Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull: Better than its reputation suggests
Review Overview
Action
6Comedy
6Romance
6Mark Harrison | On 01, Jul 2023
Director: Steven Spielberg
Cast: Harrison Ford, Cate Blanchett, Shia LaBeouf, Karen Allen, Ray Winstone, John Hurt
Certificate: 12
Early on in 2008’s Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, we learn that Marcus Brody (Denholm Elliott, who died in 1992) and Henry Jones Jr (Sean Connery, who retired from acting in 2006) have passed away between films. As new dean Charles Stanforth (Jim Broadbent) observes: “We seem to have reached the age where life stops giving us things and starts taking them away.”
The film doesn’t spend too much time dwelling on this aspect of getting older, but it’s a melancholic acknowledgement that, in this particular film, it’s not the 1930s any more. Heck, it’s not even the 1980s.
The prologue instead picks up in 1957, when Indy (Harrison Ford) and war buddy Mac (Ray Winstone) are captured by Colonel Dr Irina Spalko (Cate Blanchett) and the KGB, who are searching for remains from a military incident in Roswell, New Mexico. Suspected of collaborating with the Russians and suspended from his teaching job, Indy plans to emigrate to Europe until he’s discovered by young greaser Mutt Williams (Shia LaBeouf), son of Marion Ravenwood (Karen Allen), whose disappearance is connected to Spalko’s obsession with psychic warfare.
It’s a curious case, this one. After Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, the franchise was parked while producer George Lucas spent the better part of the 1990s trying to persuade director Steven Spielberg and star Harrison Ford that the 1950s sci-fi B-movie would be the ideal genre touchstone for a fourth instalment. Deserving or not, the flaws and shortcomings of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull are often laid at his feet (Lucas is co-credited with Jeff Nathanson for the story while David Koepp’s name is on the long-developed, slightly stodgy screenplay).
It was well received and successful at the worldwide box-office upon release, but it’s got a reputation at least as bad as Lucas’ Star Wars prequels. Taken on its own, no, it’s not anywhere near as good as its three predecessors – but no, it’s not nearly as bad as the consensus would suggests. It simply exists, as baffled academic Harold Oxley (John Hurt) muses, “between spaces”.
With a MacGuffin chase that ranges from Area 51 to a lost city of gold – Akator or El Dorado, depending on who you ask – this has much the same energy and urgency as you want from an Indiana Jones film, but it’s quite fatally convoluted in places, leading down some storytelling cul-de-sacs in certain set-pieces. There’s plenty of joy in sequences such as the quicksand scene, in which family revelations give way to Indy being repeatedly hit in the face with a snake, but they don’t lead forwards – the dialogue throughout the film comes off as over-written in the grand scheme of this convoluted treasure hunt. It’s a good job that bits like this are funny or it might be a worse film.
Perhaps one reason for the disconnect is the stacked line-up of supporting characters, whether it’s new friends such as Mutt, mysterious enemies such as Spalko, and some incoherent mix of the two, such as Mac (endlessly reversible from one scene to the next). It’s got quite a big ensemble for one of these movies, and while Ford is giving it his all and still looking very fit at 65 years old, this is the first movie in the series where it feels like Indy occasionally gets a little lost in the throng.
Besides animal-reaction shots and fridge-nuking and weightless CGI creatures and incidents, the film’s biggest unforced error is casting LaBeouf between instalments of the Spielberg-backed Transformers series. To give credit where it’s due, director Michael Bay’s naked contempt for LaBeouf’s character in those movies has some effect relative to his squirrelly, anachronistic screen presence, but there’s no such luck in a film that seems to be gently setting him up as Indy Jr in places.
The rest of the casting is a lot better. Comrade Blanchett is an inspired choice to play “Stalin’s fair-haired girl”; Hurt has fun chewing the scenery as prophetic yet addled wild-man Ox; and Russian-American bruiser Igor Jijikine makes a big impression as a curmudgeonly Big Soviet Henchman. As for the returning leads, Ford and Allen are so instantly combustive together, you’d never know they’d been apart, and they’re a real joy to watch some 28 years after Raiders.
It’s surely one of those films that’s less than the sum of its considerable parts, but there’s little sense of a cash-in by the creators here. Through various script drafts and more than a decade in the works, there’s some thought put into what makes the 1950s different for Indy rather than just rehashing past glories. Besides, Lucas was right to say that genre-hopping would liven things up, and the backdrop of rock ‘n’ roll, McCarthyism, and, yes, “saucer men from Mars” in the 1950s gives this a singular feeling.
And in a franchise where multiple deities actually exist through artefacts, it’s only a shame that suspension of disbelief doesn’t extend as far as the inter-dimensional nature of this unfairly maligned sequel. Fandom will really go believing the strangest things and then – as David Bowie didn’t quite sing – hating the alien.
Better upon reflection than its reputation would suggest, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is a belated hurrah for the franchise. It’s not going to be in many people’s top 10 Steven Spielberg movies, but it would be a mistake to disregard it out of hand. All things considered, we’d rather watch a 21st-century Indy movie that nukes a fridge with our hero still in it than one that ticks boxes and tries to reproduce the winning formula.