Indiana Jones Case History

I couldn't say that I was entering the theatre without warning. Even as I paid for my ticket, I was all too aware that I may regret the purchase. I had missed the opening weekend by two weeks, and ignoring peoples off-hand comments about Indiana Jones' latest adventure was nigh impossible. The humid mist of its failures surrounded me, and when I informed my friends that I was finally getting to see it, all of them handed me fragile warnings. And one must be fragile. This is Mr. Jones we are talking about. Beyond that, this is Mr. Spielberg, Mr. Lucas, and pretty much any of the fun people had in the 1980's, and it was apparently all in great jeopardy. There is little worse than ruining ones past films. It starts the period where people refer the original works like some dead thing, something that had been executed.

All the same, I was unconvinced of the amount of peril the franchise was in. I have never considered that Spielberg was capable of committing the Cinematical crimes that happen so frequently casual movie-goers barely complain. Poor movies are met with a shrug and a laugh, as some infantile failure too inconsequential for blame. I find the frequency of bad films just short of a skin-melting epidemic, but I digress. I bought a gelato, a treat known for deactivating fanboyism with its fatty cream, saluted the parade line of cardboard coming-attraction statues, and took my place in the theatre. Possible disappointment sat to my left, and there was concern about it hogging the arm rest.

That guillotine of eventual disappointment seemed doomed to hang over me the entire movie, yet I quickly forgot it. Spielberg handled one of his favorite children with the utmost skill, and amidst the motorcycle chases, belligerent grave guardians, and scorpions, I never had the opportunity to wonder when things would go wrong.

Of course, then it happened. During the last 20 minutes I was brought outside my own enjoyment to realize we had crossed the threshold. That point where the previous fortnight's worth of audiences had begun their exodus. This is the point where i warn of spoilers – those who wish to retain their innocence should look away.

This crystal skull, and its kingdom, was based entirely around beings not of this planet, or even, this realm. Your standard trans-dimensional, ultra magnetic, hive-minded beings. They switch dimensions like we switch cellphones. Presumably. The surprise factor of this was, i'll admit, pretty low. Mostly due to the first ten minutes of the film where Russians steal an alien from area 51. At that point I considered myself tipped off to the eventual coup dé grace. But it was more than just the logical procession of plot that ruined the surprise. It was also the director. Spielberg and aliens? The hell you say!

Sure, extra-terrestrials are that a bit of a leap. It's not as grounded as, say, the face-melting Ark of the covenant. And while there may be many long-standing and curiosity-piquing theories behind aliens and ancient archeology, it doesn't have near the scientific backing that the removal of still-beating hearts does. I'll leave the Holy Grail alone, because that's non-fiction (...). Despite all of that, the aliens didn't bother me. I'll allow Spielberg and Lucas deviate this one time. Boys will be boys and all that.

"It was something else," my friend answered to my defenses. So I considered this. There was so much that wasn't it, finding the elusive else would be a serious task. My first thought was that we will never see Indiana Jones as we once did. Audiences can't unlearn almost 20 years of cinema experience. To un-evolve in that sense is impossible. The else i did settle on was significantly less tangible, and i'm not talented enough to explain it.

The inclusion of Aliens, and a saucer of considerable size, brings Indiana out of the field. It's no longer dusty ruins and sweaty jungles, but the clean gleam of space alloy. It presupposes that every ancient trap we've seen thus far might not be due to a tribe that communicates by bass hits, but an altogether more ray-gun dependent species. I also get the inkling that the movie uses change and progression a very important theme. The nuclear blast was a concussive welcoming into a new era of 50's space-racing, a new frontier to Indy. One must ask the question; what does a man like Indiana Jones do when people look to the stars? When the earth stops being a place to discover, but a space to populate? He couldn't fight the Nazi's forever, they eventually had to get defeated. People like Indiana Jones need to exist, obviously, but to relegate them to the pristine enemies of the past is a mistake. Characters need to move forward to survive, and without that momentum they do more than die. They expire.

There is the chance that the else is something fairly simple. Maybe the escape from the alien treasure tomb just failed as an action sequence. There's little i can argue about that.