INDIANA JONES IV - Ray’s review!

Written by: David Koepp (screenplay), George Lucas (story)

Staring: Harrison Ford, Cate Blanchett, Shia LaBeouf, Karen Allen, Ray Winstone, John Hurt, Jim Broadbent, Igor Jijikine, Alan Dale, Andrew Divoff

Distributed by Paramount Pictures

Film is released worldwide on May 22nd 2008

Review by Ray DeRousse

Some reviewers have given the new INDIANA JONES film some rather high praise. Others have given it a “pass,” saying that it’s nice to have Indy back despite the lackluster adventure in this film.

Those people are wrong. Dead motherfucking wrong.

Let’s get this statement of fact out into the open from the beginning: this film was made in order to make an outrageous profit for GEORGE LUCAS, STEVEN SPIELBERG, and HARRISON FORD. There was no burning, must-tell story here; it wouldn’t have taken fifteen years to hammer out the plot if the story had been inspired and original. The greatest pop songs are often written in thirty minutes or less - they come from the moment, and touch the heart of their listeners. The original RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK was basically written during a beachside holiday between Lucas and Spielberg. Creative inspiration provided the fuel for that classic adventure. By comparison, this story appears to have been created by drawing plot points out of a fedora while being coerced by stockholders armed with machine guns.

The plot, such as it is, involves a crystal skull that belongs to an alien skeleton secluded deep inside a lost city of gold commonly known as El Dorado. Along the way, Indy manages to escape a nuclear holocaust, a swarm of killer ants, and a reunion with Marion Ravenwood (Karen Allen), which also involves the son they sired together during their adventures years earlier.

NOTE TO APOLOGISTS: I realize you want to insist on a fun, thought-free adventure movie. Please keep reading.

The original RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK was a monumentally fun adventure movie, filled to the top with terrific stunts, snappy dialogue, and mystical hocus-pocus. No film can hope to reach those simple, effervescent heights. The two sequels attempted to match the dizzying spell cast by the original film, but both failed to individual degrees. Here’s why:

- RAIDERS was not a stupid film.While the movie is funny, it’s not at the expense of the characters or the situations. The most outrageous and cartoony moment in the movie comes when the bad guy burns his hand, and stumbles into the snow to cool himself off. It’s a slightly silly moment, but believable in the context of the film. The rest of the film is played straight and realistic, with the humor being derived from the characters and situations.

- RAIDERS had believable action. While many of the stunts in the film are jaw-dropping and probably impossible in real-life, they are performed by real stunt men in real time, adding to their believability.

- RAIDERS invested in character moments. Remember the early moment when Indy celebrates his acceptance on the mission, fired up with passion at the prospect of becoming famous? How about when Marion outdrinks her opponent in her bar? Or the moment when Indy decides to shoot the sword-wielding bad guy rather than fight? These small moments linger because the film takes the time to highlight them.

The two sequels betrayed these qualities in various degrees. TEMPLE OF DOOM reveled in silly and nonsensical moments, while LAST CRUSADE plunged headlong into comedy at the expense of believability. The fairly realistic template established by RAIDERS gave way to mine cars leaping implausibly across chasms, beating hearts being ripped from chests, and ridiculous tank fights and umbrellas defeating airplanes.

Much of the silliness of the sequels can be forgiven because the stories and characters were well-defined, and the action was a clever mix of stuntwork and limited optical effects. The car going over the hill in RAIDERS was a poor matte job on a model car, but we forgave its roughness because the rest of the chase was spectacular stuntwork that lent the film a realism unmatched by special effects. The same is true of the aforementioned mine care chase, or the tank battle. Even in the worst moments, these films provided us with realistic thrills and incredible stunts.

And now, we have this.

I mention the previous films because this is, of course, the fourth film in the INDIANA JONES saga. In that regard, then, the film must be inevitably compared to its predecessors … whether the die-hard fanboys want to admit it or not.

As an INDIANA JONES film, this movie is a colossal disaster; it breaks nearly every rule mentioned above. We have CGI prairie dogs providing unnecessary reaction shots during an important chase. We have CGI monkeys teaching Tarzan to Indy’s son. We have a plot so forced and convoluted that we would need another entire movie to unlock the secrets of the story in this one.

The action is absolutely unbelievable - and I mean that in the worst possible way. Imagine the Jeep chase in RAIDERS, except that everything onscreen is blatantly and relentlessly CGI. Remember the RAIDERS moment when Indy is straddling the wheel and hanging on for dear life? Well, here we have Indy’s son straddling two cars in the dense jungle, all the while getting hit in the balls repeatedly by CGI bushes. There is not a single, solitary moment in this movie that Indy or anyone else is in danger. They just dance gingerly around the blue-screen stage and let the ILM artists create the danger around them.

And worst of all, the film does not allow for even a moment of character development. Indy discovers that he has a son during one of the monotonous action sequences, and his reaction is akin to discovering that he has a booger hanging from his nose. Quality actors like JOHN HURT and RAY WINSTONE are wasted in characters that come and go without any background, purpose, or continuity. It’s as if this is an INDIANA JONES video game, and everyone and everything around Indy is a swirl of pointlessness.

HARRISON FORD is pretty convincing in his recreation of Indy, although the character has morphed into a very cranky, humorless shell of his former self. KAREN ALLEN returns as Marion Ravenwood, although she is reduced to hollow, phony bickering with Indy when she is not Prozac-smiling into the distance. SHIA LABEOUF does what he can with a thankless role; the finale hints at LaBeouf taking over the Indy role, which is most unwelcome. CATE BLANCHETT collected a paycheck, which I wholeheartedly hope she uses to hire a new agent.

None of these on-screen stars can make an impression against the most obvious presence in this film: George F. Lucas. From the psychic monkeys, to the Caddyshack groundhogs, to the nuclear-safe refrigerators, to the self-referential quotations, to the computer-generated everything, Lucas’ fingerprints are all over every single copy of this film. Academy award winners and nominees like Spielberg and Ford should be able to stand up to Lucas and his team of mentally-challenged adopted kids, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. Whatever infantile idea popped into Lucas’ head made it onto the screen intact, and the INDIANA JONES series is worse for it. Anyone still hungering for another dose of the morose, digitally-overloaded STAR WARS prequels will find more than enough hazy, pixelated nonsense on which to chew.

As I said from the start, this film did not need to be made. The story was complete by any reasonable standard back in 1989. The fifteen years of public squabbling over the script revealed the lack of inspiration behind the project; the timetable set by Ford only added to the problem. It was made because each of the three primary movers of this franchise stand to walk away with a cool $100 million dollars. So, in order to cash in on the goodwill of moviegoers, this horribly-written, self-referential shitstorm of nostalgia was whipped together on the blue-screen soundstages of ILM and tossed into theaters as quickly as possible.

Anyone who claims that this movie is acceptable - either as an Indy film or as a stand-alone film - is fooling themselves completely. This is nothing more than a very expensive, digitally-altered scrapbook with the best pictures removed.

Shame on you, Lucas and Spielberg.

21 Comments »

The script is the ultimate weak link in this film, but the excessive use of sound stages doesn’t help. I think the best description for this film is “entertaining, but disappointing”

Comment by Paul | May 22, 2008

Fuck! I knew this would happen, dont think I’m gonna bother wasting my money going to see this now.
I’m totally sick of this “bring back one of the old heroes and relive the past” sequels.
At least Nolans doing something right with the Batman films, It’s an original take…remember that word film fans?!

Comment by The Glove | May 22, 2008

Wtf happened to George Lucas? Once upon a time (in a galaxy far away?) he had a grasp of the epic, an original voice and some pretty good story telling.

Nowadays, he is Uwe Boll! (Sorry, Uwe.)

How in hell did that happen? Can we start a petition to ban Lucas from ever taking part in any stage of filming again?

Comment by Phoenix | May 22, 2008

Oh! And can someone please explain that love affair between Labeouf and Spielberg to me. Because I just don’t get it.

Comment by Phoenix | May 22, 2008

@ Phoenix - You make a good point. Slashfilm and the rest have been championing the petition against Uwe, yet they also champion shit like this. It makes no sense at all. In my mind, this is worse than what Uwe produces, because these guys have many more resources and craftsman at their disposal.

Comment by Ray | May 22, 2008

This movie is not that god-awful. I can think of a million movies out this summer that are far worse. But you are right, its not anything like the subtle characterisation of Raiders, but then neither were the sequels, and you can’t expect that. Raiders is a cinema classic, like Casablanca, and you could never expect Casablanca IV to be near as good as the original–you would go see it to see Bogart doing his thing and providing a few thrills for the audience, and thats what this film is like. The biggest problem that this film has is that the last 1/3 never ties everything together satisfyingly, it all kind of ends flatly and theres all these unresolved characters and issues, but overall its a decent movie. But theres as much character as Temple of Doom, if not more, it just doesn’t have the same sense of mystery or excitement, but I would never call this a terrible film, its just not a very good one. Fandom despondency is thick as smoke here, and while I think fanboy enthusiasm is equally skewered elsewhere to call the film “a piece of shit” is unfair.

Comment by Michael Kaminski | May 22, 2008

What fucker said that???

Comment by The Glove | May 22, 2008

Oh for fucks sake. You ungrateful bastards. Why is this so personal for you? Did you have a hand in making Raiders? For 19 years I’ve heard you bitch and moan about another Indy film, and now that one’s finally here- for better or worse- the first thing you do is complain. Jesus, shut the fuck up. We should have stopped in ‘89, hands down. What did you expect from Lucas and Speilburg? They’re not the pair they were in ‘81; both have become very much about percentages and returns. You’ve harrassed them to the point where they felt they HAD to make another Indy- which they didn’t- and now that they’ve released it, you bite the hand that feeds you.

You didn’t deserve another Indy film. If you really loved the character, you’d just be happy to see him return after all this time. It’s really your own damn fault for getting your hopes up. And for that, I have no sympathy for you “fanboys”. You made your bed. Sleep in it.

Comment by DirtyLungs | May 22, 2008

And, no I won’t be seeing the film, and it has nothing to do with the reviews.

Comment by DirtyLungs | May 22, 2008

@ Michael Kaminsky - This film is a piece of shit from any vantage point save Ford’s performance and SOME of Spielberg’s direction. This script is absolutely horrendous. Have you ever taken a screenwriting class, or studied them? I have, and I can tell you that this screenplay does not work. The plot is incoherent at best. The characters lie flat on the page. Everything about it is lazy when it’s not lobotimized childishness.

Beyond the awful script, the film contains a whole raft of wrong decisions, many of which I detail in my review. It is not “fun” to watch this kind of garbage from two of the directors responsible for the rebirth of cinema thirty years ago. This movie is on par with soul-wrenching nonsense like VAN HELSING, which was, prior to this release, pointlessness personified.

@ DirtyLungs - Actually, I was totally against the notion of making this movie after watching the STAR WARS prequels. Frankly, I never really loved the previous sequels that much either. To me, RAIDERS is the moment of perfection, and the rest is just spending a few extra hours with an old friend.

This film, however, is like catching up with that old friend at their funeral.

If you read my review carefully, it is basically railing against the true motivations behind this sequel, and the onscreen evidence that supports my view.

Comment by Ray | May 22, 2008

The plot is not incoherant, maybe you just didn’t pay attention because I got it fine. The script needed work, I’m not denying that, it needed another pass to fill in the holes in character and construction, but its not bad at all, most of it works. Where the film falters is in the last 1/3–what occured in the first 2/3 was mostly fine but it depended on where it all led, and in the end it doesn’t lead anywhere interesting or all get paid off. ie nothing emotionally convincing happens with Ray Winston, Kate Blanchet’s motivation is never explained, the secret of the city is overexplained and lacks compelling drama, Ox never really gets resolved or goes anywhere and Indy’s day-job just goes unexplained. But in spite of a weak climax the script largely works. In fact, I don’t really have a single complaint about the entire first half of the film. You can’t expect this to be like a Lawrence Kasdan screeplay. I mean, did you even watch Temple of Doom? Theres twice as much character in this film. You can’t expect it to compete with Raiders, overall this is an average to above average script, its on par with Doom and better than your typical adventure film. I don’t see what the big deal is; its not a classic, its just a film you watch and enjoy the time hanging out with the characters. In that respect it works. I wish it were better but its not a defiling of the franchise because the franchise was defiled the moment they turned Raiders of the Lost Ark into a franchise. They shouldn’t have done the over-the-top cartoonish stuff like the Tarzan scene, and thats a shame because it harms what was up to that point a pretty good film that was completely in the spirit of the others, but to call it completely worthless and awful and “zero stars” or whatever to me just smacks of total fanboy over-reaction to something thats not that bad once you step back and look at it. Of course its the worst in the series but thats just because the first three were so damn good, I would have rather not have the film be made and keep that integrity but at the end of the day I’m still happy to watch it because its still an entertaining film.

Comment by Michael Kaminski | May 22, 2008

@ Michael - First you say that the characters in this film are better than that of TEMPLE OF DOOM, and then you turn around and say that this is “of course” the worst film of the INDY series. Make up your mind.

And I do disagree with you about the “characters,” especially since you yourself just admitted that many of the main characters lack even their motivations. LOL

I do remember certain gophers ruining an early scene, long before the Tarzan moment. Oh, Michael, there’s so very much wrong with this movie. The plot is incoherent; red lines appearing on a map do not fill in the “whats” and “whys” of the character’s journey. I can draw a stright line through the narrative of RAIDERS, and can do the same thing (to a lesser degree) with the sequels. This movie, though, has Indy and company jumping to Peru for a quick random encounter that makes zero sense … well, other than provide another opportunity to have a CGI spectacle. The film leaps around without connection to other parts of the plot. The script definitely shows the massive rewrites in its stitched-together narrative.

And I won’t even start on the gang of characters, particularly the awfully-written characters for BROADBENT and WINSTONE.

I gave it zero stars because the entire film lacked any kind of point; zero stars is less a fanboy reaction than a way to negate the entire experience from my mind. The film should never have been made, and the resulting movie fails on almost every conceivable level. It’s an Indiana Jones video game shown on the big screen, rather than a real movie.

Comment by Ray | May 23, 2008

You gave it zero stars so that your review would cause uproar and draw more attention…

Comment by Gustavo | May 23, 2008

Temple of Doom is better because it was a better thrillride, with more drama. But the characters in Temple of Doom are really thin; Crystal Skull had much more fleshed out characters with real histories, better relationships and better dialog.

I mean it’s not a big deal that you don’t like it, everyone has an opinion but I just don’t get the vehemency of the reaction. Because its really not THAT far removed from Temple of Doom and Last Crusade. I mean Indy meeting Hitler and then autographing his diary? Parachouting out an airplane with an inflatable dingy? Ripping peoples hearts out? The whole gross-out dinner scene? Whiney Willie Scott? Some five year old asian kid that inexplicably is Indy’s improbable sidekick? The Last Crusade opening that has to explain everything about Indy’s personality by contriving them all in one scene? Indy stopping the mincart with his feet and then his shoes set on fire? Stopping an attack plane with a flock of seagulls? Or Last Crusade which repeats virtually every single elementt in Raiders and then throws Sean Connery into the mix as the sarcastic but oblivious dad?

I’m not going to argue that Crystal Skull is the weakest film and that its a step backwards–but its not THAT big a step. Thats why I just don’t get the negativity. The movie’s more imperfect than the others but its still fun and all that removed from the previous films. I can understand someone not liking the film but what I don’t understand is hating the film when you liked the other sequels. Just doesn’t add up to me. But anyway, moving on.

Comment by Michael Kaminski | May 23, 2008

This movie is a joke. So much exposition, so much CG, so much waste of our time. It’s an embarrassment for all involved.

Comment by Jason | May 23, 2008

I saw the movie the first half of the movie was good, but the second half was over the top.The sword fighting in the jungle the killer ants, the jeep going over the side landing on a tree then falling into the river,and the UFO ending was too much I feel that the first half was Indy the second was Star Wars.

Comment by Kelvin | May 26, 2008

Good movie. That’s really all that needs to be said. Any extreme opinion on this movie is coming from biased standpoint, meaning that anybody that HATES or LOVES this movie was probably predisposed to do so. Iron Man is better. Dark Knight will probably be better too. But, hey, at least it was fucking ‘Prince Caspian,’ right? Gayyyyyyyy!

Comment by Phil | May 26, 2008

Sorry Guys, but I loved the movie. Although I hated the crystal skulls and it would of been great if he tracked down Atlantis instead. But there is no way this film deserves no stars, its a reaction to waiting 19 years to see the film.
Ford is good, better than he’s been in years.

The reaction to the time and place he now lives is great. The problem with the film is the ‘MacGuffin’ is weak, even worse than those damn Shankarai Stones. No one has a clue what the crystal skulls were, and no one really cared.
With the ark, it was biblical and with the Shankarai Stones it was personal and the grail was legendary (Possibly the motherfucker of all archaeology) and this is followed by crystal skulls. Blame Lucas, the guy ain’t worth batshit…..but I still enjoyed it because I thought it was Indy!!!!

Comment by Alan Cracknell | May 27, 2008

Not The Best Indy, But Still An Adventure None The Less. No matter how good this film did, you people were gonna bash it in the nuts like you do every other film. Quit paying so much attention on what is CGI and what’s not, enjoy the fucking movie for the eye candy

Comment by madhatt3r | May 28, 2008

@ madhatt3r - The original RAIDERS was not “eye candy,” hence the problem.

Lucas just loves brainless shitbags like you. He should send you a Hallmark card every time his cash register rings.

Comment by Ray | May 28, 2008

[...] stuck up for the film and wouldn’t back down that the movie wasn’t as bad as myself, Ray, Oliver or Mike Edwards thought of [...]

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