Iskenderun and far from competent. The implication that Brody and Henry go way back leaves me surprised that we never got a prequel novel or comic book, if only to explain what “Genius of the Restoration” truly means.
4. The nature of choosing wisely. If Brody’s in the best joke of the film, the Grail Knight is surely given the second-best when he remarks, “He chose… poorly.” The climactic trials through which Indy must pass before finding the Grail, leading up to an unexpected encounter with the Grail Knight, are an excellent remedy to the old complaint that Indy doesn’t actually drive the plot of Raiders. Here, Indy has to think on his feet while solving a chamber of ancient puzzles, with one whopper of a payoff. I’d venture to say that J.K. Rowling cribbed a bit for the climax of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, in which her protagonists follow in Indy’s footsteps by braving a gauntlet of magical challenges.
5. But is it the best? As many times as I’ve seen the Indiana Jones movies, I truly cannot say which I prefer – Raiders or Last Crusade. They’re both exceptional, expertly crafted and infectiously fun. Raiders might be closer to the Platonic ideal of an adventure film, but Last Crusade is almost more compelling because the stakes are that much higher. (Plus, see #2 above.) But if you came to these reviews thinking I’d finally take a stand, I’m afraid I must defer. These are two perfect movies, and how do you choose between cookie dough and butter pecan? (Insert your two favorite flavors here.) I suppose the only correct answer is, “Whichever’s closest.” If Raiders is on, it’s Raiders, but if Last Crusade is nearer to hand, that’s the one.

As we ride off into the sunset, sound off in the comments, and tell me your favorite part of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. We’ll be back next week to close out the month with Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.

 

August Archaeology: Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984)

With the 40th anniversary of Raiders of the Lost Ark this year, the release of the 4K box set (finally!), and the franchise’s omnipresence on Showtime the past few weeks, The Cinema King has come down with a bad case of Indy Fever. Having already reviewed the films some time ago, let’s try something a little different this month. In the tradition of the “Grand Marvel Rewatch,” let’s dig around the Indiana Jones franchise and see what comes up.

This week, from 1984, it’s Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. After dodging gangsters in Shanghai, Indiana Jones (Harrison Ford) drops into northern India with his pint-sized sidekick Short Round (Jonathan Ke Quan) and chanteuse Willie Scott (Kate Capshaw). The theft of a sacred stone leads Indy to Pankot Palace, where an ancient evil has taken root, and our favorite archaeologist may find much worse than fortune and glory in the caverns beneath the palace. 

1. PG or not PG? The old urban legend draws a straight line between Temple of Doom and the creation of the PG-13 rating later that year, and there’s a grain of truth to that. It’s easy to forget how downright scary Temple of Doom can be, especially in its back half; even to an adult, there’s something terrifying about the human sacrifices and death cults that pervade the caves beneath Pankot. It’s all shot in fiery reds, and John Williams takes the music in an unearthly direction, with the result sounding more like a horror film than an adventure flick. Raiders felt tame by comparison, thrilling but never quite as perilous.
2. Hats off to Mola Ram. While the Nazis are still the perfect foil for Indy’s gee-whiz brand of adventuring, let’s not forget what an excellent villain Mola Ram makes for Temple of Doom. He’s scary, with nothing redeeming about him, and his subterranean search for the lost Sankara Stones makes him a surprisingly apt antagonist for our archaeologist hero. Amrish Puri is expertly cast, with an intimidating presence even before he bulges his eyes and gives a mad leering smile. And speaking of “hats,” my compliments to the person who gave Mola Ram the sacrilegious cow skull for a headdress, melding Indian beliefs with Satanic imagery by way of Georgia O’Keeffe.
3. The biggest trouble with her is the noise. Fairly or not, so much of the film’s critical reputation falls on Kate Capshaw’s shoulders. On this latest rewatch, Capshaw is doing exactly what the script wants, playing this big-spirited nightclub singer dragged against her will into a series of nightmares. She screams more than 70 times in the film, which is profoundly irritating, but the problem belongs more properly to the script, which puts this fish so far out of water that everyone protests. She doesn’t grow, she doesn’t change, but neither does her environment change around her. Instead, we get a character who never wants to be here; it is, incidentally, the same complaint I have with most movies about The Hulk. If you don’t want to be a superhero, don’t be in a superhero movie.
4. A reactive protagonist. While some lament that Indy doesn’t govern the action in Raiders, I’m surprised the same complaint isn’t often leveled at Temple of Doom. Unlike the other films, where Indy is off looking for an artifact, Temple of Doom gives him minimal agency in his quest. The Shanghai opener is out of his control, he quite literally stumbles into the main plot, and once he gets to Pankot he’s only reacting to things that happen. Now I’m not saying this is necessarily a bad thing, and perhaps it’s even clever given that this prequel is Indy’s “first” adventure, but it’s somewhat less than engaging to watch a protagonist who’s never quite in command of his narrative destiny.
5. Do I like this movie? Raiders and Last Crusade are Personal Canon material for me, no doubt about it, and I’m sure I don’t love Temple of Doom as much as those two. In fact, I’m usually sure that Temple of Doom is my least favorite Indy movie. But does that mean I don’t like it? I’ve never raced to see it – and indeed wondered if I could get away with August Archaeology without rewatching – but each time I watch it, I’m glad I did. The opener is a real banger, and the finale is terrific (both the mine car chase and the bridge sequence), though I’ll concede that the middle is a bit dull, stuck on gross-out sequences like the exotic banquet and the creepy-crawlie chamber. We’ll revisit the question in two weeks, but isn’t some Indy better than no Indy at all? 

You tell me: is Temple of Doom the worst Indiana Jones film, or is it quietly the best? Sound off in the comments, and tell me your favorite part of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. We’ll be back next week to ponder whether the franchise’s best is actually Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. 

The Suicide Squad (2021)

Superhero movies are like ice cream. I like ice cream. I like most kinds of ice cream. I have favorite flavors, but there are also certain flavors or toppings of ice cream on which I’m not terribly keen. I don’t like chocolate in my ice cream, for example, and too much of it ruins dessert. 

I think James Gunn is chocolate ice cream. I enjoyed Guardians of the Galaxy well enough but found Vol. 2 to be overly laden with Gunn’s trademark gross-out schoolboy humor, a fascination with bodily functions and jeering insults. Vol. 2still had the Marvel heart, but The Suicide Squad has boasted that it is Gunn’s unvarnished foray into the DC (Extended) Universe. If this is Gunn undisguised, it is crude, and it is cruel, and it is certainly not my favorite flavor of ice cream.

 

In The Suicide Squad (not to be mistaken with its predecessor, Suicide Squad), Amanda Waller (Viola Davis) has assembled another crew of miscreants to undertake a top-secret mission with clandestine ill intent. She sends the assassin Bloodsport (Idris Elba), the fanatical Peacemaker (John Cena), the depressive Polka-Dot Man (David Dastmalchian), young Ratcatcher 2 (Daniela Melchior) and King Shark (voiced by Sylvester Stallone) into the island nation of Corto Maltese to find mad scientist The Thinker (Peter Capaldi) before his Project Starfish is exposed. Meanwhile, Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie) and Squad leader Rick Flag (Joel Kinnaman) are stranded on Corto Maltese, with Harley doing her Harley thing while Flag tries to get control of the increasingly manic situation.

 

From its opening scenes, The Suicide Squad is aiming for a fun and zany tone, but instead it lands somewhere just south of virulently misanthropic. If audiences complained that Zack Snyder’s comic book movies boasted too high a body count, wait until they get a load of The Suicide Squad, in which human life does not matter while the film regards each death as a punchline, an opportunity to convince the audience that Gunn’s sick, bloody nihilism is something to be cheered. As a comic book fan, I was over the moon at the cast list, scraping the bottom of the barrel for characters like Mongal and Savant, The Thinker and King Shark (never mind that the latter two had already been on the CW show The Flash). After all, Gunn had successfully introduced audiences to Z-list Marvel characters like Groot and Yondu, and we fell in love with them.

 

Not so here. At every turn, each time a character debuts, someone else on screen verbally assaults them, calling them names and mocking them. Only Idris Elba’s Bloodsport is spared this unpleasant introduction, likely because it would beggar believability to think that anyone might get the drop on Idris Elba. There is nothing redemptive like the “We are Groot” moment and nothing heartfelt like Yondu’s remark, “He wasn’t your daddy”; the only thing that comes close is the clear and predictable relationship that forms between Bloodsport and his proxy daughter Ratcatcher 2, who is herself carrying her father’s complicated and tragic mantle.

 

When the film is not actively ridiculing its protagonists or treating them like mere cannon fodder, The Suicide Squadcontinues that Gunn tradition of kneecapping its emotional moments with lowest-common-denominator humor; worse yet, just when the characters get a moment in the sun, they’re often exterminated in brutal, abrupt fashion – and these moments are, again, so predictable, lacking only the subtlety of a bright neon sign to announce a character’s imminent mortality. It is hard to imagine any of these faces becoming breakout characters because the film doesn’t often seem to care if they live or die. In a sense, Gunn might seem to have the most in common with Amanda Waller, who sees her Squad draftees as expendable grist for her own manipulative mill, yet Gunn appears to have some degree of loathing for Waller too, especially given how the film treats her in its third act.

 

But I didn’t hate The Suicide Squad. There is so much in the movie that works. Elba is a gem, and Daniela Melchior is the closest thing the film has to a real protagonist, even wading her way with aplomb through a film school student monologue about her origin story. King Shark is the closest to the film’s Groot, though Gunn makes the curious decision to write the character, the comic book son of a sea god, like a brain-damaged toddler deserving of his colleagues’ derision. Capaldi is perfectly cast as The Thinker, even though the film never gives him an opportunity to flex his augmented brain. And of course, Margot Robbie continues to be a light in the darkness as Harley Quinn, a spot-on interpretation of an unapologetic if errant feminist. It’s only too bad that the film never quite knows whether it wants to be a true Suicide Squad movie or another Harley Quinn movie (in the vein of the delightful and underappreciated Birds of Prey).

 

But as much as I wanted to like the film, and as much good material as there is somewhere in The Suicide Squad, there is a core ugliness at the center of the film, an underlying contempt for its source material and its characters. There should be zaniness and joy, especially with a cast of misfits like this. The Suicide Squad was an opportunity to tell the schoolyard bullies that they were wrong, that Polka-Dot Man isn’t proof positive that comics are inherently stupid. “This is dumb,” the film says, “and you’re an idiot for liking this.” There is nothing redemptive about The Suicide Squad, nothing but condescending spite and scorn until an emotional climax that is never really earned.

 

And yes, I am aware of the delicious grim dark irony of complaining that a movie like The Suicide Squad is mean-spirited. If you put a crew of supervillains on a helicopter together, they probably wouldn’t get along; they’d cuss and sneer and betray each other. But as much of a mess as David Ayer’s Suicide Squad was, studio interference or no, there was always a sense that Ayer liked these characters and wanted us to like them too. Gunn’s Suicide Squad is like a serving of ice cream at the Abuse Café, and it is not for everyone.

 

The Suicide Squad is rated R for “strong violence and gore, language throughout, some sexual references, drug use, and brief graphic nudity.” Written and directed by James Gunn. Based on the DC Comics. Starring Margot Robbie, Idris Elba, John Cena, Joel Kinnaman, Sylvester Stallone, David Dastmalchian, Daniela Melchior, Peter Capaldi, and Viola Davis.

August Archaeology: Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)

With the 40th anniversary of Raiders of the Lost Ark this year, the release of the 4K box set (finally!), and the franchise’s omnipresence on Showtime the past few weeks, The Cinema King has come down with a bad case of Indy Fever. Having already reviewed the films some time ago, let’s try something a little different this month. In the tradition of the “Grand Marvel Rewatch,” let’s dig around the Indiana Jones franchise and see what comes up.

 

First up, from 1981, it’s Raiders of the Lost Ark. Indiana Jones (Harrison Ford) is tasked with finding the fabled Ark of the Covenant, a biblical artifact of unspeakable power, before the Nazis unearth it. Indy enlists the help of former flame Marion Ravenwood (Karen Allen), and the race is on across continents as old rival René Belloq (Paul Freeman) dogs Indy’s every move.

1. The music. You don’t need me to tell you that John Williams is the greatest film composer of all time. Just listen to the iconic and unforgettable “Raiders March,” thrill to the spectral and mystic “Miracle of the Ark,” and swoon to “Marion’s Theme.” Williams famously drafted two separate themes for Indiana Jones, uniting them both at the suggestion of director Steven Spielberg. Yet the two themes gel so well together, melding the triumphant march with a sense of the hard work it takes to get there. Each musical motif swirls into the film as though Williams is speaking a language all his own, commenting on the plot and driving us furiously into the action.
2. Speaking of the action… I can’t count how many times I’ve seen Raiders, but it’s tremendously exciting every time. From the pulse-pounding opener, which puts one very much in mind of a James Bond pre-credits sequence, through the climactic desert chase, Raiders gets the blood pumping. The best part about the action is how often it’s used to develop and humanize the characters, as when a tired Indy laconically guns down an overeager swordsman. Ditto for the small beats where Indy catches himself enjoying the violence, only to wince and remember that he’s been shot in the arm. Raiders practically reinvented blockbuster movie pacing, and it’s not hard to tell why.
3. What a world! The world-building in Raiders makes writing look easy; I should only hope to write a story this good. The film effortlessly introduces Indiana Jones as a superheroic archaeologist and a world-renowned scholar, and it gives him such a richly textured background filled with fascinating characters who have their own complicated history with Dr. Jones. When we meet Marion or Belloq or Sallah (John Rhys-Davies), we can tell immediately how they know Indy, what each thinks of the other, and what might happen next time they’re in a room together. Moreover, Spielberg deftly introduces the Ark into the film’s world through sophisticated lighting tricks and audio cues (like soft winds or, yes, Williams’s score). It’s an overall unified narrative where no piece is wasted – smart filmmaking at its smartest.
4. Is this the best supporting cast of all time? Harrison Ford rightly takes up a lot of oxygen when we talk about great performances in Raiders, but everyone else nails their roles. Karen Allen is superb in all the moments where she refuses to be the damsel in distress, and it’s only too bad that she wasn’t in more Indy films (or, put another way, that there weren’t more Indy films for her to join). Meanwhile, Paul Freeman dials up the smug smarm of the enemy archaeologist Belloq, a walking moral compromise; he sells the competitive rivalry with Indy almost immediately. Then there’s the stalwart John Rhys-Davies and Denholm Elliott, about whom I’ll say more in two weeks. (So to answer my question, I’m sure I’m forgetting another movie, but Raiders has to be in the conversation somewhere.)
5. The formative years. My dad brought home a copy of Raiders on VHS back during a McDonald’s promo circa 1991, and the more I think about it, the more I’m convinced that Raiders was a seminal moment in my moviegoing career. For my money, it’s everything a movie should be – a brisk adventure that puts well-crafted characters in impossible situations with nothing less than the fate of the universe at stake. It’s also a period piece, which helps explain my obsession with movies like The Rocketeer and The Mummy. It’s unlikely I saw this before Star Wars, but it’s possible; either way, it set a high bar for every subsequent movie to come. You don’t get on the Personal Canon any other way.

What more can one say about one of the greatest movies ever made? Sound off in the comments, and tell me your favorite part of Raiders of the Lost Ark. We’ll be back next week – back in time, that is – with the prequel Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.