I Watch Films: Indiana Jones And The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull

 

Indiana Jones And The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull

It’s 1957 and American archaeologist Indiana “Indy” Jones is kidnapped by Soviet agents in disguise as American soldiers, led by Doctor Colonel Irina Spalko. They take him to a warehouse in Area 51 in remote Nevada and demand he find a crystal skull he examined in 1947. It’s magnetic, which he uses to find it, then tries to escape, ending up in an atomic bomb test which he survives by taking shelter in a fridge.

Questioned by the FBI, they suspect him of working with the communists (as in fact did his old friend George McHale in the previous sequence). Back at his college he’s been placed on leave. He’s approached by Mutt Williams who requests his help in finding old colleague Oxley, missing in Peru. Oxley had found another crystal skull and was on the trail of the lost city of Akator. Attacked by Soviet agents they escape to Peru.

In Peru they follow the trail that Oxley followed. Oxley seems to have had a mental breakdown but they decipher clues from his room in the asylum, which leads them to the grave of a conquistador where they find another crystal skull. They’re then captured by Soviets, again, and are taken to their camp in the Amazon.

There are Spalko, McHale, the incoherent Oxley and also Marion Ravenwood (now Williams) making a reappearance from Raiders Of The Lost Ark. It’s revealed she’s Mutt’s mother, and later that Indy is his father, Marion and he having split up before she knew she was pregnant, her marrying Williams, an RAF officer who died in World War 2, then forming a household with Oxley who helped bring up Mutt.

Spalko explains her plan; the skulls, she believes, are from aliens, and she can use them to beam Soviet propaganda into people’s minds. She connects Indy’s mind to the skull; it tells him to take it back to the lost city of Akator. He figures out that Oxley is obliquely trying to tell them where the lost city of Akator is.

Escaping again with the skull, Indy, Mutt, Marion, Oxley and McHale, now falsely claiming to be a double agent working against Spalko, find their way to Akator. There it’s revealed the skulls are indeed aliens who granted knowledge to the early humans who lived there (local tribesmen rise up to fight the Soviets, are mostly slaughtered); they’re not from out space but from a higher dimension. Returning the skull brings the thirteen back to life, they recombine and offer Spalko ultimate knowledge. This inevitably is a bad thing and the end of the film happens.

So what’s up with this, Indiana Jones came back after a twenty-year gap and it tries to do too much with too little. First the title, one too many items in it (Temple-Doom, Last-Crusade, Kingdom-Crystal-Skull). Bringing back Marion is okay, positioning Mutt as a successor (which didn’t work out) is okay, an old archaeologist friend going missing, also okay. But then they’re all in a big tangled web of family. There’s alien super-science rather than the occult nonsense in the previous three films. Having made a step forward in Last Crusade where the locals who want to stop people interfering with the weird magical site get a named leader who makes their case, here we just have an Amazon tribe who snipe at people with stone-age weapons. Briefly the fifties make an appearance as Mutt is a classic greaser with a motorcycle and their escape from the Soviet agents being facilitated by starting a brawl between greasers and college lettermen. There’s a rocket test and atomic bomb in the start sequence. Once they leave the US they return to timeless adventure land.

Watch This: Fun historical adventure with charm, stunts and spectacular scenes
Don’t Watch This: Convoluted story that conceals what they looking for and why under layers of twenty-year old personal complications