**NB This film does NOT exist. Anyone who says otherwise is a danger to themselves and others and should be remanded in custody until a psychoanalyst can prescribe them the appropriate treatment for their delusions.**
Spielberg is one of the biggest names in the business. So is George Lucas. They share a common problem though. That being they don't know when to bloody well quit. Lucas is infamous of his ability to milk a franchise dry, most notably Star Wars, so he was the obvious choice when taking a classic adventure story of the 80's and rape it beyond comprehension to make a fast buck. Especially in the modern world of disposable income and retroflective teenagers, yearning for their childhood years of Christmas time and Raiders of the Lost Ark on television. I'm sorry to say, I'm one of those teenagers, so between the tears and screaming at my boxset of the good Star Wars films (before the invention of the horrifically Rastafarian frog man), I will be typing in lament. Thank Christ this film was never actually made and never blighted cinema history.
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| Subliminal advertising was pretty poor before development |
I'll go back to Spielberg. He is regarded as one of the most influential men in cinema alive for good reason. He has produced 127 titles, directed 49 and written 21 proving he was always striving for quantity. He also starred in Austin Powers in Goldmember (2002) as "Famous Director", so he's been around the block to say the least. That said, it was Jaws (1975) that rocketed this man to stardom and two years later he hit big on a stupidly long and overrated film, Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977). However, in 1981, Raiders of the Lost Ark hit silver screens internationally and he was finally onto a winner. It is probably one of the greatest films ever made for its simplicity, quotable script and the fact is was original. Here we had a schoolteacher casting off the tweed blazer to go fight Nazis in a tomb for the Ark of the Covenant. No-one had done this before because no-one had thought it would work, but it did, and it deservedly earned a great revenue. However, this only encouraged Mr Spielberg.
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| Someone's not on BUPA |
Fortunately, 3 years later in 1984, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom hit screens. This was immediately another cult classic, developing a following of its own on the back of its older brother. Once again, there were heavy religious overtones in this film and that is important because I will come onto this later.
Finally in 1989, Sean Connery got his (very Scottish) ass in the third of the franchise, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. This allowed for his American son to make complete sense. However, I will forgive it this as it is a superb film of a father and son bonding after many years of separation. However, this time they go in search of the Cup of Christ. Yes, the Holy Grail. My main disappointment with this film was that even its title of the **LAST** Crusade couldn't stop a fourth film being made. I mean, not made. The film does not exist. I refuse to admit its existence.
Now, unlike usual, this review will be filled with spoilers, mainly because it's not as though you can go see this film, it doesn't exist after all, but you do need to be warned of the utter pile of crap this film *could* have been.
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| Kingdom of the Crystal Skull- 12 inch figure |
This film is off to a poor start as it sets the tone. Indiana Jones must take some Soviet forces (50's update from the Nazis and a tasty reference to the Cold War) to a crate in "Hanger 51" which has the body of an alien in it. Yes, it's going to be an alien movie. After he takes them to the crate he escapes on a rocket sled (no seriously) and ends up in a plywood town that is stereotypically 50's (it establishes the era without a cheap shot to a calendar). Unfortunately that town is actually a nuclear testing facility so when the red lights flash and the sirens go off, Indy climbs into a "LEAD LINED" fridge. He takes a direct hit from the nuke, is blown into the air, travels several miles and crashes, creating a huge crater, in the desert. This became such a popular scene, genuine action figures were created to celebrate this moment.
As regular readers might be aware, I hate fictional science, or "Crap" as I like to call it. Firstly, to approach the plausible; the lead lined fridge might have helped shield him from the radiation if he were several miles away. However, inexplicably, he gets radiation washed later. If you're going to stick to one story, make sure you stick to it and don't confuse matters later. Now, to assume the fridge protects him from the blast, he'd be roasted alive instantly from the intense heat of a nuclear blast. To assume the fridge protects him from the heat (it is a fridge afterall) the shockwave, blast and compression would have liquidised him. However, the blast throws him miles away, crash landing. Now, if you climb into a wheelie-bin and push it over, it hurts a great deal. I know, I'm a teenager. Increase the density of the surface and hugely increase the impact and you'd be subjected to such a shock your body could not cope at all, let alone allow you to walk away uninjured.
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| Agreed, sir. |
Forget this, there is worse to come. Turns out the aliens have skulls made from quartz, and another has been found in Peru. Off to Peru Indy flies and he discovers that the skulls are so magnetic, they even attract non-ferrous objects such as gold. They briefly try to explain this as being psychic, but fob it off as magnetism anyway. I don't think there are enough swear words in the world to explain how stupid this is from a scientific perspective.
Long story short, if you get all the skulls together, the mothership can take off because it OPENS A PORTAL TO ANOTHER DIMENSION. Yes, a huge flying saucer in the middle of the Peruvian jungle and a PORTAL TO ANOTHER DIMENSION. No really. I originally saw this film in the cinema with my excited father and typically not-interested-by-adventure-movies-or-Indiana-Jones mother and she fell asleep just before the skulls were explained to be magnetic. She woke up as the mothership took off and honestly asked me this question, "I fell asleep, is this the same film I was watching earlier?" She made a resounding point.
My main problem with the film is this. Indiana Jones was always recovering lost artifacts from religious symbols to give to the Museum to be studied. In this film there are no religious icons or references beyond Mayans worshipping interdimensional aliens who taught them how to make pyramids and cut each other up. This doesn't follow the pattern of what Indiana Jones was all about. It would have made no less sense if he gave up being an archeologist, took up plumbing and the rest of the film was an advert with Han Solo working at B&Q. It steps too far off the path for me to call this an Indiana Jones film, the best I can give it is "poorly written fan-fiction". They'd might as well have called it Indiana Jones and the Waste of Your Time.
The only audience I can see this appealing to is children young enough to have never seen the previous films. That said, in the event they saw the first three after the fourth, they wouldn't enjoy them. The world is going to hell and the kids are cheering along with mouths filled with popcorn and heads full of a lack of respect for a time when there was no CGI. Films did have low production values in comparrison to now and we still love them for it. It was honest, hard work by men and women, not computers and this has led the younger generations astray. If it isn't in 3D with shiny CGI effects then it's a rubbish film because that's how quality is judged nowadays. Fortunately, this film is packed with computer generated scenery and effects so at least the littluns can enjoy themselves whilst the middle aged men and teenagers cry to themselves and try to force the drinking straws from the overly-large cups of cola you can only get in cinemas and bowling alleys into their eyes.
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| "One day I'll kill the childhood dreams of hundreds of people in one film - Transformers? Ok, two films..." |
If I were to say this film were good, it would be for one of two reasons. Firstly, if the first three films had never been made. To compare them is to compare Super Mario to Super Paper Mario and the Adventures of blah blah. It doesn't matter what you have now, or how much you modernise it. You owe everything to the groundbreaking original and to consistantly add to a franchise and, as I said before, bleed it dry, just goes to show how little people care for stories now when shiny lights can do all the work for you. Secondly, if Shia LaBeouf hadn't been in it, let alone Indy's son. He is and always will be the little kid from Even Stevens
It doesn't even matter that Harrison Ford put on a great show despite the fact he has aged considerably since the first films. It has blighted a legacy for many years to come and they can never take this back now. They have aired their dirty laundry in public and that is it. Thank Christ almighty that this film was never actually mad- OH DEAR GOD THEY'RE MAKING A FIFTH!
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