Indiana Jones 4 and the Search for Another Religion with a long history and rich folklore to plunder
Some time in the early 2000s, for Dave Warth's "Some Stuff I Did" website, I submitted a list of sequel titles including "Holy Shit! It's that Mummy Again!" and "Back to the Future 4: I don't know, Dinosaurs seem to be popular these days!" My suggestion for Indiana Jones was the title for this post. Spoilers (and disappointment) ahead.
How to make a successful Indiana Jones movie vs. Kingdom of the Crystal Skull:
I'm joking about this last part, but I'm serious about how they messed up this film. And before people comment that my expectations were too high or that my childhood memories of the previous films are too golden, let's be clear, I'm critiquing the film from a structural stand-point--my memories may be golden, but it's still true that this film begins with an intro that directly sets up the main plot in a way that no other film in the series does; that it makes Jones' character too flat and tries to compensate by making those flat sides extreme; that it introduces the paranormal elements way too early; and that it reduces his actions in much of the last half to following another character.
How to make a successful Indiana Jones movie vs. Kingdom of the Crystal Skull:
- have a whiz-bang opening that has very little to do with the main plot; you can introduce an antagonist (Belloq in Raiders), an associate (Short Round and Willie Scott in Temple), or delve into Indy's history (River Phoenix as the first young Indiana Jones in Crusade).vs. Kingdom: an opening that directly introduces an antagonist (Irina) and an associate (Mac) would be fine, except that the whiz-bang introduction directly relates to the main plot about alien artifacts--the whole point of B-movie serials is that you can throw your characters into completely unrelated episodes. (If you want the academic-ese version, the pulp B-movie is a modern day picaresque.)
- remember who Indiana Jones is: a mild-mannered prof (flustered by a student writing "I Love You" on her eyelids) who knows his stuff but isn't particularly pedantic AND knows how to throw a punch without being a secret agent. In short, he's a two-fisted archaeologist.vs. Kingdom: as if it were written by people who only remembered the outlines of the character, Jones is both too pedantic (giving academic commentary while in the midst of combat) and too much a secret agent. In fact, he mentions that he was in the OSS, pulling missions during WWII, and while this doesn't necessarily contradict the established canon (as both Raiders and Crusade took place before American involvement), it doesn't seem to fit the character. He's a two-fisted archaeologist, not The Shadow or Sherlock Holmes--he doesn't know everything, he makes a lot of mistakes--and you know what, he's probably not going to be the guy they call when aliens crash in Roswell.
- remember that, even though there's some crazy paranormal stuff in the world, it's crazy and paranormal--treat the rare weird stuff as rare and weird, and don't show it as paranormal until the movie is halfway over. The Ark burns off the markings of its crate about halfway through, and melts Nazis at the end; a man's heart is removed from his chest about halfway through Temple, and the Sankara stones burn someone at the end; the Grail heals at the very end of Crusade. The Indiana Jones world is all about the wonder of the unnatural.vs. Kingdom: with no patience for wonder or realism, this movie introduces Russian psychic soldiers and magnetized alien corpses/bags from the very beginning, and gets increasingly weirder from there. Partly, I could be reacting negatively to the Erich von Daniken aspect of aliens helping civilization along; but I really think Prof. Oxley's comments about the aliens--they're interdimensional beings, he helpfully explains, and when they go, they don't go to space but leave for the space between spaces--don't belong in the Indiana Jones universe (where shit is weird and unexplainable, and people's reaction is to box it up in a warehouse so they don't have to deal with it), they belong in the Hellboy universe (where the weird is normal).
- remember that the mystery Jones solves has to be solved by Jones--he has to take a proactive role in piecing together the clues; these clues may be held by secret societies, but aren't widely known, and Jones' job it to put together the clues, not follow other people. Do you know who follows others and lets them do the hard work in the Indiana Jones movies? That's the villains' job.vs. Kingdom: perhaps the dumbest move they make in this movie is making a mystery so ridiculously outsized--though still a mystery that hardly inspires awe or doubt in the characters--that Jones can't solve it himself, but is reduced to following the shamefully-wasted Hurt-as-Oxley, saying "What now?, how did you do this last time?," etc. Seriously, an Indiana Jones movie that reduces Jones to a sidekick and attempts to compensate by making him a caricatured expert/secret agent has failed at the most important part of making a successful Indiana Jones movie.
I'm joking about this last part, but I'm serious about how they messed up this film. And before people comment that my expectations were too high or that my childhood memories of the previous films are too golden, let's be clear, I'm critiquing the film from a structural stand-point--my memories may be golden, but it's still true that this film begins with an intro that directly sets up the main plot in a way that no other film in the series does; that it makes Jones' character too flat and tries to compensate by making those flat sides extreme; that it introduces the paranormal elements way too early; and that it reduces his actions in much of the last half to following another character.