Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

Yesterday, at work, I got this strange feeling...as if a worm, a slug, a parasite had burrowed itself under my skin, at the base of my spine, and was slowly working its way up to my brain. It started when I absent-mindedly started listening to the soundtrack from the movie. Then I began to think about how the movie was being released that day. All of this just gave "The Thing" on my spine energy to move. I knew there was only one way to keep it away from all that I hold dear: see Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull at the soonest possible convenience.

That's precisely what I did. I went to Regal for the 1:45 showing. Going in, I expected that the opening shot would fade from the Paramount mountain into a mountain on-screen, just like the other three movies--and it did. It faded from the Paramount logo into a prairie dog hole/mound. From there, the movie pretty much rocked. It definitely played out like an Indy movie and it felt like an Indy movie...it's just that it didn't "pop" like an Indy movie. There was a lot that I liked about the movie: the acting, the casting (John Hurt and Jim Broadbent? Wow.) , the music, the action sequences, the dialogue, and maybe even the Maguffin (the crystal skull--or the "Ark/Holy Grail" of this movie). But when combined, all of that did create the same kind of legendary spectacle that the other three movies were. Why is that?

The easy thing to believe is that after the prequel trilogy, we know that George Lucas has lost it. I actually think he's been a bad director all along, but just got lucky one time and is only now having the chance to show his true colors as a bad director. Either that or he did have it, but quit using it to concentrate on other things and then he lost it. THX 1138 and American Graffiti are both really good movies. Star Wars followed his trend of "thinking outside the frame" and he really was on his way to re-inventing film. But then he lost it sometime after The Empire Strikes Back. Spielberg still has it, I'm convinced. Munich was awesome. The Terminal was awesome. Catch Me If You Can was awesome. Minority Report was awesome. AI was awesome. The only Spielberg movie that hasn't been awesome in this decade was War of the Worlds. The only movies that weren't awesome in the 90s were Hook, Jurassic Park, and The Lost World. Two of those movies have something in common--and it's not the dinosaurs. No, both the dinosaur movies were written by a guy named David Koepp. He also wrote the first Spider-Man movie. So I think there's a pattern here. With the exception of Hook, all the sub-par Spielberg movies of the past 20 years have been written by David Koepp. Any other time that Spielberg's directed from someone else's script, he's made a damn good movie.

Here's why I'm not a David Koepp fan: his films are shallow. By shallow, I mean they either have no emotional/dramatic depth, or they're just too simple. Crystal Skull suffers from both. What happens with Koepp is that there are a lot of great themes and ideas that are touched upon, but they're never fleshed out enough. There will be a scene where the characters start diving underneath the surface of their actions, expressing this real humdinger of internal conflict or arousing insight into themselves or a situation...but that's as far as it gets. The scene between Jim Broadbent and Indy at his home, talking about how life is starting to take more things away than it gives really got me excited, because it was philosophical, insightful, dramatic, and deeper than just a progression of the plot. Of course it was nothing more than a rehash of Indy's talks with Marcus, which were always good, introspective scenes that get the audience focused on the adventure they're about to embark upon. However, the scene with Jim Broadbent (I kept wanting him to say "He had a big, bushy BEARD!" for some reason) just kind of went nowhere. It stirred up excitement and interest like this was going to be a movie that'd offer a chance for a little introspection into my own heart, much like Last Crusade, but it never really did that again.

Spider-Man is the same way. The chats that Peter has with his Uncle Ben or Aunt Mae start to become really interesting, emotional, and deep but then they don't go anywhere beyond that to make any kind of conclusions to the moral questions they raise...if they even make it as far as to ask questions.

Koepp sucks. He's a hack and I always cringe when I see his name associated with a movie I'm eagerly awaiting. I mean when Crystal Skullwas being written, several exciting names were attached to the project. Frank Darabont was one. Yet, somehow, all these great writers were having their scripts shot down by Lucas. Then word comes that everyone was starting to get anxious to start production, so then they just got Koepp to crank out one of his hack jobs and that's the movie we got. To his credit, though, the movie isn't horrible. Neither were Spider-Man, Jurassic Park, or Secret Window. I mean it's one of those situations where "even a bad Indy movie is still better than most action movies". It was still a great popcorn movie...it's just that there were a lot of unpopped kernels left when it was over.