DVD: Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

Raiders of the Lost Ark, or, in long form, Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark, is arguably a perfect film. What it lacks in depth or intellect it more than makes up for in verve, style, and an extraordinary dedication to craft. Above all else, it rocks.

The next two sequels couldn't live up to the original. Temple of Doom decided that "dark" was a good thing. I enjoyed it at the time but it's aged horribly, with Steven Spielberg's wife-to-be being grating and annoying. Please, please, I now beg, just let her fall into the lava! Only that little Short Round bastard (!) is worse.

And while The Last Crusade recaptured a degree of the original's sense of fun, it obliterated two of its cherished characters. Marcus Brody was reduced to being a idiot while Sallah is depicted as hapless and well nigh useless. These were criminal abuses of people who were key to the first film, especially in the way they gave Indiana Jones, the man, background and depth.

And now we have Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, a film I first saw at the theatre but didn't want to talk about until I had seen it again, alas on DVD. It's a cut above Temple, kind of. It's a cut way below Crusade, definitely. It doesn't live up to the original, sorry.

Kingdom finds us re-entering the life of Indiana Jones in 1957. He's long since helped rid the world of Nazis and now he's just a college professor. Unfortunately for him, there's a new evil in the world, Communism, and they want something only Indy can help them find.

The "why" behind that is never particularly clear. In fact, why anyone does anything in this film is never clear. Nothing seems to flow. Instead, the plot just seems to stutter from one set piece to the next. The Commies seem perfectly capable of moving things along without the good Doctor Jones, and he has no reason for doing anything.

(Come to think of it, maybe Temple of Doom is better than Kingdom. Nah, Temple has Short Round...)

I'm worried about Spielberg. I think he's lost it. And I say that as someone who was 100% a fan. I will ardently defend pretty much everything he's made up until Munich, excepting The Lost World (the film is as morally bankrupt as Munich, but at least it has a T-rex in San Diego). He had me from "go" with Duel and I thought he owned me for life with Jaws, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and Raiders.

But now he's delivered this one-two sucker punch of Munich and Kingdom. Kingdom is incoherent on its own terms. It's first mistake was to forsake God in favor of aliens. The underlying spiritual quests of the first three films lend them a strong sense of good versus evil; this is completely lacking in Kingdom. It's second, related mistake was to forsake any notion of actually making the bad guys, you know, bad, firmly establishing why we do not want these particular people to get their hands on this particular power. When he was fighting Nazis it was easy to see who was good and who was evil, amplified by the underlying quest for God. In Kingdom, because of how modern Hollywood denies the villainy of the Soviet Union, you have to work harder to make them effective film villains.

The film even undercuts the entire idea of how "bad" the Communists are. The FBI agents are more sinister, more unforgiving. And Indy is suspended because of political pressure. His new boss actually whines about the "Red scare", dismissing it with a sniffle. This despite evidence that maybe it's not a "scare" because, duh, Soviet agents just raided a top secret US base on US soil.

Kingdom never recovers from these missteps right at the beginning. The reliance on CGI is tragic; all sense of thrill and danger is lost. Harrison Ford looks properly older and tired, and I thought he could pull it off, but after a while he just seems to be going through the motions. Same for Karen Allen, and I cheered when I read she was in the film. Alas, I was let down. Even John Williams' music was listless. And please, don't get me started on this film's "Short Round" character.

Bottom line: Waaay disappointing. Please, Steven, try and get back on track with your next film. Meanwhile, let Indy rest in peace. After all, we'll always have Egypt.