Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull - Movie Review

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull was once again directed by Steven Spielberg produced by George Lucas and this time around written by David Koepp this was a draft that was going around for a long time many different people tried to write the script Frank Darabont originally wrote a draft even Spielberg apparently loved it Lucas didn't even M night Shyamalan was asked to pen a draft of this script a proposition that I imagined must have been very attractive for him since he has often said that Raiders of the Lost Ark is one of his favorite films but eventually everyone agreed on something and in 2008 we got the fourth Indiana Jones movie and I have rarely been as excited as I was for this movie I was so hyped Spielberg released this picture when production began and ever since seeing that photo my mind and body they were both very ready there was no reason to think that a fourth Indiana Jones movie wouldn't be good I loved all three of the others its Steven Spielberg and George Lucas collaborating again in life you have your doubts with everything but there was no concrete reason other than it's been a really long time since these people have made one of these to assume that it wouldn't be any good and I remember seeing the film for the first time in leaving the theater and I was I was definitely in denial I remember just being like it's like a B yeah it's it it's like a B and even though I was in denial about it I knew right off the bat instantly that it was the worst of the four but I couldn't bring myself to say that I didn't like it I was just so crushed by the possibility of this movie that I've been hearing about for so many years hell in the 90s I remember reading about this in magazines the ideas they had for like a haunted castle and all these ideas that I couldn't wait to see on the big screen but then I saw the film one more time in theaters and again on DVD and I thought to myself hmm it's not like a being okay the film opens with the older version of the Paramount logo like scene in Raiders except golf western has been replaced with Viacom I don't know why he thought CGI gopher was great but he did it was like an omen that was the warning bell really the opening shot warned all of us that this is not going anywhere good now what I do want to say is I'm not gonna sit here and trash this entire movie just because it's popular to hate on Kingdom of the Crystal Skull if you guys have watched my channel for a long time you know that I I don't like mob mentality I don't like piling on something just because other people are whether that's praise or saying something [ __ ] I don't like this movie but I find it aggressively mediocre I'm not gonna say this is a Dragonball Evolution level pile of crap because it's not there are good ideas throughout this movie and there are some good sequences throughout this movie and I'll talk about those - the film takes place in 1957 and it utilizes that era fairly well it's kind of like b-movie the science fiction b-movie where the previous trilogy was more of the 1930s those Old Republic serials this is a b-movie the film opens with a disposable but entertaining chase sequence with some college kids listening to Elvis they encounter the Russians and they have a little race together before the Russians eventually end up at a secret military base and this is the first time in the movie that I began to notice the lighting and the cinematography it's extremely harsh and very bright everything looks overblown compared these two different shots from Raiders and Kingdom of the Crystal Skull I don't understand why it looks like that this happens a lot throughout Crystal Skull this film looks very clean I'm gonna talk a little bit about their uniforms and how even the uniforms just look freshly laundered throughout the entire movie even though they're dealing with fire ants and tombs and cobwebs and skeletons everybody looks like they just walked out of the laundry room the other films look dirty and unpolished rough around the edges next were reintroduced to Harrison Ford as Indiana Jones all these years later and for the most part I think he's great as the character especially considering his age at the time he does so many of the stunts himself and he really sells a lot of this movie he's one of the main draws of the film and one of the few things about the movie that you can't really pick apart he's damn good in the movie rig Winstone is also introduced here as Mac a terrible character he's motivated entirely by money so whoever pays him the most he's going to be on their side which makes for character that you just don't understand you don't know what he wants how he feels you know nothing about him except that if he sees dollar signs that's the direction he will head it's just a boring character if he was just in a few scenes it'd be one thing but he's in the whole movie all the way to the end and the film asks us to really care about him later and we just don't hear in the opening we also meets Falco played by Kate Blanchet she's I'm indifferent yeah I mean I'm just I'm indifferent to spell go eye to eye she's not awful she's not great she serves her purpose as an evil Russian character who has a haircut and again why does this all look so fake even a simple outdoor scene like this just looks so studio lit so soon Indiana Jones is forced to go inside the warehouse where the Ark of the Covenant was left at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark and I like that they confirm that this is area 51 that's a fun idea for an opening having to explore this place that is filled with so many objects I'm sure Indy would love to get his hands on but they're looking for something very specific and Indy knows the contents of the box are highly magnetic and so they use gunpowder and shotgun shells to find this box this sequence is fine it's okay it's not a terrible opening it's not like you're watching this scene going oh boy this is gonna be a shitty movie it's fine this is it okay scene and I like the action in it as well for the most part Indy swinging on the light and thinking he was just about to make it to the truck before he crashes back into another one is classic Indiana Jones it's one of the few moments in this movie where he displays some vulnerability a human side unfortunately there's there's not a lot of that in the movie the idea of Indiana Jones and how he fights bad guys is that he always escapes by the skin of his teeth he's this close to dying just like John McClane it's one of the reasons die hard five sucks cuz he's just guy with gun in die hard 5 and Indy is just too powerful in this movie one of the reasons I believe that that happened is because all of the years that passed between the 80s and the trilogy and to Nate when we finally got for Indy had basically become immortalized as a pop culture hero at this point we kind of view him as a God in the film world and so approaching him again it feels like they weren't looking at him like he was a human being it feels like they got caught up in the drama of making another Indiana Jones movie and they forgot to make him a person in this one and although the scene isn't too bad I don't really need to see the Ark it's just oh there it is Raiders was a damn good movie wasn't it it was better than this one I also liked this first fight scene with the Russian they have a little scuffle and then they fall onto this rocket that blasts off and their faces get kind of pushed back and Harrison stumbling around trying to find his hat even his hat didn't survive that rocket and so that sequence is kind of entertaining this opening is fine but as the rocket blasts by Spielberg doubled down on the Gophers and gives them a little teeny moment because more Gophers I guess is what we really came here for [Music] the following scene is easily the most talked-about scene of Indiana Jones history perhaps more talked about than any of the the controversy surrounding the violence of Temple of Doom the nuke the fridge moment of course let's talk about this thing so this is not the first time Indy has survived something crazy but it's certainly the most insane and stupid thing I've ever seen in Indiana Jones movie the creepiness of the setup works for me Indies in this town and there's all these mannequins everywhere the televisions are on he has no idea what the [ __ ] is going on but there's this alarm going off I like the setup and as the nuke drops he gets in a lead-lined fridge that blasts through the air and lands really [ __ ] hard on the ground multiple times I mean forget the nuclear bomb the [ __ ] fridge lands like that like eight times he's a pancake in there his guts should be all over that but whatever it's the beginning of the movie goddamn that what a dumb scene and Spielberg tripled down on the [ __ ] gopher and we got him one more time thanks for the gopher I needed that I'll say this about Crystal Skull we are warned pretty early the opening shot and this whole scene ending with the fridge it's a giant [ __ ] red flag next Indy is interviewed by the FBI and they seem very interested in him because he was just seen with these Russians since the 50s so that's not good this is one of the scenes it has a lot of ADR going in and out here's a few examples you mean that Air Force Fiasco in 47 I was tossed into a bus with blacked out windows and 20 people I wasn't allowed to speak - good to see you - vibe relax boys I can bat for dr. Jones what the hell is going on huh KGB on American soil who is that woman I remember the first time I saw this in 2008 being like it doesn't sound right there's something how does that happen there's a lot of things in this movie that I don't understand how it happened how it got into the final cut but this is one of them we find out that Marcus Brody as well as Indies father have passed away they tried to get Sean Connery to come back for this movie for a little bit and he just didn't want to do it so he's dead and in the movie he's dead god dammit and here's where we meet Shia LaBeouf who plays mut Williams in the film a lot has been said about Shia LaBeouf he has said a lot about this movie he said a little bit too much about this movie and kind of [ __ ] up his career for a while because he did not make Harrison forward or Spielberg very happy with his comments about the film and despite the fact that his character in this movie kind of sucks he's definitely given the role his all it's just that the character I don't need it which brings me to something that I really want to talk about is that in d4 has a lot of good ideas it's just if they don't really coalesce into anything because whenever I watch a film like this made by somebody like Spielberg I have to ask myself how did somebody with his instincts think that some of these choices were good ideas how did he think that this was worth everyone's time the people who made it and the people who watched it and his time and I think just on paper there are a lot of good ideas here for instance mutt telling Indy that he just wants to work on motorcycles for the rest of his life in Indies like me you want to do that for the rest of your life and he's like yeah you got a problem with that he's like no not if that's what you love and don't let anyone else tell you different he says it's okay that mutt quit school but later in the film when he finds out that mud is actually his son he's like you're gonna go back and finish school there's a lot of good ideas in Kenya mother Crystal Skull but that's also the problem Indiana Jones films should be filled with exceptional ideas not just acceptable ideas and you can have a script that has tons of great moments but sometimes they just don't coalesce into anything and if your film is just a collection of moments that could be a fun clip to watch on YouTube but you don't really want to watch the whole movie because nothing really comes together that's what Indiana Jones for feels like for me so let's get back to the film this restaurant scene is not too bad it's an exposition scene we got to learn about the Crystal Skull John Hurt's character Oxley that's apparently lost his mind mutt is wondering where his mother is he calls her Mary and although there's no monkey brains or snakes or eyeballs in soup the exposition is handled fairly well and I like how the scene plays up that 1950s thing of jocks versus greasers there's a fun little fight which leads to maybe the best action scene in the film a motorcycle chase through the city where Indy crawls through a car gets back onto the motorcycle there's a lot of great stunts in this scene although there's one aspect of it that's always bothered me it's the fact that they decapitate the statue of Marcus Brody and it's sort of played as a joke not only has the character of Marcus Brody passed away in the Canon Denholm Elliott the actor has also passed away and I find it strange and a little disrespectful something else had to talk about is all the hey your old jokes there's a lot of them they don't bother me it's something I think that the filmmakers are acknowledging hey we're not vain about this Harrison Ford's not vain about this yeah I'm old but there's one joke in particular where Shia LaBeouf is like what are you like 80 and you know if they make Indiana Jones v like they're planning he might actually be eighty more power to you man [ __ ] it punch people all you want in movies for the rest of your life Harrison Ford I love watching you do it there's also an aspect of this film that feels really underdeveloped to me it's the relationship between mut and Oxley because when they find a cell where Oxley was kept for a while and there's all these words and drawings everywhere mutt gets really emotional about it because he feels like his friend lost his mind I don't really understand that much about their relationship it's all just kind of blurted out really quick in the restaurant scene it's kind of like Marty and Doc Brown in the Back to the Future movies how did they [ __ ] know each other where who knows how did they know each other he's young he's old what's happening and this mystery that's being uncovered about this crystal skull and a couture and all of these places that Oxley has apparently been to and now is leading them on a journey in a sense feels very undercooked it's not that it's boring it's just uninvested a thing they they went to a place there's a drawing on the wall and now they're gonna go in another place and there might be another drawing on the wall there it feels more like a Tomb Raider movie and although I like Tomb Raider I've always viewed it as Indiana Jones light this is actually an Indiana Jones movie that's not supposed to feel that way so here we get to a grave robbing scene with a lot of great sets and a line reading that is so horrendous and it's baffling to me that it's in the movie because it's way better in the trailer a teacher hard time you're a teacher part-time so like I said the sets during this scene are very impressive although it's just kind of funny that he's carrying around this [ __ ] plastic looking skull and he's just like talking well he kind of balances it in his hands and it just it looks like he got it at Walmart but Mack returns and the Russians capture Indy and mut we meet John Hurt as oxley he's completely lost his mind and the Russians try to use the skull and it's apparent psychic abilities on Indiana Jones here we learned spouts COEs plan which is basically to harness these psychic abilities to put their thoughts and their desires into the minds of other people like as a form of warfare basically they don't even have to lift a finger and while this scene isn't bad it's just it's like what is what does this have to do with but the real development of this scene is when we see Karen Allen as Marion Ravenwood once again a welcome sight she's pretty good in the movie I like I like her I've always liked Marion and she's not bad it's just that her Carrie she's just there you know she drives the car the problem here isn't the pieces they have assembled in this film it's what they've chosen to do with them although I do like Indies adorable reaction to seeing Marian again when they get a chance to escape they encounter quicksand or as Indy calls it a dry sand pit and you get a little callback - Indies fear of snakes when mud throws the snake towards him instead of a rope and he's got to grab hold of it to be pulled out of the sand pit I like how Indy can't touch it unless they refer to it as a rope they have to stop saying snake and say rope for him to be able to touch it it's sort of something that the MCU does a lot sometimes you watched an MCU movie and it's fairly entertaining there's a lot of good scenes but the story the narrative is so disposable and throwaway that you forget about it within a day or two and that's how I feel about this movie you know there's lots of scenes that are entertaining enough it's just that the bad ideas are bad ideas like really stand out bad ideas there's still some in fact the worst ones yet to come that we'll talk about in this movie here is where we start the jungle chase every one of these movies has a chase scene and I remember being so excited to see what Spielberg was going to do with this jungle chase there's a joke in the beginning of it though that I never really understood Mutt throws into his knife and in do ppens it and you hear fabric tear mutt reacts as if something has happened but Indy just gets up and starts untying their ropes so either he ripped his leather jacket or stabbed himself it's one of those two options and I I don't really see either of them paying off in this moment it feels like a joke that was set up but there's no punch line we've already talked about vulnerability a little bit for Indiana Jones but this sequence is one of the biggest examples of the lack of it in this movie he basically drives throughout the whole scene he leaps onto a car filled with Russians punches them all real good punches Mac and then drives he does nothing in this scene it was such a disappointment the majority of the scene is focused around mut he has a sword fight with spell ko everything in this sequence somehow looks CG and green screen even though the large majority of it was actually shot on location it looks really [ __ ] fake during this scene we get the next horrific offense that kingdom of the Crystal Skull gave us and that was Tarzan know what they were thinking but he swings around on vines like a guy the guy who had the idea had to then go to someone else and say I have an idea and that guy had to go hey yeah I like that they had to shoot it had to set it up they had to prepare for it they had to edit it and they had to [ __ ] put it in the movie a lot of people had this idea I don't know why they had the idea honestly this is something that terrifies me because we all know how great of a filmmaker Spielberg is the instincts of George Lucas has four story and they still have these ideas and they were like yeah that's that's that's good this is good it's a terrifying notion that to have as great of instincts as they do normally have they can still do something like this it's also kind of cathartic in a way it's like you know what you can fail as an artist you don't have to be perfect because even Spielberg can have Tarzan mutt Indiana Jones son movie with the nuclear bomb fridge and Gophers but once again why is everything so goddamn bright it's like they have no shadow there's no dark levels in this movie everything is just so [ __ ] bright and fake looking and for a movie that was shot on film and largely shot on location it's baffling to me all I can think of is that Spielberg cinematographer was trying to emulate the stuff that Douglas Slocum did instead of just doing what he knows how to do and they try to make it look like the older movies but it doesn't it looks like this weird digital thing even though Spielberg is like no no no film film film film and for some [ __ ] reason this is the most digital clean glossy looking Indiana Jones movie I've ever [ __ ] seen how does a movie from 2008 look worse than the movies from the 80s as far as John Williams goes he's never got to compose a bad score but this is easily his worst score for Indiana Jones I do love mutts theme though it's excellent that is a great theme and I also like the Crystal Skull steam it's very very suspenseful feels very b-movie as it should but again with vulnerability how in the [ __ ] did they survive this in fact there's a similar moment at the beginning of the jungle chase but after the chase ends Spielberg introduces his creepy crawly of choice for this movie fire ants which came from an earlier draft and they're pretty cool I like the fight with the Russian it's pretty bare knuckled but it's also pretty 50/50 they're just kind of punching each other a lot you never really feel like Indies getting his ass handed to him or as I said escaping in the skin of his teeth he gets knocked down a few times but he basically knocks the [ __ ] out of the guy and then the ants crawl into his mouth and easily the creepiest scariest shot in the movie it's a very tame a movie there's something I noticed while watching it Indiana Jones never fires his gun it's the only movie where he never fires his gun I mean come on man Marion drives their truck onto a tree branch that then falls into a river and it acts as like a flyswatter towards the Russians on the cliff I you're losing me here Spielberg it's at this point that the film becomes a series of sets one collapses as sand pours out of it they have to run down retracting steps there's a room filled with a lot of loot and the Crystal Skull has to be put on top of it there's just no tension or stakes to this finale it's nothing like opening the Ark of the Covenant or battling mola ROM on a collapsing bridge or the tests at the end of last crusade where he's trying to save his father's life they're just going from tomb to tomb to tomb and eventually they come across a bunch of alien skulls the skull leaps from their hands back onto the alien skeleton and it says that it wants to give them a gift they don't have anything to do with this gift though because a portal opens above them a pathway to another dimension apparently they're interdimensional beings and spell Co having followed them they're led by Mack who once again changes his loyalties as he does throughout this entire movie jumps in front and says I want to know everything give me all the knowledge in the world and the CGI alien glares at her and the overload of knowledge like blows her up look I know that all the Indiana Jones bad guys always go out because of their own greed because of their pursuit of the item but the idea of like knowledge overload blows he wa Mack dies when he sucked into the portal and our heroes are trapped in rising water and they're blown out of this thing and a giant UFO lifts from the ground and then vanishes into thin air a lot of people did not like this ending myself included and it's not just because aliens I don't really care that Indiana Jones encountered aliens there's tons of Indiana Jones books where he encounters weirder things than that it's just the fact that I don't give a [ __ ] about anything that's happening as I said already there's no tension here I don't feel invested at all everything just happened in a series of really boring sequences it didn't feel like it led to anything of interest or merits and the emotional impact that took place in Last Crusade between Indy and his father is nowhere to be seen between Indy and his son and look at in Dee's jacket look how clean it is he just got launched out of a geyser this film looks so fresh and polished and justed there's nothing about it that feels like an Indiana Jones movie except Indiana Jones happens to be in it we cut through a wedding scene and Marion and India are getting married which is nice that Indy and Marion are settling down and I'll never forget in 2008 even though I was in denial about how I felt about the movie Shia LaBeouf has Mutt picking up that hat terrifies me I was like don't put that [ __ ] hat on man oh thank god okay whew that was Spielberg kind of rescuing that moment for me because I was terrified of the notion of them saying now we're gonna do mutt Williams the movie please don't do that Indiana Jones is Indiana Jones don't ever take that hat away from him whoo that was a close one so as I've said Crystal Skull is a movie that is filled with some ideas that work and there are scenes that are fun to watch it's not a terrible Trash movie in every way it's just a film that has good ideas that really don't add up to anything and its third act just goes completely downhill and you begin to realize that the sequences that were fun were just that exactly just these little moments these little lightning in a bottle moments that added to nothing it's one of the most disappointing movies I've ever seen in my entire life I'm gonna give Kingdom of the Crystal Skull a c-minus guys thank you so much for watching my Indiana Jones reviews I've always wanted to do more in-depth reviews of these films the other three are on my channel right now I hope you check them out I hope you enjoy them guys thank you so much as always for watching and if they make Indiana Jones 5 let's hope it's good you guys are the best thank you as always and if you like this you can click right here and get stuck mine eyes [Music]

Channel: Chris Stuckmann

Views: 779,872

Keywords: Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, Movie Review, Chris Stuckmann, Indiana Jones 4, Indy, 2008, Reviews, Film, Scene, Clip, Trailer, Teaser, Mutt, Son, John Williams, Soundtrack, OST, Music, Score, Alien, Aliens, UFO, Ending, Marion, Spalko, Harrison Ford, Cate Blanchett, Shia LaBeouf, Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, Karen Allen, Ray Winstone, John Hurt, Jim Broadbent, Temple of Doom, Raiders of the Lost Ark, The Last Crusade

Id: qHWUYjigDKM

Length: 27min 5sec (1625 seconds)

Published: Sun Jul 26 2020