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!

V for Vendetta (2006)

Verily, I can only think of a few remakes that have been better than the original - 1941's The Maltese Falcon, 2006's The Departed, and 2007's Hairspray spring immediately to mind. Even sparser, though, are movies better than the source material (books, most voraciously) on which they are based. In fact, only one rests at the forefront of my consciousness.

Here is unveiled V for Vendetta. Director James McTeigue did a valorous job vindicating Alan Moore's eponymous graphic visitation now envisioned as a profoundly first-rate political thriller that vociferates considerably less voraciously than Moore's original vista.

What if Orwell's vision of 1984 vandalized England? That's the vicious venality that 2038 London finds itself enlivening, villified with an iron fist by venal Norsefire High Chancellor Adam Sutler (John Hurt, verminously filling in for Big Brother - and Bush-era America? The vote is yours...). Vivified by sheeple-by-vocation like Evey Hammond (Natalie Portman - more on this casting later), England needs only a victor to shake them out of their stupor. That virtuous vigilante comes in the form of mysterious anarchist V (voiced by Hugo Weaving, of The Matrix fame, verbally expelling a delightful vichyssoise of verbiage), whose visage is cloaked with a vacant Guy Fawkes mask. Victor or villain? This vox populi dares to vindicate the votives of those who seek freedom in England once again.

My vocation being to review filmic visions the very better to aid your volitions, I vow to keep this vade mecum very far from verbose and shall continue to limit my verbiage to a vocabulary less than verbose. A vixen in her own right, Ms. Portman should not find herself the victim of a vicious villification; inded, her performance is virtuous - some might say commendable, though this vexes my otherwise vocabulary-based symmetry. Envision if you will a twenty-something British bon vivant, vitiated by a violating vermin! The verdict is that Keira Knightley ought have played Evey, though one must admire Portman's vitiation of vanity and emotive weeping as her head is shaved. On repeat viewings, one can more fully approve of Portman's vocation as an actress as the initial vice of not casting Knightley is removed from attention.

As an improvement on Moore's work, V for Vendetta unvexes a previously muddled and thinly veiled derivative of 1984, in which the protagonist was vigilant yet unconvincingly vocalized. Though Moore's ambiguous version of Adrian Veidt in his undisputed marvel Watchmen was enviable, V is less than convincing, part vigilante and part villain. Here the vanguard of liberation is given fair shrift, defending his land with vim and vigor. Ambiguity thrives in literature, yet sloppy ambiguation proves most vincible in analysis.

More vindicating than vindictive, McTeigue's version of V for Vendetta vehemently strives for victory in the celluloid realm, and as comic books go this re-envisioning of a predominantly virtueless work of a visionary soars. View it if you can, and remain vigilant. Because "a revolution without dancing is a revolution... not worth having."

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008)

"All you need for a movie," Godard said, "is a girl and a gun." Yet the latest in this popular franchise, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, runs on two things: adrenaline and nostalgia.

For devotees of the franchise, it's been a dry spell marked only by Harrison Ford's retiring of the hat, coat, and whip - nineteen years since 1989's Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. So when Spielberg and Lucas announced the action hero's imminent return, skepticism was understandably high. Fortunately this movie delivers in a big way. Indiana Jones (Ford) finds himself at the epicenter of another global race to the MacGuffin - this time, it's a crystal skull from a long-dead (or is it?) culture. The Nazis have been replaced with 1957's top foes, the Communists and their paranormal expert Irina Spalko (Cate Blanchett, who never slips out of her impeccable Ukranian accent). Indy gets by with a little help from his friends, though: young sidekick Mutt (a surprisingly talented Shia LaBeouf), old flame Marion Ravenwood (Karen Allen back for more), and addled prof Harold Oxley (a surprisingly irreverent John Hurt).

Now that most everyone has seen this movie already, I feel fairly safe airing my grievances with the MacGuffin here. The crystal skull, legend has it, was constructed by extraterrestrial beings, though all skulls have so far been debunked as little more than clever human constructions. The movie doesn't take a hard line on the skulls until the very end of the film, relying instead on a slightly more archaeologically fascinating relic, the location of Akator (or El Dorado, the city of gold).

Yet there's still something a little off about the movie compared with the neoclassics Raiders of the Lost Ark and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. On a few levels there's something wrong with this movie. There's a plot twist somewhere about Mutt's parentage, but really - did anyone not see this coming? And the MacGuffin isn't as compelling; there's something about Judeo-Christian artifacts that I just find more compelling. And as nice of a change of pace as the Communists are - and as wonderfully wicked as Cate Blanchett makes herself - it's just not the same as having Indy fight Nazis, the token cinematic villain. Plus, we all miss Sean Connery.

But this movie isn't about making a great piece of celluloid. It's about making a fun thrill ride and revisiting an old favorite. Dr. Jones scores points on being just as entertaining as he was twenty-some years ago, with the adrenaline pumping in a nonstop race to the gilded finish line that puts one in mind of the similarly adventurous Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest. There's something to be said for a movie that makes me gasp in terror when a protagonist as immortal as Indy teeters on the edge of a cliff during a supremely climactic car chase. Additionally, it's great to see that a character like Indy ages well - physically and cinematically. He's like an old friend: not quite the same since the last time you saw him, but that's to be expected. As long as you can kick back, dig into a bag of popcorn, and have a good time, there are worse ways to spend a few hours at the cinema.

I can think of a few better, but not many.

Hellboy II: The Golden Army (2008)

One thing's for sure: with Hellboy 2, Guillermo del Toro is assuredly getting comfortable with his wholly unique cinematic sense of sight. Visually, this superhero sequel is a mesmerizing tour de force replete with stylizations to make even Tim Burton blush at outperformance.

That, and how cool is a superhero whose catchphrase is "Aww, crap"?

Ron Perlman is the titular Hellboy, a devilishly good hero rescued from a Nazi ritual by American forces led by Professor Broom (a nice cameo from original cast member John Hurt). Now a member of the BPRD (a supernatural covert task force that for all intents and purposes "does not exist"), Hellboy joins fellow adventurers pyrokinetic Liz Sherman (Selma Blair), aquatic Abe Sapien (Doug Jones, vocally and adequately replacing David Hyde Pierce, though the motions are still all Jones), and German ectoplasmic ghost Johann Kraus (the voice of Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane). Hellboy's mission here is threefold - defeat the villainous Prince Nuada (Luke Goss), who's bent on destroying humankind; frustrate Tom Manning (George Bluth himself, Jeffrey Tambor), the boss of the BPRD; and find out what secret girlfriend Liz is keeping.

Where the first movie had all the earmarks of a Mike Mignola comic book - deep shadows, talking corpses, larger than life (literally) characters - Hellboy 2 couldn't be more Guillermo del Toro. I'm not sure how to encapsulate his particular "look," but you know it when you see it: lanky creatures with multiple eyes in all the wrong places, fascination with global mythologies, and an underreliance on CGI effects that have similarly earned Christopher Nolan a few heralds for his work. While superhero sequels often allow the writer to expand on a character without the burden of an origin story, this one allows del Toro to spread his visionary wings to create the artistic sight he's been bearing his whole career.

That's not to say that the movie is too dark or too "del Toro." Kudos to the team for finding a way to integrate humor in small doses to keep the tension of the film from crushing its audience; kudos also for the Baby Bear way of finding a "just right" amount of humor to inject without creating a self-mockery like Spider-Man 3. Perhaps the most classic example here, without giving too much away, is a moment right in the middle of the movie in which an intoxicated Hellboy and Abe sing along to Barry Manilow's "Can't Smile Without You" over discussing girl troubles (Abe has been smitten by Nuada's twin sister Nuala). Too much of this would have destroyed the movie, but a few sprinklings here and there can only help.

Admittedly some of this movie smacks of a cry for a threequel - Hellboy's "destiny" for example seems fertile soil from which a threequel can grow, as does Liz's penultimate-frame delivery of the peace sign (not quite the intention, but I'd hate to spoil it). And I'm glad to hear that A) del Toro has a plan for a third movie involving the Universal Monster crew, and B) del Toro and Perlman are more than willing to keep doing Hellboy movies as long as they can.

If nothing else, though, this one is visually stunning in a way that comic book movies seldom are. Good thing the rest of the movie lives up to the eyeball assault. We'll have to wait a few years for the next one? Aww, crap.

Trailer Park: Hellboy II: The Golden Army (2008)

This is actually the second trailer for Hellboy II: The Golden Army, but aside from being mostly similar, I think this trailer does more than the first trailer. Granted, I'm going to be seeing this movie regardless of its ad campaign, but I like how this trailer is distinct from others in that it doesn't have as much of the corny narration the first one did, and it introduces the movie by giving us a full scene before letting us know what the heck we're seeing.

Inspired casting in Ron Perlman as the big red devil Hellboy, and it's always good to see Jeffrey "George Bluth, Sr." Tambor getting work. This looks visually more complex than the first Hellboy movie, and I guess this is my only criticism of the trailer. This looks more like a Guillermo del Toro movie (in the style of Pan's Labyrinth) than a Hellboy movie. I know it's both, but I suppose I'm just spitting at a lack of visual continuity with the first one.

Oh, and despite how this trailer appears, Hellboy does use his "Aw, crap" catchphrase. That's just in the first trailer, though.