Indiana Jones Movie Followup
May 28th, 2008 by Rob
So I thought I would post a followup to my previous article about the new Indiana Jones movie. I admit, I saw the movie on opening weekend… I told you I was a sucker for an Indiana Jones movie… but I did avoid seeing it on the first opening nights so I guess I did win one battle. So after being a big skeptic of the concept of making a new Indiana Jones movie so many years after the last, what did I think? Well, let me first preface this with a warning… if you read on, there may be spoilers.
I guess most of the die hard fans have already seen the movie by now and formulated their opinions. If you are a fan and you haven’t seen the movie yet, let me first say that there is one spoiler that you may want to hear before going to see the movie… the story is about aliens. That’s right, it’s Indiana Jones meets Close Encounters of the Third Kind. As a fan, this is a tough pill to swallow. I knew this ahead of time and had time to warm up to the concept. However, that being said, the story handles this concept rather well for most of the movie and blends it well into typical Indiana Jones style archeology.
Harrison Ford returns to the role without missing a beat. Once again, the character lives up to the previous movies and Ford plays the role flawlessly. Was he too old? Not at all. In fact, the storyline handles the additional twenty years nicely and makes light of the additional years. He still pulls off all the action scenes with an additional sense of wisdom. Contrary to what many may say, Shia LaBeauf does an excellent job as the sidekick “Mutt” and Karen Allen has a nice return. All of the characters were handled quite well with the exception of Kate Blanchett’s villain role as Irina Spalko. Her character lacked depth and didn’t really give you the “fear the bad guy” impression the villains of previous movies did. However, this appears to be more the fault of the writing than any reflection on the actress.
This brings us to the story. Overall, the story was good… however, you expect “great” (or above) from an Indiana Jones movie. It wasn’t for lack of action. In fact the action was more over the top in the movie than any of the previous three. It’s suppose to be unbelievable, but not suppose to make you say “oh, come on!”. The real root of the problem seems to be the battle between Lucas and Spielberg over the storyline. There were many drafts of the script due to disagreements and the resulting work was a merge of them. To put it simply, it shows. Lucas has really lost his touch over the years. You could clearly see George’s influence on certain scenes in the movie; from the animated prairie dogs that hearken back to the silly cartoon-ish characters in the Star Wars prequels to the absolutely ridiculous monkey and vine swinging scene that should have been left on a cutting room floor. I think we have Spielberg to thank for not letting this movie go the way of Episodes 1-3. Sound harsh? It’s probably because certain scenes stick out like a sore thumb as clearly not belonging. However, as soon as you start to get annoyed, Indy belts out a classic one liner and you put it behind you and move on. The story starts out strong, has it’s choppy moments, and ends on the weaker side. In fact, I thought the ending was more of a tie-in for Close Encounters than the type of ending you’ve come to expect from the series. However, it does wrap up the characters rather well… in fact, it alludes to the possibility of passing the famed fedora on to a new generation… a concept that I’m sure leaves many of us long time fans saying “Oh, please God, NO!”.
Overall, it is a good movie, but not a great movie. It lives up to the name Indiana Jones, but at moments will make you wonder. While it is the weakest of the now four movies, it does rank up there with them and will find itself right next to the others on the DVD shelf.
