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But Needless
Things did not start here on Blogger (which I hope to be leaving at
some point as part of this whole upgrade). It started on MySpace in
June of 2008 when I was so utterly disgusted by the latest Indiana
Jones movie that I had to write a review of it. That’s what started
six years (so far) of writing about pop culture.
I have reposted
a number of those MySpace posts here, but have been waiting for a
special occasion to bring this – my first-ever internet article –
over. I thought about saving it for Needless Things’ 1000th
post, but I feel like that needs to be something a little more
special. So here today, in the midst of my begging you good people
for money, is the Special Edition of my review of the turd that is
Indiana
Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.
Similar to my
Scareglow review,
I have cleaned it up a bit and added in comments where I felt it
appropriate. While some of the grammar and rougher bits might have
changed, the content is the same.
This review contains SPOILERS! Do not
read it if you don’t want to know the secrets of sucking that this
film contains!
If you decided to check this out, bear
with me. I have never written a review before, and am not entirely
sure it’s a good idea. This is severely stream-of-consciousness, so
the format and the flow may be a little shaky at times.
I could post the
first and last sentences of this paragraph at the beginning of
everything that I post.
I’ve waited a couple of weeks to
write this because I really wanted to let the movie sink in. I love
the character of Indiana Jones and have thoroughly enjoyed most of
his adventures. I just could not enjoy this one. I thought about
going to see it again, just to be sure, but I decided that I was just
fooling myself.
Many things about this movie are
awesome. Parts of it even recapture the magic feel of the first three
movies. The jungle chase scene is almost perfect in tone, matching
the fun and edge-of-your-seat feeling of the mine car chase in Temple
of Doom. The cemetery fight
with the skull-face guys is also well-done, giving Indy a chance to
show that age and cunning are assets he can put to good use.
The two problems that I have with the
movie are huge and invasive, but if only one of them existed I might
have been able to overlook it. Together, though, they were
insurmountable. There were also a few nagging little issues, but that
is to be expected with any film of this undertaking. Nobody’s
perfect.
The first problem is the story. Know
in advance that aliens freak me out. To this day I maintain that E.T.
(which I saw when I was 7) scared me more than any movie I have ever
seen. I can’t even watch Communion
or Fire in the Sky.
Regardless of that phobia, I feel that I am judging the story on its
merits and how it fits in to the Indiana Jones mythos, not my
irrational (hopefully) fear of grays. I really just don’t think an
alien story works. Logically, I get where it can be justified. I
personally believe in alien life forms as much as I believe in God,
so a story where an ancient civilization worships aliens is not
ridiculous to me (this
is an unwieldy sentence – I’m saying I believe in God and in
aliens; I do – seriously).
It would probably make a great non-Indy movie. I’ve read other
reviews where it was suggested that seeing the alien at the end was
going too far and that if that had been cut all would be well. I
disagree. The alien thing just doesn’t work for me. The other
movies were about religion and mysticism, not technology. The other
movies made me contemplate faith and man’s place in the grand
scheme. This one just made me think about how much I hate
inappropriate CGI.
Which brings me to problem number two.
Everything looked fake as
fuck! From the start of the
movie where we are in front of the warehouse (which was an awesome
plot point and great to see) meeting Cate Blanchett’s great
villainess to the campsite to the marketplace to the cemetery. It all
looks fake and jarring and it takes you right out of the movie. I
wish that this could have been shot completely on locations. If you
look at the first three movies, they are epic in scale and locale.
Every shot is real and every location feels real. You just lose
yourself in the cinematography. Here, though, you feel like you are
on the back lot from the end of Pee-Wee’s
Big Adventure. I hated the
CGI monkeys, but thought the ants were pretty cool. The part where
Blanchett crushes one between her knees is priceless.
I want to
mention that the significance of the warehouse is that it’s the one
where they stored the Ark of the Covenant at the end of Raiders.
I couldn’t remember why I thought the warehouse was such an awesome
plot point as I was reviewing this.
Which segues into my closing remarks.
Cate Blanchett, Harrison Ford and Shia Lebouf were tremendous. I
really liked the Beowulf guy (I am at work and can’t remember his
name – Ray Winstead or something) as the back-and-forth traitor.
Yes – I
enjoyed The Beef’s performance. And looking back, I think I still
would. I liked him in that Rear
Window rip-off.
Er, homage.
And to think there was a time when I wasn’t familiar with the man
who would play not only the best Punisher ever, but my favorite GI
Joe character. Crazy.
My only issue cast-wise was Karen
Allen. I don’t want to pick on her, but she came across as someone
who was an actress about twenty years ago but dropped it to be a mom.
Which is apparently pretty much the case. I have no problem with
Indy having a son or getting married and I loved the scene with him
grabbing the hat back from Mutt. Unfortunately, the good in this
movie just couldn’t overwhelm the lame. All of the awesome was
moments or scenes, while the suck-ass was consistent and present
throughout. After it was over, I called my wife and had to voice an
opinion that seriously hurt me. Honestly, I felt that churning twist
of the gut that is almost the exact opposite of the nerd-chills you
get every time you hear the opening chords of the
Star Wars theme as I
uttered the dreaded words into my cell phone – “That was fucking
awful.” Maybe it really
wasn’t that bad, but lord it wasn’t good.
2 out of 5 Fedoras
I totally forgot
that I used to pick an object from the movie for my rating scale.
-Phantom
I thought about
watching the movie again so that I could maybe provide some new
commentary, but I’ve tried to watch it a couple of times since that
first theater viewing and all it does is piss me off.
Be sure to come
back next week for what is basically going to amount to Needless
Things’ Greatest Hits! You might find a few things that you haven’t
read before or forgot existed. I know I’ve come across some that I
either didn’t remember or didn’t recall how good they were.
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