Deviation Actions
Literature Text
By Dakota Wiegand
You read the title right! You are intrigued with what I have to say! You’re saying, “What can a guy who does reviews on cartoons have to say about that piece of shit?” I’ll tell you: it wasn’t that bad. GASP! WHAT?! Oh no he didn’t! Oh yes he did! Let me explain.
I was making a story and character for an action/adventure game the other day for my Game Design class and the movie popped into mind. I said what the hell and I watched Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull online. Now when I first saw it I thought it was a disgrace to the entire series especially with Indy surviving the nuclear bomb in a lead insulated fridge and Shy LeBeouf swinging in trees with monkeys and the aliens part. But I put all of those thoughts out of my head and watched the movie with an open mind. True those two scenes were bad, but it actually didn’t take away from a fun and enjoyable sequence of the rest of the movie.
Indiana Jones is now older and is still doing his archeologist gig. In fact, I think he’s a little more badass in this movie. True he’s older and its clear he wasn’t doing all of his own stunts like he used to, but the fact that he is still doing what he was doing years ago is amazing. The fight sequence in the graveyard where they find the crystal skull was amazing. It was Indiana Jones being Indiana Jones. He hasn’t missed a single step! Plus his interaction with Mutt, his son, was awesome. He was opening up to a kid he didn’t know and Mutt just enjoying what he does with pure amazement.
Mutt Williams, Indy’s son, was a fun character. True, Shy LeBeouf will always be the kid from Even Steven, I watched the show ‘cause I had a crush on his sister, you forget about him and see this character. The 1950s attitude really comes through with him being a greaser and being in love with his motorcycle. However, he is also well educated for a punk kid and knows things that most don’t. You can see certain similarities with the two even before you find out that they are related. It was an ode to The Last Crusade in the same way you can see the similarities with Indy and his father.
Bringing back Marian Ravenwood as Mutt’s mother and Indy’s returning love interest makes perfect sense! They had an amazing connection in Raiders of the Lost Arch and it was disappointing for some of the fans to see her not return in the other movies. She had spunk and a certain quality about her that everyone fell in love with that makes you want to see her again. Plus she was hot in Raiders. Although she was not as attractive in this movie, she still had the same spunk and charisma from Raiders that she brought to Crystal Skull.
The Russians being the main enemy in the movie also makes perfect sense! The Nazis are all but gone from the world at this point and the Soviets were the biggest threat to the US. Plus, it was the beginning of the space race between Russia and the US making the UFO and alien aspect of the movie perfectly reasonable. Finally, the Russians researching telepathic warfare makes sense too. Every military, including the US, has looked into it. Aliens and telepathic warfare being sought by the Russians seems a little more believable than the Germans looking for religious artifacts that can bestow great power onto the beholders. One actually has science backing it up.
Even though I like the movie, I still think it’s the weakest of the Indiana Jones movies. I know Indy has gotten out of several bad situations by means of stupidity, like jumping out of a plane on a survival raft and gently landing on the slope of a mountain in Temple of Doom. The audience didn’t have a problem with this for two reasons: 1) it wasn’t done in CGI 2) it looked believable. Indy surviving the nuclear blast in a lead lined fridge is just too farfetched. He would have been killed on the tossing and turning of the fridge, or thrown out of the fridge and been burned up by the blast. It was also done in CGI instead of miniatures or maybe an actual fridge. Spielberg is an amazing director and has put together amazing looking scenes with miniatures and live action footage. Couldn’t he have done that here? He over uses CGI in the movie and it takes away from the overall film. When he uses it to create the ant army, though, made perfect sense to do that in CGI.
My other problem with the film is that the final alien design and the flying saucer wasn’t original looking. This is actually a small problem, because everything else was so creative. But you just expect a little more from Spielberg in the end to come up with something original looking. True aliens have been done a thousand times over and that original concepts are running short, but you can squeeze one more out. And did it have to be in CGI? I know Spielberg did a lot of things in CGI in Jurassic Park, but that CGI looked 10 times better than the CGI in this movie.
In the end, the movie was fun! It entertained me while keeping true to Indiana Jones. It doesn’t leap frog over Temple of Doom and make that the worst Indiana Jones movie, but it does represent the source material very well. If the other movies were graded as A’s this one seems horrible in comparison because it’s a B movie.
It’s worth another look and a little more credit than what we give it. Watch it as a blank slate and an open mind.
Movie rating: B
Watch what I was talking about!
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull www.1channel.ch/watch-391-Indi…
