![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Indiana Jones vs. the Martians
Jun. 2nd, 2008 10:59 amTo my dismay, it seems my wariness regarding this was justified - Indiana Jones & the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is final, definitive proof (as if any were needed) that George Lucas must - must - be prevented from writing any more scripts. By force, if necessary.
To summarise the major problem I have with the script; unless your hero is Superman, you can't have them survive someone dropping an atom bomb on them in the first reel without wrecking any sense of danger or threat you might to try and build later. After all, what's a dozen commies with guns compared with several megatonnes?
The problem that George Lucas has as a writer is that he has no sense of proportion. In his head, if something is cool, then having a that same thing million times is a million times cooler. So - shrug off a punch to the face = cool. Shrug off 4,000,000 tonnes of TNT = coolest! and the problem that Indiana Jones & the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull has is that's it's George Lucas trying to write the coolest thing he can possibly imagine by taking all the things that were great about Raiders of the Lost Ark and making them even bigger.
Which makes them, you know, even cooler.
It's a shame the script is so poor, because the cast do their best to make it work. Shia leBeuf takes the usually thankless role of sassy teen sidekick and remarkably makes it into a likable character I didn't want to smack round the head with a cricket bat. Harrison Ford is, well, Indiana Jones - only older - and Karen Allen as Marion Ravenwood not only has a picture in her attic, but she's plainly having such a great time that it's impossible not to enjoy every scene she's in.
Even the scenes with shocking script and plot, which is most of them.
There's some great scenes - a motorcycle chase early in the film has the lightness of touch and fun that one expects and I found myself thinking "If the rest of the film is like this, it's going to be great!", and there's some good spooky shenanigans in an old Conquistador cememtary. Alas, these scenes are the exception rather than the rule, as the rest of the film follows Lucas' mindset that a five minute chase sequence in military vehicles in Raiders of the Lost Ark was cool, so a fifteen minute one will be three times better and not tedious after a while, or falling over one waterfall is funny so it follows that falling over three waterfalls will result in people having to be stretchered from the auditorium having been overcome with mirth.
I could go on about the plot holes and so on, but there's not much point. Just remember the plot holes in Revenge of the Sith and we're looking at a similar level of consistency here, but at least we don't have to contend with Balsa Boy this time round.
Julius Ceasar had a man whose job it was to follow him round and remind him that he was mortal. Lucasfilm needs to hire someone whose job it is to follow George Lucas round and rugby tackle him whenever he looks like picking up a pen.
Overall? Three stars out of five. Wait for it on TV.
To summarise the major problem I have with the script; unless your hero is Superman, you can't have them survive someone dropping an atom bomb on them in the first reel without wrecking any sense of danger or threat you might to try and build later. After all, what's a dozen commies with guns compared with several megatonnes?
The problem that George Lucas has as a writer is that he has no sense of proportion. In his head, if something is cool, then having a that same thing million times is a million times cooler. So - shrug off a punch to the face = cool. Shrug off 4,000,000 tonnes of TNT = coolest! and the problem that Indiana Jones & the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull has is that's it's George Lucas trying to write the coolest thing he can possibly imagine by taking all the things that were great about Raiders of the Lost Ark and making them even bigger.
Which makes them, you know, even cooler.
It's a shame the script is so poor, because the cast do their best to make it work. Shia leBeuf takes the usually thankless role of sassy teen sidekick and remarkably makes it into a likable character I didn't want to smack round the head with a cricket bat. Harrison Ford is, well, Indiana Jones - only older - and Karen Allen as Marion Ravenwood not only has a picture in her attic, but she's plainly having such a great time that it's impossible not to enjoy every scene she's in.
Even the scenes with shocking script and plot, which is most of them.
There's some great scenes - a motorcycle chase early in the film has the lightness of touch and fun that one expects and I found myself thinking "If the rest of the film is like this, it's going to be great!", and there's some good spooky shenanigans in an old Conquistador cememtary. Alas, these scenes are the exception rather than the rule, as the rest of the film follows Lucas' mindset that a five minute chase sequence in military vehicles in Raiders of the Lost Ark was cool, so a fifteen minute one will be three times better and not tedious after a while, or falling over one waterfall is funny so it follows that falling over three waterfalls will result in people having to be stretchered from the auditorium having been overcome with mirth.
I could go on about the plot holes and so on, but there's not much point. Just remember the plot holes in Revenge of the Sith and we're looking at a similar level of consistency here, but at least we don't have to contend with Balsa Boy this time round.
Julius Ceasar had a man whose job it was to follow him round and remind him that he was mortal. Lucasfilm needs to hire someone whose job it is to follow George Lucas round and rugby tackle him whenever he looks like picking up a pen.
Overall? Three stars out of five. Wait for it on TV.
