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Detailed Newspaper review for 'Crystal Skull'

posted 3 years ago by elmadman_99 (57)
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Steven Spielberg's very stupid adventure: who's to blame for Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull?

One morning early in 2007, Ray Winstone sat in his home in London watching a young man in a crisp suit sip tea. Winstone’s latter-day incarnation as the face of online gambling was still a few years away and, to kill the time, he was in the process of lining up one of his highest profile jobs ever. Such, at least, was the theory. Reality was proving rather stranger.
Several days previously, Winstone had been contacted by representatives of Steven Spielberg. Did he want to be in the director’s next movie – a return to the swashbuckling Indiana Jones franchise? Most actors would have said “yes” on the spot – his future co-star Shia LaBeouf had, to his subsequent regret. But canny, cautious Winstone always insisted on reading the script, even when the offer was from Spielberg.

Which is how he came to find himself hosting a polite yet inscrutable functionary who had jetted across the Atlantic with a numbered copy of the screenplay. Winstone was allowed to peruse it under strict supervision and with the clock very much ticking.

“They sent the script over to me, with a young kid in a suit,” he would tell Jonathan Ross. “He turned up at the door and sat there…while I read it. I liked it… there was plenty to work with. I gave him the script back and off he went on the plane…Even after filming we had to give the scripts back…They’re very clever about the way they sell their films.”

On its 10th anniversary Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is remembered as a misfiring postscript to an otherwise glorious blockbuster saga and a great, dribbling copybook blot for Spielberg and his collaborator George Lucas (who wrote the story).

What’s forgotten is that at the time Crystal Skull owed its infamy to the extreme secrecy in which it was shot and marketed (Winstone wasn’t the only one to be chaperoned as he read the script – co-star John Hurt reported a similar process).

By the time the film was released 10 years ago this month several bread-crumb trails of fake clues had been carefully scattered. The project’s name was, for instance, variously leaked as Indiana Jones and the City of Gods, the Destroy of Worlds, the Fourth Corner of the Earth, the Lost City of Gold and the Quest for the Covenant.

“There's lots and lots of people who don't want to find out what happens,” Spielberg had explained. “They want that to happen [in] May. They want to find out in a dark theatre. They don't wanna find out by reading a blog.... A movie is experiential. A movie happens in a way that has always been cathartic, the personal, human catharsis of an audience in Holy Communion with an experience up on the screen. That's why I'm in the middle of this magic, and I always will be.”

Spielberg and Lucas were paranoid that, in this new era of internet gossip and social media [by 2008 Twitter was already two years old], Indiana Jones’s dramatic comeback might be ruined in advance. They had resolved that as little as possible be known – to the point where they initially refused to confirm Cate Blanchett’s casting as the main villain (a surprise they arguably spoiled by then bringing her along to that year’s Comic-Con).

Anyone flouting the blackout was dealt with harshly. A extra divulging minor plot points to his hometown newspaper back in Canada was sued; the opportunistic pilferer who stole production photos and attempted to auction them to the media prosecuted and sentenced to two years in prison.

Yet in their determination to conjure an aura of mystery as Indy swooped onto screens after an 19 year hiatus, Spielberg and Lucas lost sight of what made the original Raiders movies so compelling – that singular mix of grit and derring-do, humour and rollicking action.

They would soon be left in little doubt as to how badly Crystal Skull failed to keep up with the previous Joneses. The first indication things were amiss arrived an early scene in which Indy (Harrison Ford) escapes a nuclear blast in the Nevada desert by hiding in a refrigerated unit. The sequence became a byword for the worst cinematic overkill – what happens when jump the shark… jumps the shark.

“What people really jumped at was Indy climbing into a refrigerator and getting blown into the sky by an atom-bomb blast,” Spielberg would reflect. “Blame me. Don't blame George. That was my silly idea. People stopped saying “jump the shark.” They now say, “nuked the fridge.” I'm proud of that. I'm glad I was able to bring that into popular culture.”

“Nuked the fridge” actually had its origins in another Spielberg production, 1985’s Back to the Future. In the original script, Marty McFly travels back to the present day by climbing inside a fridge as it is driven into an atomic explosion. Spielberg nixed the concept fearing kids would be encouraged to climb into fridges.

[–] elmadman_99 (57) 3 years ago

Twenty-three years on he repurposed the idea with gusto with a scene which even the deadpan Ford struggled to carry off (it ends with a freshly nuked Dr Jones communing with a CGI gopher). Yet even setting Indy-in-the-fridge to one side, Crystal Skull was tentpool goo, a career low-point for almost all involved.

Spielberg’s auto-pilot directing and overuse of computer effects (and fridge nuking) were abetted by Lucas’s simultaneously linear and preposterous storyline about aliens with elongated heads hiding in the South American jungle. There were also creaking performances by Ford, Blanchett, LaBeouf and, yes, our old mucker Ray Winstone. Nobody walked away with their figurative felt hat un-dented.

How could so many talents cook up such a calamity, in the process burning through the stockpile of goodwill accumulated by the previous Indiana Jones film? One problem was the project’s torturous gestation, dating all the way back to 1993 and the immediate aftermath of its predecessor, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.

When they had collaborated in 1981 on Raiders of the Lost Ark, the swashbuckling first entry in the
series, Spielberg and Lucas had planned a total of five Indy movies. However, after 1989’s Last Crusade, Spielberg was eager to take his filmmaking in a more “mature” direction. Lucas, meanwhile, fretted they’d run out of ancient artefacts around which to build compelling stories. There was a chronic “MacGuffin” shortage.

[–] elmadman_99 (57) 3 years ago

They’d almost run out of MacGuffins by Last Crusade which the duo had briefly considered setting in Africa and populating with killer monkeys and a haunted castle.When that idea fizzled out they had turned, in some desperation, to the Arthurian pursuit of the Holy Grail. Spielberg, almost more attuned to the real world than the geeky Lucas, initially blanched, fearing unkind comparisons to Monty Python and the Quest for the Holy Grail.

“We wrote complete scripts on other MacGuffins [for the third film],” he said. “And finally I said, look, let’s just try the Holy Grail. [Adopting another voice] ”Ohhh, it’s too cerebral, we’ll never make it work….” So we turned it into a tangible magic cup with healing powers, instead of an intellectual thing. It wasn’t until the idea of introducing the father [Sean Connery as Dr Jones Senior] came along that we kind of pulled [the third movie] out of the fire.”

The only person seemingly not fed up with Indiana Jones was Harrison Ford. He was attached to the whip-snapping archaeologist to a far greater degree than to Han Solo from the Star Wars movies (curious considering they are essentially the same wise-cracking protagonist, with different outfits).
Every so often Ford would badger Lucas about a possible fourth installment. In 1993 Lucas, who was already thinking about a new trilogy of Star Wars prequels (a fantastic idea that would obviously do very well) relented and bashed out a treatment.

With Ford getting older – he had just turned 50 – Lucas felt it prudent to leave behind the pulp universe of Nazis and buried treasures.He provisionally set the new adventure in the Fifties, envisioning a tribute to the b-movies of his adolescence (Indiana Joneshad started as a 1973 Lucas script, The Adventures of Indiana Smith and was intended as a homage to pulp cinema). There would be diners and greasers on bikes – and, obviously, flying saucers too. And, in the middle of it all, reunited with his bullwhip and hat, Indiana Jones.

[–] elmadman_99 (57) 3 years ago

With the Star Wars prequels occupying more and more time, Lucas handed the scriptwriting to Jeb Stuart (Die Hard, The Fugitive), whose screenplay for Indiana Jones and the Saucerman from Mars sees the eponymous hero marrying a US government agent named Molly and tasked with protecting a live alien. With further revisions from Jeffrey Boam (The Lost Boys, Lethal Weapon 2) in 1995, the script was presented to Lucas and Spielberg.

The timing could not have been worse. Independence Day was about to become a huge hit and Lucas was wary of the spaceman plot line. Spielberg, meanwhile, was doubtful about the sci-fi overtones, feeling they would make Indiana Jones look silly.

Enter Frank Darabont, writer and director of the Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile, who revised the screenplay, toning down the extra terrestrial elements while retaining the b-movie aspects. Alas, his take didn’t find favour either – as the combative Darabont wasn’t slow in revealing.

“It was very disappointing and a waste of a year. It showed me how badly things can go. I spent a year of very determined effort on something I was very excited about, working very closely with Steven Spielberg and coming up with a result that I and he felt was terrific.

“He wanted to direct it as his next movie, and then suddenly the whole thing goes down in flames because George Lucas doesn’t like the script. I told him he was crazy. I said, 'You have a fantastic script. I think you’re insane, George.' You can say things like that to George, and he doesn’t even blink. He’s one of the most stubborn men I know.”
With no screenplay and other pressing responsibilities – in Lucas’s case, torching the Star Wars legacy with his prequels – Indiana Jones and the Saucerman from Mars winked into deep space.
Or at least it would have were it not for Ford, whose eagerness to crack the Indy bullwhip seemed to increase in inverse proportion to the woes attending the franchise.

[–] elmadman_99 (57) 3 years ago

In 2000, he met Spielberg, Lucas and husband-and-wife producers Frank Marshall and Kathleen Kennedy (today the custodian of Disney’s Star Wars sequels) at an American Film Institute event in his honour and once more pressed the case for an Indy revival.

This time, the response was more receptive. Having won his Oscar for Schindler’s List perhaps the director felt he had proved himself as a grown-up filmmaker and was prepared to play in the blockbuster toy box once again. After several dark features – Munich and AI:Artificial Intelligence – he was, moreover, in the mood for something brisker and brighter.

“Harrison…said, "Why don't we make another one of these pictures? There's a fan base out there that wants it,” Spielberg would recall. ‘He was tenacious. He called George and George got to thinking about it, and then George called me and said, "Well Steve, what do you want to do? It could be fun to make another movie."

Strangely, little of Ford’s evident fondness for the character was discernible the screen. The 66 year-old Dr Jones we meet fighting Soviets in the midst of the Cold War is crotchety with bells on. Ford delivered his lines in a grumpy rasp and seemed disconnected from that old Indy charm.

In his defence, Ford must be credited with going to lengths of acknowledge Jones’s age. His Indy is a grumpy old man with the emphasis as much on the “old” as the “grumpy”. He winces after every punch thrown and received and, in an early fight scene, looks puffed jumping into a car driven by Russian agents.

[–] elmadman_99 (57) 3 years ago

Ford even urged Jurassic Park screenwriter David Koepp – author of a final revised screenplay on which everyone could agree – to include more references to Indy’s decrepitude.

“What astonishes me,” Ford said at the time, “is that people can't imagine Indiana Jones ageing at all. Why expect any character to be frozen in time? The appeal of Indiana Jones isn't his youth but his imagination, his resourcefulness.”

“His physicality is a big part of it, especially the way he gets out of tight situations. But it's not all hitting people and falling from high places. My ambition in action is to have the audience look straight in the face of character and not at the back of a capable stuntman's head. I hope to continue that no matter how old I get.'"

A honking lack of chemistry between Indy and his protege (and, it is ultimately revealed, son) Mutt (Shia LaBeouf) was one of the movie’s other big stumbles. As already pointed out, LaBeouf, regarded as potentially the next Tom Cruise on the back of the Transformers movies, had said “yes” to Indy and Spielberg on the spot.

He had expected a film-making masterclass with one of the greats. What he got, by his telling, was a soulless stint on a blockbuster production line.

You can see the tension between LaBeouf and Ford in an early scene in which they spar in a diner and the older actor shouts at his co-star to calm down. It’s not clear whether he’s acting or telling his fellow actor to dial down the method acting (with his bike leathers and wincing pout LaBeouf was doing his best mini-me Brando impersonation).

[–] elmadman_99 (57) 3 years ago

“You get there, and you realise you’re not meeting the Spielberg you dream of,” a still disillusioned LaBeouf told Variety in 2016. “You’re meeting a different Spielberg, who is in a different stage in his career. He’s less a director than he is a f______ company.”
LeBoeuf would subsequently go off at the rails and alienate much of Hollywood and his remarks are probably best read in the light of later eccentricities (appearing at Berlin premiere wearing a paper bag inscribed “I Am Not Famous Any More” etc).
But his comments were valid to the extent that Crystal Skull is indisputably one of Spielberg’s weakest and most generic excursions. Especially disappointing was his reliance on muggy CGI – a rejection of the scrappy pulp quality of the previous Jones films.

The worst example was a jungle chase toward the end in which Mutt and Blanchett’s Ukrainian killbot Dr. Irina Spalko engage in a sword fight across speeding vehicles. One minute they are bearing down on a tree, the next it’s gone and they parry on regardless; later LaBeouf seemingly blinks from the front to the back of his Jeep in a single frame – sloppiness not usually associated with the meticulous Spielberg.

At Lucas’s insistence the creaking science fiction components of the story were retained too, with Indy chasing the eponymous mineral-based cranium to the Peruvian jungle. There he discovers it belongs to an alien with mind control powers, who has thoughtfully parked his flying saucer under a Mayan temple.

Crystal Skull also suffers a profusion of secondary characters, with Dr Jones variously aided and opposed by Mutt, John Hurt’s “Ox” Oxley, Winstone’s traitorous “Mac” McHale and Indy’s old lover Marion Ravenwood (Karen Allen back for the first time since Raiders). The resulting film makes you wish someone had come up with a collective noun for irritating sidekicks (an “Indy” of sidekicks perhaps?)

[–] elmadman_99 (57) 3 years ago

Much like the Phantom Menace nine years previously, eagerness for a new Indiana Jones was such that, initially, critics and audiences were inclined to look past Crystal Skull’s flaws. It grossed $780 million – impressive even considering the $185 million budget.

However, as the flying saucer debris settled, the movie’s stock rapidly plummeted and, within a few weeks, “nuke the fridge” memes were circulating. Spielberg and Ford would not abandon their dreams of a fifth and final Indy foray (in “development” and provisionally due 2020, with LeBoeuf’s character conspicuously absent).

But among the public enthusiasm for the series declined and, as with Lucas’s Star Wars prequels, the unexpurgated awfulness had the arguable effect of retroactively diminishing its predecessors.

In the end even Spielberg has seemed to turn his back on Crystal Skull, claiming that – fridge nuking aside – he was merely servicing his pal Lucas’s vision. He may have nuked the fridge. Now he was throwing Lucas under a bus.

"I sympathise with people who didn't like the MacGuffin because I never liked the MacGuffin," he would say. "George [Lucas] and I had big arguments about the MacGuffin. When he writes a story he believes in – even if I don't believe in it – I'm going to shoot the movie the way George envisaged it."

[–] strntz (12773) 3 years ago

Whatever the reasons, it was a stinker. Thanks for the post.