Wall-E Wins, Wanted Whacks It Part 1

I guess everyone knew Wall-E would be universally loved. After all, Pixar is basically bulletproof in the "family entertainment" genre, having produced such overrated features as Cars and Finding Nemo (and listen, I've softened up to Nemo, but it doesn't change the fact that it's, essentially, boring). On top of that, you know the gaggle of female adolescents out there is going to support a cute, midget bot crooning "Wallllllll-Eeeeeee" in a trailer. And I'm starting to suspect female adolescent gaggles are what drives the entertainment indusry in America.

Wanted is a surprise. With a 74% Fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes and 3 stars from James Berardinelli, typically a harsh critic of summer popcorn fare, the movie has gained all sorts of support that I never would have precedented after the movie's first half hour.

Put simply, Wall-E deserves every iota of praise and more. Wanted does not. We'll start with the inferior movie.


Wanted has one thing going for it and that's the character of Wesley Gibson BEFORE he becomes an assassin. The most interesting scenes are those that involve Wesley (James McAvoy) suffering Peter Gibbons-esque levels of dissatisfaction with his dead-end cubicle. It's a story that we're all familiar with, but I haven't heard any on-screen persona tell it as directly as McAvoy's character. "There's my best friend ****ing my girlfriend on an IKEA table I recently purchased" he narrates as they vividly demonstrate.

His boss is a creatively profane lardass, said cheating girlfriend is a bitch, and he's essentially taken as a chump by everyone around him. He even gets attitude from an ATM for his laughable assets, in a particularly inspired scene. Gibson's life makes Office Space seem like Disneyworld.

The convenient plot device used to explain Wesley's inevitable messianic importance is his anxiety condition. Whenever stressed, the world begins to pulsate around him, things slow to an agonizing crawl, and sounds become a distorted boom in his head. Wesley medicates to keep himself in Schmucksville.

Enter Fox (Angelina Jolie) and Sloan (Morgan Freeman), who force him to see what he's capable of without pills. When Wesley realizes that he's a star in an action movie, he wreaks havoc in his office, verbally crushing his boss and slamming a keyboard into his "best friend's" face. This is the most inspiring moment in Wanted, evocative of that simple truth Mike Juge presented more realistically in 1999: the American system of career advancement sucks balls.

So, rather than dealing with the truth, Wanted jumps into escapism. And this isn't the issue, since I enjoy vicariously living through main characters that don't have the same responsibilities I do as much as the next guy. My gripe is the particularly uninspired and predictable form this escape took.

Let's get this out of the way: The Fraternity of Assassins receives its orders from a mystical Loom of Fate. You know...a machine that weaves patterns with thread. That's where they get their kill orders. Sorry to spoil it. But you probably should know before you walk in expecting an interesting method to their madness. There is no method. They're just crazy.

For about ten seconds, the movie wrestles with the question of conscience: "What have these people done? Do they deserve to die?" So, Angelina Jolie tells a dark story from her past that makes us feel okay that Wesley is pistol-sniping random white collar white guys. The justification is basically, "Kill one, save a thousand."

Okay...but later, Fox drives a car into a train leading to its derailment and the death of hundreds of innocent civilians. So the real message is, "Mass death is profitable." And yeah, I'll admit it, I feel like I get more bang from my buck durng those over the top scenes. But it doesn't make the movie any more culturally significant than the evening news.

SPOILERS. Eventually you find out that all the chain of events we witnessed were put into motion by Sloan, not the Loom of Fate, so you can rationalize yourself out of the collateral damage argument, if you want. But this just brings up the fact that we all expected a massive backstabbing to happen from minute one. Especially from the black mentor. Way to follow the M. Night formula, Wanted. SPOILERS.

At the descending slope of the film's climax, Wanted attempts to wax philosophical again. Since the assassins are all guilty of cold-blooded murder, aren't they worthy of hits themselves? An interesting question posed, but considering it comes minutes within the film's final brain-breaking bullet and the main character's ultimate choice, its attitude toward morality is best summed up by Common's final line: "Fuck the code."(Yes, I realize I didn't censor before, but I didn't feel like it just now.)

Listen, I'm not a crusader against gratuitous violence in American movies. It's a fact, people get killed and there's a part of us that's fascinated by that. But the good movies are the ones that put that hyperviolence in a thoughtful context. Example: Rambo. Ultimately, much more violent and disturbing than Wanted, but worth more of my time and money. What this movie approaches is something more like masturbation for the id, that evil and vicious part of you that likes to see people's heads explode. Yes, I go "WHOA, nice!, and haha!" at the blood splatter, and Angelina Jolie's ass, and the giddy use of profanity, but ultimately, I haven't really connected with anything eye-opening. I was impressed with the initial rampage involving Mr. X. I hadn't had that much fun watching murder since Shoot 'Em Up. But then it became more of the same.

My research on the comic book tells me it actually didn't deal with the honorable assassin bull and was literally about a society of supervillains. So maybe that was a more interesting exploration of evil. The movie, instead, tries to rationalize the killing and reassure you that you, the viewer, are on the right side. Bore.

I'll end with something positive. Like I said before, Wanted grips you with a direct, no bullshit representation of one man's pitiful life and it makes you root for him, because Wesley Gibson is so damn witty under his doormat exterior. So, yes, there's wit here and there's vision. Wanted hits the right note as the once overly-apologetic Wesley sends a bullet into the double-breasted gut of an Andrea Bocelli. His calling card? "I'm.....sooooooorrrrrrryyyyyy."

Apology accepted, Wanted. You did provide some fun, after all.

I'll save the Wall-E review for later tonight, since I don't fell right combining it with this disappointment and I have stuff to do.

What if Tyler Durden were a giant, green tank?: The Incredible Hulk

The accepted format for discussing a reboot or a sequel is referencing the preceding movie(s). Since Hollywood is indulging both our strongest cravings and our biggest gripes by providing more of the same, the biggest blockbusters are always being held up to a tough standard of comparison. Indiana Jones 4: Inferior. Spiderman 3: Inferior. Superman Returns: Inferior. Batman Begins...BRING ON THE DARK KNIGHT.

It's the golden Nolan standard which Universal is trying to achieve with The Incredible Hulk. And unlike Indiana or Spiderman, Edward Norton's project shares Batman's arguably enviable position of having a disappointment (critically; but worse, commercially) precede it. Unlike Batman, Hulk doesn't have the burden of reviving interest in its comic-family franchise on his huge shoulders. That task was carried out mercilessly by Iron Man.

Appropriately, given the current comic movie zeitgeist, The Incredible Hulk will be unstoppable.



Rewind 5 years.

I hadn't given Ang Lee's take on the temperamental green giant a second glance since my 15 year old self was soundly disappointed in theaters. As the opening credits rolled for Incredible, I began wondering whether my enjoyment would have been enhanced or ruined if I had revisited that alleged catastrophe. So, one of the first things I did when getting back from the movie was immerse myself in YouTube videos and reviews of the first movie.

My first thought was that critics and viewers liked it a lot more than I would have expected. They praised the psychological subtexts, comic homages, and performances. It enjoys a technically "fresh" rating on Rottentomatoes at 61%, only 5% less than this summer's movie. And it had Jennifer Connelly. How did this movie go wrong? Did it actually go wrong at all or was it just Universal bitching that it didn't make Spiderman-like profits?

It's more surprising when you realize that one of the major differences between the two movies is a lack of rich character/relationship exploration in Norton's flick. Typically, I criticize a lot of comic book movies for being too shallow. I refer you to Fantastic Four and its successor, Rise of the Silver Shitter. Yet, somehow, Incredible managed to sidestep Freud and all those "Sins of the Father" concepts and provide a more satisfying experience.



I think it's about pretense. The Incredible Hulk doesn't have any, but it doesn't stoop to the lowest common denominator either. By contrast, Ang Lee attempted to make a movie that was both a family analysis and a comic book action-fest. I'm not saying it's an impossible or unworthy goal, but it is a volatile risk and Marvel shouldn't have let Lee take those chances with a franchise as valuable as the Hulk.

Basically, Lee's movie was still a dumb, high-octane popcorn flick throughout and the exploration of daddy issues were never handled seriously or thoroughly enough to make a significant impact. Worse, the action scenes in Hulk 2003 actually hammered the nails into the gamma-laced coffin. No amount of interesting Nick Nolte-Eric Bana interaction is going to make up for Hulk Dogs and My Father, The Cloud as the main super-baddies. I mean, let's not kid ourselves. This was not meant to be Brokeback (which was also BORING) or Sense and Sensi-sissiness, it was primarily a way to make mounds of money and play with computer effects and it failed at at least one of those aspects.

Ironically, new Hulk director Louis Leterrier's most famous body of work is The Transporter movies and somehow he delivers a movie that is more upfront about its intentions, but subtly meaningful.

Ang Lee comparisons hopefully stop...now.

Eric Bana is a good actor and all, but...Shit. Re-do.

Edward Norton is crucial to this movie. He's the right amount of geek to portray a gifted scientist, but we all know from his prior performances that he is also a badass, so it's not a surprise when we see him outrunning military special operatives on foot in a way that would make Matt Damon and Daniel Craig eat their hearts out.



The movie throws fans of the last movie a bone by starting the narrative with Bruce Banner lying low in South America. It also focuses mercifully little on the simplistic and well-known origin story. Rather, the film's theme is Banner's unique relationship with his superpowers: They Suck. The man blacks out more than my uncle at a month-long moonshine convention, only remembering bursts of bullets and fire in his face the next morning. His Hulk Hangover reduces his clothes and stretchy pants to tattered shreds that induces the sympathy of even the scrawniest Mexican beggar boy. And what good is dating Liv Tyler if you can't have her roleplay as Arwen for too long before you kill the 7-Eleven clerk in search of kilo-magnum rubbers?



Peter Parker's whining about his powers being a burden and a curse fade into yesterday's Myspace bulletin when we see Dr. Banner's plight. Spiderman ultimately adapts to his superhero duties. Tony Stark relishes the opportunity to missile terrorists. No one has it as bad as Bruce; his life is actually ruined by his rage, not enhanced, and that's a truth simple enough to resonate in several moviegoers. This movie is about Bruce's quest to get rid of his major selling point -- the unstoppable CGI behemoth.



Speaking of the Hulk himself, I really enjoyed the design of the monster. You'll still find people complaining about CGI usage coming off as cheap and distracting, but I think it's some of the best use of digital effect technology to date. Hulk's shade of green is more organic and the attention paid to detail is amazing. His muscles, bones, and sinews are clearly defined. His roar vibrates in your chest. Best of all, his face is capable of many convincing expressions besides bloodlust. One of the best liked scenes will be the moment Hulk and Betty Ross are in the cave during the thunderstorm. It's perhaps the best example of that subtlety this movie achieves.

I wish I could say Liv Tyler's acting was as satisfying. She's not an offensive choice as Dr. Ross, but the script gives her some sickeningly domestic lines to work with which she somehow turns even more pathetic. Factor in her frou-frou bangs and the distracting presence of Steven Tyler's lips aching to eat Edward Norton, and I really started to miss Jennifer Connelly. Then again, I always miss Jennifer Connelly.













OR






Bruce/Betty in general fell kind of flat, but The Incredible Hulk isn't a love story to a much greater extent than any other major franchise release, so it doesn't sink the production. It's something they'll have to work on if they explore the dynamics of a Hulk-Betty relationship in future movies. They did establish that Betty Ross is the Hulk's emotional anchor, so it's not like she's irrelevant, but I'm willing to concede some awkward initial flirtations. As a matter of fact, there are a couple of moments which are actually poignant and convincing, such as Betty kissing Bruce's cheek rather than going straight for the soap-opera tongue-lashing technique and the aforementioned cave sequence.










As for the other actors, we get fitting performances from William Hurt as General Thunderbolt (no, they don't call him that) and Tim Roth as Emil Blonsky (a.k.a Abomination a.k.a. that Other Huge Green Thing you saw about to pound Hulk's face to slushee in the trailer). For most of the flick, the General and Blonsky seem like very unique villains exploring a gray area of morality rather than the standard megalomanic comic book enemy fare. Then Blonsky blows it in the third act, but that can be forgiven, because it sets up a very entertaining and vicariously bone-crushing final fight. At first, I heard this was going to be about 30 minutes long and was frightened. Now I wish they had delivered on that threat, or at least made the fight a tad longer and more brutal. Still, it was nice to finish Hulk and realize it had taken less time than, say, a thorough colonoscopy.

The last little gripe I would have is the musical score, but it's not like you can really hear it over Hulk screaming bloody murder anyway.

Basically, The Incredible Hulk is not as good as Iron Man, nor should we expect it to be, given that Marvel hasn't released Thor and thus, still can't harness lightning to strike the same spot twice consecutively. But this film is in the same vein of quality and that is a very good thing for the upcoming universe films. Norton and Leterrier were wise to approach this reboot with a very basic premise rather than overstuffing it with villains and subplots (*coughSamRaimicough*), because it lays a very firm foundation for a potentially titanic series.

Hulk Smash. Hulk Smash indeed.



SPOILERS. Oh, and I expected a much cooler Tony Stark cameo, not a rehash of Sam Jackson. I guess putting the scene before the credits is supposed to drive home the fact that they're REALLY making this Avengers crossover and it's REALLY going to be canonical for these movies, but I found it kind of tacky. Still....I will be lining up to see it. END SPOILERS

Is there a God?

....WOULD have been the topic of my second post on this page had I not gotten sidetracked by the latest marcher in the degenerative parade of American trash TV, America's Got Talent. I'm serious. I'm dead serious. I was considering going into theology.

And then something like this started happening on my screen.



Maybe that answers the question.
------

I watched the first American Idol. A lot of it anyway. I was part of that crowd who assimilated Kelly, Justin, and William Hung into their daily cultural lexicon. At 12 or 13, I had nothing better to do. Over the years, the series lost its interest along with Survivor, Big Brother, and whatever other crap I used to heap onto my cable box. But the rest of the country apparently didn't stop watching. Other networks started to ape it.

Which brings us to the third season of America's Got Talent.



The premise is Idol with talents other than singing and tryouts in front of a giant audience in conjunction with the three washed-up celebrity judges. You've got Piers Morgan who plays the wholly original role of the snarky British critic, Sharon Osbourne in an attempt to restore family dignity, and David Hasselhoff, itching to belt out Du at a moment's notice. The show pulls a classy move in casting Jerry Springer as Ryan Seacrest (Which reminds me, wasn't it a PAIR of hosts in the first season of Idol? What happened to that other dude?). What follows is the familiar guilty pleasure of watching wave after wave of delusional psychos get torn apart, with the occasional eyebrow-raising act.

I guess there was a name for this sort of thing before the turn of the century. It was called Star Search.


Trash TV has a spot in my life, particularly when it airs on NBC. American Gladiators is a nice, brainless punctuation mark at the end of dreary Mondays. Of course, Gladiators has the indisputable boon of hot women in skintight gladiator outfits, so there's actually very little reason NOT to see it. In the words of my friend, "It has more Crush, therefore it is Win."



I acknowledge that there are more insulting things on television than a glorified talent show, but it is concerning to see how the Idol formula of manipulative narrative, sappy music and caricature judges has found its way into every showcase show. I guess the closest thing Talent comes to Ed McMahon is Jerry Springer, but I don't think Ed got as emotionally involved.

But I don't know. Something about America's Got Talent kept me watching. It wasn't Piers Morgan's Simon Cowell impression, or the Carmina Burana send-ups in the soundtracks...Terrible as it is, NBC pulled the right heartstrings and got me to care about the contestants. Those bastards. I hate it when I fall for this shit.

But fall for it, I did and some of the characters stuck with me:

- The baller trombonist who came off as unassuming and meek in his interview, but a showstopping badass during his performance. Kudos, one of my favorites.
- The Romanian twin act, Indigo, with a suitably entertaining attitude that you know won't make up for their God-awful singing when they go to the next step in Vegas.
- The 80-year-old who, humanely, was denied the chance to break her hip tap-dancing at the next level.

- The four year old who induced some of the most patronizing lines this side of the Special Olympics. "Does singing make you happy?" Give me a break. The kid was cute and all, but a four year old cannot compete on this level. I mean, did you see the parents' faces? Did they seem ecstatic? No, they probably didn't expect the girl to get past this part. Tell me, is it ethical to expose this child to seedy Las Vegas? Well...maybe, but that doesn't give her the right to belt out a song from An American Tail in a saccharine-ly revolting manner. Face it, I'm a horrible person for saying this, but the main reason Mrs. Osbourne was tearing up was the fact that she was probably remembering her own daughter before she became a fat, ugly guttermouth.

This is where Simon Cowell would have had his uses. He wouldn't have cared if the studio audience swooped down on him and tore out his gonads. He would have buzzed that little sneak and made her cry. That would've been quality television.
















- The burlesque dancers with the laughable claim that they were going to show people that burlesque could be classy and then proceed to strip off their skirts.
- The cool double-headed guitar dude who got booed off by a crowd of impatient cretins.
- BATON-GIRL! Er...I mean, the extremely heart wrenching story of a boy who got picked on for following his drea....

Excuse me, I just threw up a little.

Baton Girl did a cool act, though. I'm rooting for him.

- The dance team with the eyesore costumes. Morgan had it right when he said their look was enough to bring them down, but I'll be interested to see if they top their little Riverdance impression.
- And finally, Big Opera Dude, who is far from Andrea Bocelli. He was one of the many examples of the pity vote. But that's a fact of stardom, right? No charisma, no ticket? (But wait then, how do you explain Courtney Love?)

Basically, I was kept mildly amused. Now there's a part of me that wants to boycott all reality TV out there, but then there's the part of me that knows that it's a closed-minded approach, as well as futile if I'm ever going to use a television regularly in my adult years. Besides, these shows have been around since the dawn of television, back to the days when Elvis shocked and appalled with his shaking Pelvis of Doom. In its own, Idol-tainted way, it hearkens back to traditional family TV time, when mom, dad, brother, sister, and grandma could sit down and rot their brains as a unit, as opposed to letting adults do it separately through Fox News and kids do it fifty times as quickly on Myspace.

So it's manipulative and its sappy and it's far from thought-provoking. But it made me root for someone in a television contest again. I think that makes it potentially worthy of a second, third, or fourth look, until I get tired of the contenders. Still, it doesn't get me any closer to the definitive proof of God's existence.



Though, if Indigo ends up winning the thing, I think it'd be safe to assume that He's out there and that He's Romanian.

Indy 4 is worst of the franchise...but is that such a terrible thing?

I should preface this by saying that Temple of Doom is my favorite Indiana Jones movie, putting me in a category spat upon by most Indy die-hards.

What can I say? I like Short Round.


I guess I understand that the significant departure from the scope, characterization and pacing of Raiders badly jarred those whose first impression of Indy was the epic swashbuckler who traversed desert sands, canyons, and hostile marketplaces in search of the emblematic Ark. In my case, Temple was my introduction to Dr. Jones and I reveled in the highly animated, ridiculous stunts and dialogue. Today, every single minute practically injects nostalgic and elated neurotransmitters in my medulla oblongata, which Wikipedia tells me isn't supposed to deal with emotions in the first place. That's not to say I don't enjoy Raiders or Last Crusade, but they simply don't pack the same childhood fulfillment.

Since it was a prequel, Indiana's search for the Shankara Stones was appropriately narrower in archaeological significance and his intentions were (initially, before the missing-children-factor) less altruistic than ever. In my opinion, it takes talent to explore a character's growth in a logical and satisfying manner. But it may take even more talent to go back and lay down a character's roots in a way that's both fresh and consistent with the established legend.

But this article isn't about Indy's roots. It's about his seeds and whether they're packed in any fruit worth biting into (wow, how's that for a ridiculously-constructed metaphor?)

I have a friend (at least, I hope he's still a friend) who absolutely hated Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. I didn't even have to ask him or hear him speak of his contempt directly to witness the magnitude of hatred aroused by this film. After seeing it, his Facebook profile, much to my delighted amusement, became a shrine of Hate for George Lucas. His profile picture became a picture of George with a big "NO" sign over his face. It was great.




Though I figured it might have been overboard, I still trusted his judgment enough to assume that Indy 4 was going to be something of a trainwreck. I walked in with low expectations the day after getting back from Europe (thus missing the release date). Of interest, I went to see it with my whole family, including my dad who NEVER goes to movies. My parents were the one who initially recorded Temple of Doom on VHS for me to watch over and over again. The fact that this installment roused my father out of his Hollywood boycott speaks to the power of the franchise, but I digress.

Did George Lucas ruin Indiana Jones?

My argument: No, but it would take a schmuck far schmuckier than George Lucas to achieve that. It is clear that at least one person (probably George) did his damn best to dress it up inappropriately. It doesn't help that screenplay author David Koepp is a painfully obvious example of how modern screenwriters can't transition worth shit. And for everyone who assumed Spielberg would keep this movie from raising eyebrows (or bile), it just doesn't seem like his heart was in it for this one. But even in all of its clumsiness, Crystal Skull manages to be far more entertaining than the drivel studios pump out this century and, in my opinion, makes a compelling case for more franchise entries in the distant future.

So, some discussion on the elements of the film:

The Opening Credits.
Personally, I think the title sequence is brilliant (minus the gopher). It firmly establishes the piece in a new decade while channeling some of the kinetic energy that make prior Spielberg films so great. The titles themselves are discreet, direct, and a throwback to both the original movie and the golden age of action cinema. It may seem like a petty compliment, but you can often deduce a lot about a movie by its titles.

The Villains.
Okay, the Indiana Jones series has never been particularly excellent at creating realistic henchmen that don't manage to insult some ethnicity in their exaggerated antics, but Crystal Skull seems distinctly offensive in the twenty-first century post-Saving Private Ryan cinema world. In that film, we learned that enemy soldiers can be human too, but that doesn't have to stop the hero from busting a cap in his gray matter or us from enjoying it. Indy 4 subscribes to the theory that the best way to make an audience relish gray-haired Indy's ass-whoopings is to make his targets mindless commie drones who bark at each other in menacing Russian.

As for Cate Blanchett, I can admit that my dread at watching her put on a Boris-and-Natasha act was partially unwarranted. Her severe haircut and clockwork-assassin-from-Hellboy mannerisms are more distracting than Mola Ram's bone-and-feather hat thing. This is unfortunate, because Blanchett sometimes shows some genuine creepiness behind her thick and cartoony accent and I get the sense that she let the campiness get in the way of creating the first compelling female villain in the series.

SPOILERS. Her demise is particularly disappointing, mostly because the whole "unable to resist greedy desire to probe the universe's secrets" thing has been done at least twice before in the Indy movies. Also, I expected the American spooks questioning Indiana to play a bigger role as obstacles in his quest. It seems their sole purpose was to introduce the completely irrelevant plot device of firing Dr. Jones from the university. I guess this is Spielberg and Lucas' attempt at creating a George Clooney-esque commentary on McCarthyism, but all it does is take you out of the adventure in an annoying fashion. END SPOILERS.

Oh, well. At least it wasn't Nazis again.

The Sidekicks.
I like Mutt. So sue me. This probably has something to do with the fact that I like Shia LeBeouf and believe his presence helped Transformers. On the internet, Mutt's name is often mud. Yes, we can all see the gears working in their heads, considering replacing Harrison with Shia for the next batch of movies. To some this is understandably anathema. Me? I would rather see more Indiana Jones movies than Jar Jar Binks biopics and since George Lucas seems intent to do at least one of those, I fully support Shia's potential contribution, especially after watching him create another cool character in this movie.


It'll be interesting to see if the studio will let LeBeouf age a decade or so before revisiting the character. You know, pace the series, a concept entirely foreign to today's Hollywood.

SPOILERS. And boo-hoo, Indiana has a son, oh no. I know there are people who believe Indiana Jones should be permanently unattached, free to dig ancient graves without worrying about a tarnish on his legacy, but I find the implications of his late foray into fatherhood interesting, particularly when you think about his relationship with his own dad. I agree that the "surprise, he's your son" plot device is kind of tired, but Karen Allen delivers fairly well on that revelation. And speaking of Marion, I'm glad to see the character back, but Allen is really hit-or-miss on the delivery of certain expressions and one-liners. It's as if she can't decide where Marion lies on the spectrum between "badass shot-taking she-warrior" and "jilted and complacent widow." Come to think of it, Spielberg doesn't seem to know what to do with her either. Her "big reveal" in the commie camp is totally anticlimactic, without so much as a kazoo to emphasize her arrival. Seems like John Williams fell asleep at this part of his screening. Also, what's up with her completely disappearing for a portion of the jungle chase? I seriously thought she might have bitten the dust at one point. Finally, the wedding was lame. Sure, I get that Indy's ball-and-chained, but if I wanted to see a relationship resolved by increasingly irrelevant symbolic ceremonies, I would have seen something like Made of Honor. Does James Bond ever get married? No. And if he did, you'd be damn sure the bitch would either turn or him or suffer a terrible death that would prompt James to rocket-launcher someone's ass Goldeneye 64 style. I'm off-topic. END SPOILERS.

That still leaves Mac and Oxley to deal with. Mac was another character who had the potential to leave questions and impressions in the audience's mind, but who simply turned out to be a caricature. I find Oxley far more compelling and entertaining and it's a shame he only starts speaking full sentences late in the movie. One thing though, his role in the sand pit scene is laughable and not in a "oh, that silly Oxley" kind of way, but in a "wow, Koepp, couldn't figure out any other way to get the heroes recaptured, huh?" kind of way.

The Effects.
To keep it brief, I believe at some point I was promised traditional stunt work and special effects...I was lied to. Even the freakin' animals were CGI. What happened to the trained monkey from Raiders? It's hard to believe a monkey that awesome didn't have about 50 Acting Monkey Jrs. Or what about the YouTube gopher/praire dog thing? Did he demand too much money when you offered him the role?

No! No, it's just that ever since ILM came to mean "really fake-looking shit," the quality of special effects has taken a turn for the worse.

To be fair, this nitpick only applies to a couple of scenes, mostly. The actual fighting and set design do harken back to a time when stunt crews and set designers were valuable. As far as fight choregraphy goes, the most entertaining sequence of the film involves a series of vehicle entanglements in the jungle (as well as one of Shia's most infamous scenes) followed by "big damn ants."

Unfortunately, there's still an entire dungeon for the heroes to pillage and explore after this and it isn't quite as impressive. And to make up for the effort of traditionality in the first 2 hours, the movie decides to hit you hard with Pixar-inspired glory at the end.

The Relic.
I really liked most of what they did with the legend of El Dorado and the crystal skull. I appreciated the South American setting, the incorporation of the conquistadors, the "living dead," all of that. The mystery behind the skull itself is both interesting and silly...

SPOILERS. Perhaps what fanboys curse the most is the "sci-fi" element. To one extent, I agree. Indy has no business witnessing flying saucers and alien corpses, not without at least two movies of convincing transition from Earthly treasures to extraterrestrial ones. Lucasfilm already has its space franchise. Indiana is partly defined by an element of realism (juxtaposed with the supernatural relics he retrieves).

Even so, it is common legend that spacemen DID influence the ancient tribes of pre-Columbian Mezoamerica. So, I'm not troubled by the idea of the Saucer People being the natives' gods. I do have an issue with the Saucer People making a forced appearance looking like a cross between Close Encounters and the pygmy things from Galaxy Quest. The movie could have been much less heavy-handed, alluded more and revealed less, and had a more subtle payoff. I mean, I had a little bit of trouble accepting the immortal knight in Last Crusade. This ending felt like a different movie series entirely. END SPOILER.

Also, the skull is pretty.

The Man.
Like I said, it takes an act of Crystal Skull Gods to mess up an Indiana Jones movie. That's because Indiana Jones is one of the most iconic and exhilarating heroes of our time. He's up there with Hercules and that guy who won American Gladiators. He's witty, charming, intelligent, resourceful, and packs a powerful punch. He also has an impeccable sense of style.

If this continuation had been attempted at this time with an actor other than Harrison Ford, it truly would have been a travesty. It was also a good call to age the character at the same rate as the actor. Physically speaking, Ford packs the same wallop. There is, however, a certain gravity around the character now. Yeah, I miss Indiana's cocky chuckles and smiles, but I'll admit, his more somber demeanor is appropriate. And it doesn't stop him from being sure of himself and awe-inspiring in those around him.

Indiana simply is The Man. I don't expect Mutt Williams to fill his shoes. But he could potentially make a damn good effort at an homage.

I've made a lot of complaints about the movie. More than I planned to make, actually. But there's a school of thought that believes that human beings are most critical about that which has the potential to bring them the most joy. I noticed all of these things during the film, because that's what I inevitably do with movies. But, also, throughout the whole thing, I was genuinely entertained, pleasantly surprised, and occasionally reminded of those moments as a child when I had nothing better to do than pop in an old VHS tape and watch Indy get in and out of ridiculous situations.

Bring on Mutt Williams.


SPOILERS. Or Mutt Jones, I suppose. END SPOILERS.