(no subject)
The Indiana Jones movie was the sort of thing that, ten years from now, will be on TV every rainy Saturday afternoon from here to Hoboken, and hopefully in the process will be edited down about half an hour. Because not only would the movie make a smidge more sense that way, it also would drag less. It's, you know, an adventure, but not nearly as snappy as one might hope for.
Also, it's an object lesson in how racism is the easy, lazy choice when writing your globe-trotting adventure. So your heroes have climbed a gigantic cliff and are raiding an ancient and abandoned graveyard at night. Need an action sequence? Why, have some convenient Indian ninjas! I have no idea why there were a pair of Indians, wearing Scream masks no less, loitering about in a graveyard in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night. And where Peruvian Indians get their ninja skills I decidedly cannot say. Alas, the characters got no lines at all, so not only did we not get to find out who their ninjutsu sensei is, we didn't even get to learn that they are members of a secret society devoted to kicking the asses of invading white archaeologists, especially the ones that break things willy nilly.
And again later: your heroes (more of them now) have tramped all over the rainforest looking for a secret hidden city (for reasons still vaguely touchy-feely), and despite those three deadly-looking waterfalls and dastardly-looking Soviet chasers are in need of a sense of menace. What to do? Why, slather some body-paint on underclad Indians, and let them grunt menacingly at the camera, of course! They can crawl out of the walls and appear to act with a hive mind, just like the ants who featured in the previous action sequence! Brilliant idea! No, we never need to know why these Indians live here, whether they regularly commune with the Van Der Graff machines in the basement, nor for that matter where all the wimmins are because if they represent the hereditary protectors of aforementioned hidden city they are a paltry and not even particularly ninjafied set of protectors. But they didn't get any lines either, so I have no idea whether those poor guys watch The X-Files on satellite when duty is not calling.
(By contrast, not only did the secret society people in Movie #3 all speak English, they helpfully explained their secret societydom, and all wore matching tattoos! I mean, this was the sort of movie in which an undead knight from the Middle Ages also spoke modern English, but better illogical exposition than no exposition at all, hey?)
Now, let it be said that the whole script is incredibly lazy like that. But, like, lazy with the laws of physics is the kind of thing you laugh off (or grumble about, if you are me), but lazy with the archetypes of a racially-troubled genre is just icky. Especially because the former situation was a totally consequence-free action sequence that didn't do anything to advance the plot, and in the latter situation, the whole plot-function could have been better served by... a jaguar. Or a troupe of jaguars. With glowy eyes or something, to make clear that they are not just ordinary cranky predators. Stupid writers! You could have sidestepped the issue entirely! But instead you had to Go There.
I should say, this is also the movie in which I giggled uncontrollably every time I saw the titular McGuffin, because, it is a giant elongated glowy alien-head! How can you take that seriously!! Especially when you remember that the little gray aliens on The X-Files were played by a dance class of nine year old girls, and it had to be girls because equivalent gaggles of boys had a bad habit of beating each other with their foam heads? I don't think that's the kind of laughter the movie was trying to provoke from its audience.
In the end, the movie was floppier and less trim than its aging star, re-treading set-pieces from its ancient serial forbears rather than reinventing them. Also, you know what? Much as everyone might want Shia LaBeouf to be some kind of latter-day Tom of Finland heartthrob, he just isn't. He doesn't have the charisma. Marian out-charismaed him, and all she had to do was drive a succession of exotic vehicles and wield her smart mouth.
There were things to like -- see: Marian -- and some of the old pulpy tools in use were gleeful and downright glorious -- see: Cate Blanchett vamping it up, dripping her vowels with hilarious Stalinist-cheesecake aplomb. There were individual funny lines, and individual action bits that worked, although several of the latter were just screaming "Go! Buy the video game!!" Sometimes, I could laugh along, as when a cliff suddenly appeared out of nowhere to up the drama; sometimes, it was just too ridiculous and self-congratulatory, and I laughed at rather than with. The script never delivered up one of those sublime physical-comedy moments which strike me as the cornerstones to the franchise: like Professor Jones and Indy tied back-to-back, shouting at each other and each turning the wrong way, more and more exasperatedly, trying to hear a response. It's not funny because it's a zowie stunt; it's funny because it's exactly what would happen if two people were shouting at each other tied back-to-back, and to see such a mundane predicament in the middle of a huge action-adventure brings it all back down to the human level.
Which is a level mostly lacking from the fourth Indiana Jones movie.
Also, it's an object lesson in how racism is the easy, lazy choice when writing your globe-trotting adventure. So your heroes have climbed a gigantic cliff and are raiding an ancient and abandoned graveyard at night. Need an action sequence? Why, have some convenient Indian ninjas! I have no idea why there were a pair of Indians, wearing Scream masks no less, loitering about in a graveyard in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night. And where Peruvian Indians get their ninja skills I decidedly cannot say. Alas, the characters got no lines at all, so not only did we not get to find out who their ninjutsu sensei is, we didn't even get to learn that they are members of a secret society devoted to kicking the asses of invading white archaeologists, especially the ones that break things willy nilly.
And again later: your heroes (more of them now) have tramped all over the rainforest looking for a secret hidden city (for reasons still vaguely touchy-feely), and despite those three deadly-looking waterfalls and dastardly-looking Soviet chasers are in need of a sense of menace. What to do? Why, slather some body-paint on underclad Indians, and let them grunt menacingly at the camera, of course! They can crawl out of the walls and appear to act with a hive mind, just like the ants who featured in the previous action sequence! Brilliant idea! No, we never need to know why these Indians live here, whether they regularly commune with the Van Der Graff machines in the basement, nor for that matter where all the wimmins are because if they represent the hereditary protectors of aforementioned hidden city they are a paltry and not even particularly ninjafied set of protectors. But they didn't get any lines either, so I have no idea whether those poor guys watch The X-Files on satellite when duty is not calling.
(By contrast, not only did the secret society people in Movie #3 all speak English, they helpfully explained their secret societydom, and all wore matching tattoos! I mean, this was the sort of movie in which an undead knight from the Middle Ages also spoke modern English, but better illogical exposition than no exposition at all, hey?)
Now, let it be said that the whole script is incredibly lazy like that. But, like, lazy with the laws of physics is the kind of thing you laugh off (or grumble about, if you are me), but lazy with the archetypes of a racially-troubled genre is just icky. Especially because the former situation was a totally consequence-free action sequence that didn't do anything to advance the plot, and in the latter situation, the whole plot-function could have been better served by... a jaguar. Or a troupe of jaguars. With glowy eyes or something, to make clear that they are not just ordinary cranky predators. Stupid writers! You could have sidestepped the issue entirely! But instead you had to Go There.
I should say, this is also the movie in which I giggled uncontrollably every time I saw the titular McGuffin, because, it is a giant elongated glowy alien-head! How can you take that seriously!! Especially when you remember that the little gray aliens on The X-Files were played by a dance class of nine year old girls, and it had to be girls because equivalent gaggles of boys had a bad habit of beating each other with their foam heads? I don't think that's the kind of laughter the movie was trying to provoke from its audience.
In the end, the movie was floppier and less trim than its aging star, re-treading set-pieces from its ancient serial forbears rather than reinventing them. Also, you know what? Much as everyone might want Shia LaBeouf to be some kind of latter-day Tom of Finland heartthrob, he just isn't. He doesn't have the charisma. Marian out-charismaed him, and all she had to do was drive a succession of exotic vehicles and wield her smart mouth.
There were things to like -- see: Marian -- and some of the old pulpy tools in use were gleeful and downright glorious -- see: Cate Blanchett vamping it up, dripping her vowels with hilarious Stalinist-cheesecake aplomb. There were individual funny lines, and individual action bits that worked, although several of the latter were just screaming "Go! Buy the video game!!" Sometimes, I could laugh along, as when a cliff suddenly appeared out of nowhere to up the drama; sometimes, it was just too ridiculous and self-congratulatory, and I laughed at rather than with. The script never delivered up one of those sublime physical-comedy moments which strike me as the cornerstones to the franchise: like Professor Jones and Indy tied back-to-back, shouting at each other and each turning the wrong way, more and more exasperatedly, trying to hear a response. It's not funny because it's a zowie stunt; it's funny because it's exactly what would happen if two people were shouting at each other tied back-to-back, and to see such a mundane predicament in the middle of a huge action-adventure brings it all back down to the human level.
Which is a level mostly lacking from the fourth Indiana Jones movie.