We’re all getting older.
Middle age is youth without its levity, and age without decay. – Daniel Defoe
Indiana Jones is getting older. I feared that a 64-year old Harrison Ford engaging in superhuman stunts, pummeling fist fights, and all-around death defiance would be unbelievable, but to Ford’s credit, I didn’t smirk once during the action sequences. Maybe his occasional self-deprecating acknowledgment of his advanced age made me willing to accept a senior citizen action hero.
But something else has changed about Indy. His formerly suave wit has crusted into staid mundaneness. The one-line zingers that once flew as fast as the punches have been dulled by triteness, self-reflection, and excessive plot-related jibber-jabber. I laughed exactly once, during a bit involving snakes, because I had a flashback of River Phoenix as the young Indiana Jones in The Last Crusade, falling into a train car filled with snakes. Crystal Skull’s most tragic fault is the total loss of Indiana Jones’ comic esprit.
Morality comes with the sad wisdom of age, when the sense of curiosity has withered. – Graham Greene
George Lucas and Steven Spielberg are getting older. Obviously the plot for Crystal Skull is coming from imaginations that have matured since Temple of Doom. Perhaps they felt obligated to endow the long-awaited fourth installment with more significance. And that’s not a good thing. Crystal Skull’s second-most tragic fault is the highly-involved plot that commands the audience’s full attention.
Here comes the spoilers: Indiana Jones, his long-lost son, his long-lost son’s mother Marion (from Raiders of the Lost Ark), and some random insane English academic are in a race against Soviet agents bent on using a highly-magnetic elongated crystal skull to dominate the world. It involves the ancient Mayans, riddles and symbols, psychic warfare, Area 54, aliens, a very snappy Cate Blanchette as a KGB agent, a portal to an alternate dimension, a massive flying saucer, and about 20 minutes of insipid family bickering.
The older I grow the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age brings wisdom. – H.L. Mencken
And the audience that delighted over his adventures in the first three Indiana Jones movies is getting older. I have fond memories of watching Indiana Jones as a youngster. It freaked me out a bit, and I didn’t understand half of what was going on, but it didn’t matter. The stunts, scenery, characters (even Short Round), and music hooked me. That said, it is hard to tell if my distaste for Crystal Skull was because I’m older and usually bored by special effects bonanzas that aim for universal appeal. Had I seen Raiders of the Lost Ark for the first time as a 31 year old, would I be similarly unimpressed?
Instead of blocking out the voices of the dozens of children surrounding us in the move theatre, I listened to them. And what I heard was confusion: “What are they doing? Where are they? Who’s that?” When I was younger, I didn’t ask questions in the middle of movies, not only because I was polite, but because I knew instinctively that it didn’t matter. Crystal Skull’s third-most tragic fault is that half the time, it tries to evoke feelings other than awe and delight beyond what a child can perceive, and the other half of the time, there’s CGI prairie dogs and monkeys.
