indiana jones and the temple of the legend of the last raiders of the crystal crusade ark of doom


So, I saw the new Indiana Jones, and it's not very good. It's not horrendous, but it's not very good at all. The main problems are really the script and Shia LaBeouf. The kid can't act. He couldn't act in Transformers (which is amazing, when you think about it) and he can't act in this. At all. No matter the character, he comes off as someone who is bland and uninteresting that's wearing someone else's clothes.

The script, though. Wow. I should go back and see the earlier films at some point, because I seem to recall the original Raiders as being something of a great time to watch and this was just kind of lame. The standard defense of any George Lucas sequel is "it's in the same spirit as the originals, you were just eight years old at the time, so you have higher standards now," but I've never believed it. It's been long enough that I don't really remember them, so it should be interesting. Also, that line from Apocalypse Now kept humming in the back of my head: "The more they tried to make it just like home, the more they made everybody miss it." Every time they tossed in some reference to the earlier movies or brought back a character, all it did was remind me of the stuff that I liked earlier and that they were now murdering.

Unlike a lot of people, I didn't have any problems with the choice of aliens, really, because it's just an excuse to hang out with Indy for a while, and that's fine, although I did figure out the entire plot of the film as soon as I saw the hangar doors with the number 51 closing in the background roughly 3 minutes into the movie. Hey, whatever.

The thing that sucks, though, is that I think a big part of Indiana Jones's draw is that he's so knowledgeable and right all the time; he's this magic fount of wisdom that knows a lot of shit and knows what to do in almost any situation. Whenever he starts off in hushed tones about how this wall contains ancient text from the Hyundai tribe of Gargantua and it means free slushees for all come Thanksgiving, he's earning the eight bucks I slapped down for a ticket. In fact, if he could just talk authoritatively about some weird shit, then get into a car chase, then go back to talking about ancient Hindus, that would be great. I'd be happy. He didn't do a whole lot of that in this movie, though.

Instead, he has a kid and gets married. What is it with every movie series turning into a soap opera? We must push our characters into family life toute de suite. Also, I was hoping this would be a super generic random adventure of his with no kids or fathers or brothers or mention of his past adventures, just random temples and maybe a better girlfriend than that woman from Temple of Doom. No such luck.

Cate Blanchett really looks good in that wig, though. And she had a sexy accent stowed away in her jumpsuit. That certainly helped.

One last complaint, I guess, is that I wish people would stop with the CGI. The monkeys looked fake, the groundhogs looked fake and I can't believe they really had him survive a nuclear explosion by hiding in a refrigerator. I mean, they really did.