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Indiana Jones has been and will always be about the supernatural. George Lucas, who pretty much directs the character’s existence, has declared as much to be true. The supernatural leaves all kinds of things open for Indy to explore and/or be affected by, and some things in the supernatural world won’t sit well with fans who have their own ideas for what Indy should pursue. CRYSTAL SKULL is such a movie, where some will hate it and some will love it. Personally, and for the most part, I loved it.

I have not felt compelled to review a movie in a long time. There have been so many that have come and gone. Many that have been promised that have been either delivered or postponed, and many that were delivered and either delivered well or fell short of expectations. I just don’t have any expectations at all. I think its a better way to go into a movie like this…you are pleasantly surprised more often than you are disappointed.

Hollywood seems to be in hit-recycling mode right now (and so does the music industry…for more on hit-recycling read The Long Tail by Chris Anderson) and I love it when it involves my childhood favorites such as Star Wars, Superman and Indiana Jones. Although lately, such francise-re-invigorations haven’t been so invigorating (namely STAR WARS and SUPERMAN RETURNS). Indiana Jones hits closer to the mark but only because it fired everything it had at the target, not because it’s aim was more true (it was more accurate than precise).

Star Wars was lacking in the smart-ass dialogue that made the first three so popular: B-movie space movies that didn’t take themselves so seriously. The prequels suffered from stilted and contrived dialogue that has no excuse because it took so long to make them after the original trilogy (perhaps it was the length of time that made it worse — more like analysis paralysis and then let’s just get something written down). The Star Wars prequels tried to recapture the original magic with characters who didn’t create the original magic and with production designs that overwhelmed the characters; I’m not sure you can win in that situation. George Lucas is a master storyteller, no doubt, but on paper, not in the director’s chair. SUPERMAN RETURNS catered too much to its producer’s wishes, where Superman is more of a Christian-like savior than a superhero. If the producers weren’t so happy with a religious experience as their franchise reboot, we might have gotten a better Superman picture. I mean after all, this is Superman! He really kicks ass! Where was the ass kicking in SUPERMAN RETURNS?

INDIANA JONES AND THE KINGDOM OF THE CRYSTAL SKULL keeps to it’s B-movie roots and NEVER takes itself seriously. I wasn’t too big of a fan of the goofy humor in LAST CRUSADE, but emotionally that movie scores bigger than CRYSTAL SKULL. CRYSTAL SKULL continues the goofy humor and is so focused on giving everyone what they want in another Indy picture that it loses sight of where it should really go. That’s not to say it’s not fun; it really is. I just found several scenes a bit jarring, considering we are in the atomic age instead of the pre-WWII age, and I am used to seeing Jones in the 1930’s.

David Koepp was tasked with taking all the best elements of all the scripts that have been written since LAST CRUSADE and putting them into this movie. I’m not sure that was the best idea, as half of them would have made this movie good. Putting all of them into one movie is overkill. Since this script is an amalgamation of several scripts, you can probably make out where INDIANA JONES AND THE MONKEY KING fits, as well as INDIANA JONES AND THE SAUCER MEN FROM MARS. At one point CRYSTAL SKULL was shooting under the name INDIANA JONES AND THE CITY OF THE GODS, which is close in plot to where CRYSTAL SKULL winds up in the end. David Koepp is obviously a fine working writer, but I haven’t seen a movie where he has been solely responsible for the script and the movie has turned out to be a great character piece. He usually needs help to make a movie more emotionally centered (like when he wrote THE PAPER with his brother, William Koepp). Otherwise you get JURASSIC PARK and THE LOST WORLD, which carried some of the original novels’ intentions, but little of characterization and emotion. CRYSTAL SKULL suffers from this kind of adaptation: lots of action and little character development.

It’s not all Koepp’s fault. I believe Steven Spielberg is beginning to stick to his favorite people for this type of movie. When he is working on an action picture, he turns to Koepp (WAR OF THE WORLDS, JURASSIC PARK, etc.). Otherwise, it’s anything goes, as long as it’s important. MUNICH, SAVING PRIVATE RYAN, SCHINDLER’S LIST; these were all written by different people. The minute Spielberg needs to make a popcorn-muncher he relies on Koepp. The same goes for his actors.  For a while, he wanted to use Haley Joel Osment as Harry Potter (back when they were shopping for a director). While Osment is a fine actor, you really needed an unknown for Potter. Again, Spielberg relies on what he knows. Shia LeBeouf is beginning to be that type of actor, where Spielberg refers him to Michael Bay for TRANSFORMERS and uses him in CRYSTAL SKULL. LeBeouf is also good, but if he knows what’s good for him, he’ll do a lot of other things rather than stick with Spielberg all the time.

Don’t get me wrong…Spielberg is still one of my idols. I just think he’s getting a little insecure about who he works with, especially with big-budget action pictures like this. Lucas’ input notwithstanding on Indiana Jones’ scripts, Spielberg can really make a good movie, and he should rely on his natural filmmaking abilities to campaign for scripts he’s passionate about, and be as stubborn about an Indy script as Lucas is about his crystal skull MacGuffin. Use new actors. Use new writers. Find big fans fo the original series and trust them with the new movies. Yes, CRYSTAL SKULL can never be as good as you imagined it would be. But if this movie came out a few years after LAST CRUSADE, people would still have been polarized by it’s content, but I bet people would have been saying it was better than the first three, even with half of the things they put in there.

In summary, CRYSTAL SKULL is a mixed bag.  It’s really good in some places, really bad in others.  I love the fact that Indy is back up on the big screen.  I just can’t wait for it to get to DVD so I can watch my favorite parts over and over again and skip the bad ones.