In 2008, the incredibly tardy Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the
Crystal Skull returned cinema's most beloved archaeologist to the big
screen almost two whole decades after The Last Crusade.
While it's certainly not as widely reviled as other modern sequels to
classic series, I feel safe saying that most found Crystal Skull
disappointing. Many people walked out of the theater blaming things
like monkeys and fridges. While those are absolutely elements of the
movie's failure, my autopsy has uncovered a number of other causes of
death.[1]
Unnecessity (disclaimer: not a word)
 |
| One of these people looks less comfortable than the others. |
An Indiana Jones movie doesn't need to be essential. There aren't
lots of threads connecting one to the next. Supporting characters,
settings, plots all change from movie to movie. It's an inherently
episodic series. There's a reason it gets compared to the James Bond
franchise sometimes.
However,
the people making it should feel like they have something to say, not
that they feel obligated to just say something, anything. Steven
Spielberg himself provides a fantastic argument for the unnecessary
nature of Crystal Skull in the very first non-dialogue lines of a
behind-the-scenes featurette on the DVD.
When I was done with Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, there's a
reason that I invented the shot of Harrison riding a horse into the
sunset. Because I thought that brought the curtain down on the
trilogy, and then we were all gonna move on and mature into other
aspects of filmmaking and I never thought I would ever see Indiana
Jones again. Which, by the way, in a sweet nostalgic way, was fine
with me at the time. But there were some people it wasn't fine
with.
Spielberg relates a
version of the story in which fans pester him, Lucas, and Harrison
Ford about a fourth movie, getting to Ford first, who then gets to
Lucas, and Lucas to Spielberg. As he says: “I was the holdout. I
was the one that said, 'I'm done
with this series! It was great; let's walk away!'”
This isn't to say
that there isn't a great Indiana Jones 4 movie that could have been
made. But the idea that the film's own director was unmotivated to
tell further stories with the character could explain in part some of
the other problems I'll talk about below.
I should mention
that Spielberg didn't phone in the direction on set. The
camerawork and technical storytelling are fantastic as always. The
story he has been tasked with telling, however, has some serious
issues, including the surplus of characters.
Character
Overload
If you watch the first three Indiana Jones movies, you'll find that
Indy is almost always in a pair, with occasional moments alone or in
a trio. In Raiders of the Lost Ark, Indy picks up the always awesome
Marion Ravenwood. (Though I'm about to complain about excess
characters, bringing her back was a good idea). Very shortly
after they join Sallah in Egypt, Marion is seemingly killed off. When
Sallah and Indy are separated, Indy finds her in the Nazi camp. The
Last Crusade ostensibly begins with three protagonists, but Elsa and
Marcus share only two scenes before it becomes just Elsa and Indy. As
soon as Indy finds his dad, Elsa switches sides. The finale of
Crusade does finally incorporate Marcus, Sallah, Henry, and Indiana
as well as the villains[2], but that's only for the final fifteen
minutes or so. Temple of Doom, ever the odd man out, sticks to its
three-man party basically the whole time (though only one could be
called a man).
Who's in the protagonist section of Crystal Skull's dramatis
personae? Indiana, Mutt, Marion, Professor Oxley, and sometimes even
Mac. That many people only just fit in my car, and somebody's not
getting a window. Similarly, it's impossible for everyone here to get
their due. There just isn't enough screen time to go around. Look at
the Amazon truck chase, which splits its time jumping around to three
different active heroes (Ox is being useless and Mac is in evil mode)
and three different vehicles. As a result, every character gets short
shrift.
In the Back to the Future commentaries, one of the writers says that
they regretted putting Jennifer in the DeLorean at the end of the
first movie upon realizing they'd actually be writing a sequel. The
series does its darndest to write her out as quickly as possible,
leaving her unconscious for basically two entire acts and a whole
other movie. The dynamic we're interested in is Doc and Marty, and
Jennifer is just a third wheel. In a way, the Crystal Skull cast of
heroes is something like a five-wheeled bicycle, but without the
stability that implies.
Mutt and Marion actually do contribute as characters, but the other
cast members... Well, let's get into one or two of them.
The Mac Problem
 |
| He's back there. |
Double crosses are a proud tradition in the Indiana Jones series. I
think the thought with Mac was to embody all the betrayal in just one
(1) Ray Winstone. Unfortunately, they got everything wrong with him
they could.
In the opening to Crystal Skull, Mac is introduced as Indy's sidekick
– sort of a big, Ray Winstone-y Short Round. Unlike Short Round, he
almost immediately betrays Indy. It could be considered an echo of
Alfred Molina's Satipo in Raiders (“Throw me the idol; I'll throw
you the whip!”), another character who exists only to betray our
hero in the early going.
But! In Raiders, Satipo's betrayal isn't portrayed as the end of a
long partnership. It seems like a marriage of convenience that's not
yet post-honeymoon. Mac isn't just a hired hand, though. Dialogue
tells us he and Indiana have spent “years spying on the Reds.”
Indy even tells him, “I thought we were friends.” The movie seems
to be asking us to mourn the death of the fantastic Indiana-Mac team,
but it's a team we've never seen do anything but get dragged out of a
trunk. Elsa going turncoat in Last Crusade succeeds in affecting our
emotions because we've spent something like twenty minutes liking her
– watching her help Indy on his adventures and out of his pants.
Jones has supposedly known Mac for far, far longer than he did Elsa,
but because the audience doesn't, we're not hurt by it (this ties
into the low stakes of the movie, which I'll be bringing up a lot –
more on that later).[3]
Any importance of the severing of their relationship is further
undermined later on by Indiana's quick acceptance of him back into
the fold. In the truck chase, Mac claims “I'm a double agent!”
only to do absolutely nothing to help Indy and the gang to prove it.
He doesn't even go to the effort of hiding his greedy motives,
complaining about the “city of gold” not being gold enough for
him. The most helpful he gets is riding shotgun, where maybe he could
change the radio station if need be. He's exactly the same on the
side of good as he is on the side of evil, just with less
gun-pointing.
That's the other problem with Mac: He doesn't do anything. The
character is totally superfluous to the plot. Take him out and add
just one more silent Russian soldier and the story moves forward in
exactly the same way. A great example is the end of the film. Mutt,
Marion, Indy, and Oxley are exploring the pyramid and interacting
with each other while Mac is off to the side grabbing jewelry. When
he pulls the pistol on them in the room 'o' skeletons, it's followed
right away by the Russians striding in to take over threatening
duties. It may as well be Spalko who walks in with gun aimed; cut out
the middleman.
After two hours of doing nothing, Mac succumbs to his greed and is
killed despite Indy's efforts to save him. Depending on whether
you're feeling generous, this is either an homage to or ripoff of
Elsa in The Last Crusade. It worked much better in Last Crusade,
though, because she was ever at any point sympathetic. Mac was firmly
in the spectrum between non-presence and prick all movie. At least
Elsa seemed nice at the beginning.
While we're talking about people dying pointlessly in the climax,
let's talk antagonist.
The Spalko
Problem
Indiana Jones villains have always been cartoons. (The one with the
most shading is Belloq, who is humanized slightly in his scenes with
Marion) These cartoons are reflective of their respective groups as
viewed through a pulp fiction lens. The Nazis are obsessed with
power, and the supernatural as a way to it. The cultists seek to
enslave.
The pulp vision of the Soviets is one of invasion and cold war
tension. Crystal Skull makes a little effort to give Spalko a related
motivation when she tells Indy she plans to use the crystal skulls to
control the thoughts of Americans everywhere. Unfortunately that goal
is tied up in the weak, vague MacGuffin (more on that later).
There's also a perfunctory blacklist subplot, but “perfunctory”
describes it perfectly. It sees Dean Charlie Stanforth, a character
we've never seen before, forced to resign and the audience forced to
ask, “Why should I care?” The movie wrings far more emotion out
of a photograph of Sean Connery than the living human in the room.
Just listen to John Williams' music in that scene; it's clear he
knows what's actually moving and scores it accordingly.
But back to Spalko herself. She spends the entire film seeking the
“power” of the crystal skulls in the lost city. Once she gets in
the room with them, though, Spalko suddenly desires “knowledge.”
She asks the alien for it, and it's pretty polite by her standards.
She then gets obliterated for her trouble. The bad guy is dead and it
looks on the surface similar to the demises of other Indy villains.
So why is it so unsatisfying?
This desire for “knowledge” comes out of nowhere. The Nazis
opening the Ark in Raiders are showing the disrespect for history
they've shown all film, seeking only to appropriate it for their own
uses. When Donovan chooses poorly, he does so because he
fundamentally misunderstands the character of Christ. In Temple of
Doom, Mola Ram ends up losing the Sankara stones because he betrayed
Shiva with their misuse.
Spalko's a jerk, but she never really disrespects the crystal skulls.
Maybe her once-mentioned plan to use the skulls for mind control is
against the aliens' ethos, but we have no way of knowing that, and
she's not expressing a desire to do so when she's killed. The
circumstances of her death are out of nowhere from her perspective,
from the aliens', and thematically.
Now that I've brought them up, let's talk about those aliens.
On MacGuffins
and Stakes
Crystal skulls, as used in the film, are just a far weaker MacGuffin than any in the
original trilogy. Even Spielberg agrees: “I sympathize with people who didn’t like the MacGuffin
because I never liked the MacGuffin,” says Spielberg. “George
[Lucas] and I had big arguments about the MacGuffin.”
It's not the skulls that bothered Spielberg so much as their
extraterrestrial origin – I'm sorry, Ox, “Interdimensional
beings, in point of fact.” Let's go back to that behind-the-scenes
interview with Spielberg.
George Lucas had this idea for Indiana Jones, and it was basically
“Hey, let's do aliens!” and I said “George, I don't wanna do
aliens! I've done two alien movies!” […] He said, “Okay. These
are interdimensional beings. They're not extraterrestrials; they're
interdimensional.” So I said “Fine. Fine. And what are they gonna
look like?” “Well, like aliens. But we'll call them
interdimensionals.”
Honestly, I think
this compromise is worse than just going all-in with aliens. That's
clearly a big saucer lifting off in
the movie's “X-Files: Fight the Future”-y ending. Calling it “a
portal, a pathway to another dimension […] Not into space, into the
space between spaces” just needlessly muddles matters.
 |
| Totally not from outer space. |
All of that wouldn't matter, though, if the crystal skull were
clearly explained and carried emotional weight. Raiders does a
terrific job establishing not just the Ark of the Covenant early on
(including pictures!), but even the Staff of Ra and the Well of
Souls.
The scene uses awesome music and Indy's description to really
establish the awe surrounding the Ark. It doesn't have to be horribly
specific, but just the line “Fire, lightning, real wrath of God
stuff” is more specific than the crystal skull's powers ever are.
What does “control over the power of the city” entail?
Beyond
that, there is something to be said for the Judeo-Christian artifacts
of the first and third films coming with pre-set connections in
people's minds. As Belloq says, “We are simply passing through
history. This is history.”
People know about the Ark and the Holy Grail. In Raiders, Indy says
the Ark “represents everything we got into archaeology for in the
first place.” A well-known MacGuffin would have served the movie
well; there were rumors for a time of Atlantis being featured, which
would certainly qualify. Crystal Skull screenwriter David Koepp is
also interviewed in that behind-the-scenes short, and he says, “The
closer you can stick to real legends, the better the movie's gonna
work, I think.”
The
Sankara stones were manufactured for Temple of Doom, but they come
with emotional stakes as their fate directly and visibly affects a
sympathetic village. In Crystal Skull, the stakes ostensibly include
the entire United States, but the danger remains completely abstract;
we never see the skull
used to brainwash anyone. There's a reason superhero movies
constantly endanger a girlfriend or family member. Even when all of
New York is supposed to be in peril, filmmakers know that we're going
to react more viscerally to seeing Mary Jane threatened specifically.
We know the city is in
trouble; we feel her
fear. And feeling is a far more powerful tool.
Heck, look at the
Cross of Coronado in the beginning of The Last Crusade. By
representing unfinished business from Indy's childhood, it's more
personal (and thematically resonant to the rest of the movie) in
thirteen minutes than the crystal skulls are in two hours. Here's
Indy's relationship with the skull:
INDY: I have to return it.
MARION: Why you?
INDY: Because it told me to.
Not exactly “the
reason we got into archaeology in the first place.”
(Incidentally, why
do we see the Russians getting the alien body from the warehouse?
That skull is glimpsed in the camp scene and never again. The whole
rest of the movie is spent fighting over the one Indy and Mutt find
at the grave of Francisco de Orellana. I guess whoever finds the
Soviets' trucks just gets to keep the other one. Not a fatal flaw,
just a plot hole that bugged me.)
It's not just the
crystal skulls' fault that the stakes of the movie are so low. Let's
take a look at the resolutions for some characters who aren't Mac or
Spalko. The returning of the crystal skull does have one effect on
our heroes, in that Professor Oxley gets his mind back. How or
why he does, I don't
know, but that's his happy ending. The thing is, we didn't know him
before he lost his mind. Rather than seeing a character restored to
the personality we know and love, we see one crazy character we don't
have a connection to[4] become a completely new sane character we
don't have a connection to (because we only just met him).
What
about a character we do like?
At the end of the movie, Indy marries Marion. This is the one story
thread that kind of works: Indy, Marion, and Mutt becoming a family.
Time is spent on it, and the people involved are all
multi-dimensional characters. In particular, I like the surprisingly
subtle (for an Indiana Jones movie) echoes of Henry Sr. and Indiana
in Indiana and Mutt.
 |
| "Look what you did!" |
 |
| “This is crazy! Somebody's gonna get hurt!” |
In an effort to address the barely-there blacklist subplot, Indy also
gets promoted to associate dean. ...Is that what he wants? He never
expresses interest in the position. He deliberately avoids paperwork
and students seeking office meetings in The Last Crusade, which would
seem to indicate it's the actual teaching he enjoys. He's still only
a part-time professor here. When he grabs his hat from Mutt at the
end of the movie, it's a signal to us that he doesn't intend to give
up adventuring as the other part of his time just yet. Associate Dean
Jones is just another unsatisfactory resolution to a story with
poorly expressed stakes.
But in the minutes before we get the epilogue, what's Indy up to?
The Inactivity
of Indy
Every Indiana Jones movie has a climax with some aspect of deus ex
machina in its more literal sense, with God or a god affecting the
outcome in some way. But they also involve Indy using knowledge (and
occasionally his willingness to cut bridges in half) to be an active
participant in the plot's resolution.
The Temple of Doom climax is a fairly straight-forward action scene,
though Indy does have something of a professor moment when he invokes
Shiva. In The Last Crusade, he has to use knowledge (“In Latin,
Jehovah begins with an I”, the Grail is the cup of a humble
carpenter) to outwit ancient traps, and when the Grail falls, he has
to make the decision to “let it go.” This is all important and
active stuff, especially the last one which is the culmination of the
two Henrys repairing their relationship.
The Raiders climax might seem on its face to involve an inactive
Indy, given that he is tied up at the end. But take a closer look at
the last minutes of Raiders and you'll see that Indy is making
decisions that clarify his character in satisfying ways. He's
reuniting with Marion. He's deciding to put down the rocket launcher
and not destroy this piece of history. In the Nazi-melting finale, he
goes from telling Marcus “You're talking about the boogeyman” to
“Don't look at it, Marion.”
What does Indy do in Crystal Skull? He walks into the pyramid with
the skull, and he runs away when it all crumbles, with a brief stop
to try and fail to save the unsympathetic Mac. That's it. Nothing is
revealed about his character by this. Nobody makes a major decision.
Indy doesn't even get to punch a swordsman. None of it feels like an
inevitable conclusion to something the movie has been setting up.
It's just people fleeing CGI disaster. It may as well be the end of
2012 or The Day After Tomorrow.
Conclusion
The victim died of half-baked characters, the sidelining of its
protagonist, and lack of emotional stakes. It's surprising, really.
One would have expected “crushed by boulder” or “impaled by
spikes.”
Nathan
Cranor's writing appears regularly at www.rateeveryanimal.com
and irregularly at
nscranor.wordpress.com.
He has a lot of
fond memories of that dog.
Footnotes
[1]The
monkeys and aliens are great examples of “tangible details” that
viewers tend to get hung up on that Film Crit Hulk expounded on well
in this piece:
http://filmcrithulk.wordpress.com/2011/06/07/hulk-essay-your-ass-tangible-details-and-the-nature-of-criticism/
[2]And
five camels!
Even though Sallah was clearly told no
camels.
Can't he count?
[3]I should note that it is possible to quickly introduce
characters the audience cares about. The beginning of the '09 Star
Trek gets me choked up every time, thanks in no small part to Michael
Giacchino's score. Mac is just a nonentity with a mustache.
[4]It's possible to connect with a character who can't interact
properly and speaks in nonsense fragments; look at River Tam in
Firefly who's humanized by her interactions with her brother Simon.
In this movie, the people who supposedly care about Oxley express
little to no affection for him. Why should we?
No comments:
Post a Comment