What's so great about Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

Indy goes 50s

Nineteen years after Indiana Jones rode off into the sunset with his father, we find our hero in a wholly different world. The geopolitical landscape of the late 30s has given way to the 1950s. The Nazis have been replaced by the Reds. The atom bomb has changed the course of human history. Paranoia has replaced patriotism. Indiana Jones himself is a post-war figure now, a war hero, a patriot, and somehow, still a tenured professor of archeology. Professor Jones’s first word in fourth appearance on screen? “Russians.”

This is why I love Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. It’s a story that takes place not only in the historical era of the 50s, but as an expression of 1950s zeitgeist. “Commies", flying saucers, McCarthyism and greasers were the iconography of post-war America. George Lucas, ever the protector of his own creative freedom, leans into the era and never apologizes for the new tone. That means Crystal Skull has its very own feeling, as it should. The pulp fiction of 1950s is a set of references that have very little in common with serials of the 1930s.

There’s a competing desire in popular culture to see both what we’ve seen before and also demand something new. Thus, you will inevitably hear a chorus decrying either choice: if something is too similar to what’s come before, it’s a retread; if it’s too far from the tried-and-true, the series has jumped the shark or strayed from the formula.

George Lucas always prefers the big swing, grounded in a kind of stubborn dedication to his vision. He doesn’t like to repeat himself (until he does, because Star Wars rhymes, he contains multitudes). The prequels were not designed to give us what we wanted, they were designed to more fully express his original idea. (If you read the first draft of Star Wars, it has far more in common with Episode I than Episode IV.) Even though he and Spielberg famously had a staring contest about this movie’s plot and Spielberg’s resistance to flying saucers and aliens, Lucas would clearly not be deterred.

So, that’s one reason I love it, it really commits to its world. But it’s also because of Steven Spielberg. The film’s sequences are realized in a way that few filmmakers could ever achieve. He lays out environments, moves the camera effortlessly, understands how to bridge from one scene to the next, how these sequences are closer in tone to comedy than drama. There’s wit everywhere, little jokes and accidents. The beginning of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is one extended scene that begins with Russians infiltrating a military base and ends with Dr. Jones staring at a mushroom cloud. The whole sequence goes from the camp of Cate Blanchett as Irina Spalko, to the discovery of aliens, to multiple double crosses, a race to escape, fist fights, a jeep chase, and emerges into a surreal scene in a model home full of mannequins being used for a bomb test, Howdy Doody playing on the TV. It’s wild.

What’s more, it’s eminently watchable. There’s never a moment I’m confused about where we are, characters’ relationship to each other in space, what the rules are, and where we’re going. Modern action is often less interested in the map than the moment, the camera tends to be swinging like a punch instead of finding the right way to observe. Spielberg’s work is classic in that way, and to see it in 2008 was a breath of fresh air. Remember: this was six years after The Bourne Identity came out and heavily influenced action. The new approach was compelling, that’s a great film, but this is action as I remember it from childhood.

I also absolutely love the return of Marion Ravenwood. While the first three films give Dr. Jones a different love interest in each ala James Bond, this film identifies that there was really only one true match for Indy. Karen Allen’s chemistry with Harrison Ford is instant, some things time can’t dim. They’re, I mean, just plain hot together. (Is that okay to say about your parents?)

Which brings us to the result of their union: Mutt Williams. Shia LaBeouf is a charismatic actor who holds his own with some of the biggest stars in history. You can tell why he’s given so many opportunities to carry franchises like Transformers and here with Indiana Jones. I think the reveal of his being Henry Jones III has one of the best punchlines in the series (“Why didn’t you make him finish school!”). He’s got a lot of winning moments and he’s a good partner for Ford. I personally never bought him as the successor to the series because he’s got a dopey, aw shucks energy that feels more sidekick than hero, but it’s not because I didn’t enjoy him playing a role in this story.

Certainly, this is the Indiana Jones movie that’s action is the most ‘comic book,’ from Mutt playing Tarzan, to a crazy jungle chase with fencing and rotating blades, to bouncing a car off of a tree branch. To me, that’s all in the spirit of a new amusement park ride. It’s all vibrantly staged and energetic and joyful, even when it feels like a departure from the previous films’ more practical feel. I had fun watching each step along the path to Akator.

Yes, eventually the Crystal Skull is reunited with its alien hive mind interdimensional skeleton and we see straight up CGI ETs with eyes that make your brain explode. As I said in my previous thoughts on The Last Crusade, the only reason some find this less plausible than an Immortal Knight is how much weight we give to Christian fantasy. I don’t think most practicing Christians believe, for example, that drinking from the Holy Grail will grant you eternal life. It’s no less mythological than aliens. In fact, Ancient Aliens is a persistent supposition in our storytelling. So, it feels perfectly right to be that it would show up in Indiana Jones 1950s adventure, complete with flying saucer. Alien visitation is one of our many myths and that’s Indy’s stock and trade.

I also think it continues the series’ theme about hidden truth. In Raiders of the Lost Ark, the Nazi’s hubris at trying to harness the power of God does them in. Here, the same thing occurs. (“God’s head doesn’t look like that.” “Depends on who your God is.”) Spalko’s quest for knowledge leads her right up to the edge of human understanding. When she fails to identify when she’s crossed a border that she was not meant to cross, the consequences are exactly in line with what’s come before.

It’s a careful line tread between encouraging the quest for the occult and the series’ skepticism that all secrets are meant to be exposed. Some things, it appears, belong in a museum (debatable). Other things are meant to stay where you found them. Knowing which is which, perhaps, is the purview of a true scholar.

One of Indiana Jones’s true super powers, after all, is education. He’s a man steeped in study, who can walk a dead language written in cuneiform “through Mayan” in order to decipher it. Dr. Jones is a brilliant, not just a bold, and it’s a quality we see far too little excitement for in most modern adventures. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is about the quest for knowledge, it lionizes knowledge, and, through that quest, finding meaning.

Finally, on the cusp of seeing the fifth and final Indiana Jones adventure tonight, I’m reminded of the relativity of age. When Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull came out, Harrison Ford was in his sixties. The script calls him ‘gramps.’ There was a collective sense that he was too old to make action adventures like these, that these sorts of movies were for younger men. Now, compared to the eighty year old man who will finish out the story, this Indiana Jones looks positively spry.

I sometimes feel like I’ve aged quite a bit since 2008. I was 32 years old, and that feels like a long way away from 47. But, someday, I will look at pictures of myself now and think about how young I was, how able-bodied and energetic. That’s how we work, isn’t it? We turn 21 and think we’re finally adults. We turn thirty and mourn our twenties. We turn forty and look back at thirty, thinking ‘how young I was.’

The truth is, there’s no age limit on the spirit. You’re always young to someone, and always older than you were yesterday. Sitting through these movies, which span from my childhood to my adulthood, is a reminder of how much is always ahead, even if it’s just one more day to seek adventure. Even as Henry Jones Jr ages, these movies make me feel young.

With that, I’m excited to see what the Dial of Destiny has in store. It may take me a few days to digest the movie, I’m seeing it a few times, so I’ll write about it when I feel ready to pen to paper.

Thanks for digging through this series with me, fellow archeologists! Have a wonderful time at the movies this weekend!