Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull!

 Many years after the finale of the original trilogy of Indiana Jones movies, they decided to make another. I admit I was skeptical, not unlike what had happened with the Star Wars movies. I personally like the trilogy produced by Lucas telling us the origin of Darth Vader, but I see why people regard it with suspicion. It's not like the others, it's full of then-new tech tricks which allow us to see more than we did before. That turns out to be the case with Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull as well. There's more stuff to see, and while at times that becomes ridiculous, it never loses my attention. 

The movie is set in 1957, and Indiana Jones is an older and wiser man, though no less dedicated to finding lost treasures where he comes across them. The use of the Soviet Union to replace the Nazis was a great touch as they are suitably evil for all narrative purposes. You don't have to spend a lot of time with it, just assert it. The goal is a properly mysterious one as well and I liked that the story shifted its settings this time to South America. Another Indy movie in the Middle East would've been capitulation to convention and admission of a lack of imagination. 

This movie is very well cast overall with the likes of Cate Blanchett, Ray Winstone and John Hurt involved in various ways. Blanchett as a Soviet telepath and dedicated soldier is particularly sweet as she is constantly met with disappointment in the film. Ray Winstone is dandy as a soldier of fortune of questionable loyalty and John Hurt is kind of wasted as an archeologist who is largely hypnotized by the awesomeness of the "magic" he's uncovered. Shia Labeouf was okay as Indy's young helper, but it's Karen Allen who steals the show when she returns in the role of Marion Ravenwood. 

As I said there are things in the movie I like which are outlandish. Indy surviving a nuclear blast by hiding in a lead-lined refrigerator is stunning visually but silly too. The battle back and forth between the trucks in the jungle is excessive in any number of places, and I understand wanting to call back to the great truck battle in Raiders of the Lost Ark, but that one kept our credulity carefully protected while this just says it's a movie so who cares. The ending comes quick and I like the twist on the nature of the "aliens". It's a better solution overall. 

This is a fun movie. I am happy they made it. 

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The Last Crusade!

Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade is my least favorite of the movies in this series. After a true departure in the second one and getting hit with both diminished critical and popular appeal, the creators decided to make another Jones versus the Nazis movie. It's as great target they select, the Holy Grail being a rather familiar icon for the errant archeologists to seek out. But like so many sequels this one apes the original in too many places to elevate it above anything other than a retread. It's a handsomely mounted retread, but a retread nonetheless. 

Don't get me wrong. This is a fun movie to watch, a wild ride with good enough characterization and vile enough villains, but something from the original is lost. That something is gravity. The lightheartedness of the movie in so many places ultimately undermine its moments of grittiness, and those moments seem derivative if exciting. 

The strengths of this one is the interplay between the stars Harrison Ford and Sean Connery as son and father. They have a nice chemistry, and this is the heart of the theme of the story. But that strength also detracts from some of the other aspects of the story such as the mysticism around the Grail and the relationship between Ford and his female co-star Allsion Doody. John Rhys Davies is a welcome addition his appearance points again back to the original and reminds the viewer how much different this outing is. 

The Indiana Jones movies were always intended to be love letters to old-style storytelling from the days of the movie serials. We get that in the structure of the tales which are episodic, with Indy traveling the world in his efforts to find his goal. The Grail is the one which means the most to him by the end of the movie because finding it allows him to actually save the life of his father. The movie is very clever in places, and I really enjoyed that "X" marks the spot moment. This is a really good movie and offered up a nifty first "finale" for the trilogy as our heroes ride off literally into the sunset. But as we all know that wasn't the end. More on that next time. 

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The Temple Of Doom!

What do you do when you have a surprise hit movie on your hands? Today we are all accustomed to seeing sequels to virtually all movies that make money. But in the 80's this was a business model which was just getting started. The Raiders of the Lost Ark (a little movie made relatively quickly and based in no small part on B-movies of decades past) made a bushel of money for its producers so another Indiana Jones movie was required. Actually, they say that this always supposed to be a trilogy, but I bet if the first one had tanked the second wouldn't exist. As is often the case a sequel will not be as good as its predecessor and that's true for Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. 

By all accounts this is the darkest and scariest of the first three Indiana Jones movies. I'd agree with that. Much of the movie takes place in the darkness of underground temples and mines, so the movie is literally dark. But it doesn't begin that way. To counterpoint the beginning of the first movie, in this one we get a splashy Busby Berkley dance number. It's neatly done and does gives a good glimpse into the less noble side of Indiana. He's a made a deal with the devil and he pays the price. 

The price puts him in India in 1936 which at the time and the region is still part of the once sprawling British Empire. We meet some seemingly urbane and civilized types but learn quickly that this is a mere ruse to cover the return of the infamous Thuggee cult which had been demolished decades before. This legendary murderous cult of Kali is a staple of adventure films and does good work here giving us several tasty villains de jour. 

The action in this one, once it begins in earnest, is unrelenting and perhaps a too much so. The first movie offered up fantastic action moments but maintained a pacing which allowed the violence to erupt. Here we get so much violence and action that it becomes arguably tiring. By the time the baddies are dispatched we are somewhat relieved it's over. That makes sound like I didn't enjoy it, but I did. 

This movie is criticized properly for kowtowing to racist tropes. That's all too true, but I'm curious why this one gets that critique when the first movie did a lot of the same kind of thing, but just with different cultures. The simplification of foreign peoples and their ways is practically a trope of this kind of movie. I might could see the critique more plainly if all the individuals of Indian culture were presented as stupid or evil or whatnot, but we get a range, admittedly a range familiar to moviegoers. This movie is typical of its genre, good and bad. 

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Raiders Of The Lost Ark!

Raiders of the Lost Ark hit the big screen in 1981. Ronald Reagan was beginning his first term as president of these United States beginning a slow steady decline which has gotten us finally into the mess we find ourselves in today. We didn't know how good we had it when Ronnie began his assault on the public good and even the whole idea of a public good. But even then we needed some escape from the rigors of life and Steven Spielberg's not-so-little action flick was an ideal choice for a moviegoer looking to forget the real world. 

Indiana Jones was one tough nut. As the movie begins, we're not even certain he's a good guy. And truth told it takes most of the movie for him to figure that out. He's not a villain for sure, but is he a hero? At many points in the movie it's questionable. He's a compulsive figure who seeks ancient secrets and does so at no small cost to those around him. Harrison Ford's portrayal is ideal and it's of course impossible now to imagine someone in that role. Tom Selleck was apparently all set to do it when Magnum P.I. got in the way. I think we're lucky in that regard in that as charming as Selleck can be in his roles, he lacks the mean streak that allows us to believe even for a moment that Indiana can fight as he does. Shooting the swordsman is an ideal example of a man who is pragmatic and not overcome by whimsical notions of good and evil. 

It's been a few years since I watched this movie again and I'd forgotten how good the other parts are. Karen Allen is vivacious and believable as the tough-as-nails broad who lives on her own in Nepal and drinks larger men under the table for cash. Paul Freeman is vile and charming all at once as Indy's counterpart who pretends not to be as bad as the Nazis but turns out is. John Rhy-Davies makes his impression as the passionate and loyal Sallah. There are several highlights (the giant rock, discovery of the Ark's hidden site, the pragmatic battle with the swordsman, and more) but for me the sequence where Indy takes on the whole of the Nazi forces for control of the truck and so control of the Ark is one of the most exciting fight sequences ever filmed. It hovers on the edge of believability, and it is in fact incredibly, but in the frame of the film it holds the viewer fast. 

According to Spielberg he wanted to make a movie on time and on budget. With the help of George Lucas as producer he did just that with a movie I don't think either of them imagined would spawn the franchise it became. They made a movie that's at once cynical and yet offers up hope in something greater than ourselves, if we don't lose track of what's important. It's all too easy to do. Just ask those of us who still remember Ronald Reagan. 

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The Saturday Serials - Return Of The Jedi!

I'm not going to lie -- I'm not a big fan of this movie. Star Wars burned out my old-fashioned eyes when it debuted and rewired my boyhood brain with fresh understandings of both movies and science fiction. Loved it fiercely and still do! The Empire Strikes Back added to the saga effectively, picking up the hints and suggestions from the first and fleshing them out and setting the stage for a stunning finale. Tragically Return of the Jedi had the least mustard of any other original trilogy and while they are not the only problem by any means, I mostly blame those damned Ewoks.

Now I don't hate the Ewoks. Wait..let me correct that statement...I do hate the Ewoks. They are the antithesis of what I'd come to expect from the Star Wars universe, a romanticized good guy-bad guy situation, but one with a sometimes grimy appearance and sometimes a gleaming appearance. Aliens were weird, really weird, but one thing they never ever were was...cute. The Ewoks brought "cute" to the franchise much to its detriment and the ersatz teddy bears proceeded to demolish not just those Imperial walkers but my trust in George Lucas.

Now that doesn't mean that the movie doesn't have its charms. And for that I'll point to every Star Wars fanboy's wet dream, the ravishing Princess Leia in her slave bikini. Now in the previous flicks Leia had been more tomboy than vixen, a damsel well capable of getting herself out of distress in the first one, and a no-nonsense warrior in the second. She does give in to her love for Han in the first sequel, thus cracking her tough skin just a wee bit, but it's not until she's chained at the...uh...ahem..."feet" of Jabba the Hut that classic sci-fi sexuality is allowed to sizzle forth from Carrie Fisher's portrayal. She soon strangles the nasty Jabba with is own chain showing her mettle (no pun intended) has not slackened. But make no doubt about it,s slavegirl Leia she's occupying new territory in the fanboy imagination.

Another thing I didn't care for in Return of the Jedi was the quick dispatch of Boba-Fett, a character I thought was worthy of a better send-off. We get his origin decades later and that helped soothe my woes, but it was a prickly point at the time. On the plus side, I did very much enjoy seeing a confident Luke Skywalker taking it to the Emperor as well as arguably the most delinquent father in film history. He's gone from white to gray to black and with each shift in color his skills have developed. Now the swiftness of the training is a bit of a nag, but that's not uncommon in these stories and give Lucas a pass on that one. The relationship between Leia and Han Solo is really nicely done as they can now get on with the lovemaking since we now broken off the Luke angle on the triangle. (That was a tad icky by the way.)

The ending is a little too overgrown for my tastes, a fan of westerns in which the hero just saunters away into the sun when the work is done, but I can handle celebration in moderation. (I generally hate applause by characters inside the narrative of a movie -- it almost always seems contrived to elicit a similar reaction from the audience.) The misty trio from the source -- Obi Wan, Anakin and Yoda -- was a bit over the top, but I'll suck it up for the kiddies. It sounds like I hate Return of the Jedi and I don't. If it had been the only one of the three, it would've been a triumph for science fiction fantasy on film. But given the expectations and the opportunity it presented, it falls short of what was anticipated for several years. And that can leave a mark. 

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The Saturday Serials - The Empire Strikes Back!

There are many folks who consider The Empire Strikes Back the best of the Star Wars movies. I am not one of those people. The movie is a dandy for certain with a barely discernible harder edge than its predecessor, though for all of the vaunted differences in tone it's supposed to have from Star Wars (now call "A New Hope"), I detect very little change save that they don't win  at the end. (Sorry if that's a spoiler.)

All the stars return to reprise the roles that came to define their careers and in many instances their lives. The story is set several years after its predecessor and gives us a good inside look at the Rebel Alliance which is supposed to stand up the overpowering Empire that dominates space. Its' also a war movie, at least at first. The tale beginning with a huge battle as it does evokes more of a doughty WWII feel in the way soldiers take on devastating machines in the form of the "Walkers", one of my favorite Star Wars inventions. There is outstanding stop-motion filming done in this flick and in these days of digital overload a delightfully simple solution. After the fighting the movie settles down into a light drama with extensive comedy thrown to lighten the blend.

The love triangle sorts itself out as Princess Leia shows her feeling for Han Solo and poor little Luke is left to hang and train with the offbeat Yoda.  Whereas the first story was set pretty much on Tatooine and in space, this one wants to play up different worlds and takes the watcher to the ice world of Hoth, the swamp world of Dagobah, and the cloud world of Bespin, as well as a little time on an asteroid which is home to an enormous worm. We also get a ginormous space battle cruiser, all black and sleek controlled by Darth Vader himself. The canvas is much larger, and that's no doubt because the producers of the film were pretty much guaranteed a success given the hunger for a sequel created by the enormous success of Star Wars.

As for the big reveal of Darth Vader as Luke's father, it all seems a little quaint these days. But I can remember wondering about it and the impact it would have on the outcome of the story. Darth Vader was an amazing composite character, physically performed by David Prowse and vocally by James Earl Jones. His mystery and menace lurks all over this movie, more than the others even because he's the center of attention as much as anyone is. The first movie was about the droids and told from their perspective and while we don't get that access to Vader, we do get a much greater sense of his power and limitations such as the time he kneels to his Emperor and speaks so confidently of his plans.

The Empire Strikes Back was a remarkable thing, a sequel nearly as compelling as the film that inspired it. To my mind not as strong or complete an experience, but that was all intentional and I cannot fault the creators for the necessary problems. The story would be resolved in the next movie, but for that I'd have to wait several more years. And when the time finally came, I got to meet Ewoks. More on that encounter next week.

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The Saturday Serials - A New Hope!

There's little chance of overstating the impact of Star Wars on films, science fiction, and the popular culture in general. We were all living our lives quite quietly, discontented with a decade which was not delivering on the promises of the previous two. America was, if not crumbling, then at the very least showing its age with its big cities becoming wildly dangerous places (at least in the imagination) and the world increasingly not listening to our demands, especially in the Middle East where it turned out "our oil" was not actually ours.

In the wake of America's two hundredth birthday it seemed that life was turning a bit gloomy all around. Then Star Wars hit. It saved Hollywood from itself , rescuing an industry which had gotten old but not mature, and it saved comic books when the license bailed out the company which would become the behemoth Marvel. For a fantasy and sci-fi fan it was manna from heaven giving us all something new and shiny to discuss and obsess over. It was indeed as it would come to called, a new hope.

For me personally it was eye-opening to the extreme. I grew up a comics fan, a science fiction fan, and was just coming away from several years entranced by the works of J.R.R. Tolkien and his imitators. I'd read lots of Asimov, some Ellison, but not enough Heinlein. Dune was perhaps my favorite sci-fi novel, maybe still is. I went to see most all the fantasy and science fiction movie releases that hit my area including the Harryhausen and Heston epics.

But when I went to see Star Wars, already having read a somewhat lackluster comic appearance, I came out changed for all time. While it seems a bit old and worn these days, back then those spaceships were visions of an imagination larger than mine and the characters were at once stunningly weird and comfortably familiar. Movies like Logan's Run suddenly seemed like out-sized episodes of Lost in Space and a new game was afoot.

Like most folks I saw it multiple times, four I think. In those days when video was just blooming there was no such thing as waiting at home for it to drop in a few months. These will-of-the-wisps had to be chased and wrestled to the ground. My tired bones like the new age of countless films at my fingertips, but I confess the old days were fun for muscles eager to run about.

I'm not going to spend any time reviewing the plot of Star Wars because if you don't know it, you ain't reading this blog. But here are few things that have stuck me in recent viewings. Luke is set up elegantly as our hero from the magical repetition of his name when we first meet him to the twin moons of Tatooine, one shining and one dusky, which symbolize the twin natures of his heritage and his soul. We know who is father is, who is sister is, but he doesn't and he's a young man set adrift when his Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru are murdered. They seem too quickly forgotten it now seems as I watch the movie, but I didn't think that then as he clings to a new mentor named Kenobi, who opens a box and draws forth a magic sword that will lead the youngster toward his destiny.

I prefer to watch the original version of the movie as opposed to the refined and retooled one that Lucas dropped on us to make them more compatible to his prequels. Seeing some unidentifiable beast lumber across Mos Eisley doesn't really add value to my experience though I confess the sweetened explosions don't hurt.

When Lucas made Star Wars that was it, the only one for all the chatter about chapters and such. Because it was an enormous success he could make the sequels (neither of which surpasses the original --spoiler alert) and years later when cash-strapped he'd finally launch his own personal "Silmarillion" on the world. (I confess I like them fine, but you're only a virgin once.) Of the new movies only Rogue One has captured the exciting essence of this very first New Hope and that's because like its predecessor it was only supposed to ever stand alone really. One shiny object from a time and a galaxy far away to behold and enjoy forever and ever.

More next week when...you guessed it...the empire will strike back.

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Where Were You In 1962!

American Graffiti is a movie that takes us ultimately into the future, but by way of revisiting the nostalgic past as seen through the eyes of writer and director George Lucas. This movie of a teens on the verge of passing into adulthood and at once eager and fearful of that transition picks up some of the themes evident in the earlier Lucas film THX 1138 in the sense that it's lead character is confronted with the dilemma of staying fixed in his reasonably comfortable but constricting life or trekking out to find something different, perhaps even something better.

Of course Lucas takes the naive position that if one has the courage to move into the new sphere they will necessarily find success and that doing otherwise is utter foolishness. A more nuanced understanding of life might have given this film a deeper meaning, but as it is it does direct our feelings to want to root for the life beyond the winding streets filled with endlessly meandering cars. Success might be beyond the horizon or it might not be and happiness can be found in the local, but for all symbolically at least the transition into the sometimes cold world of adulthood is unavoidable.

As a comic book and movie fan, nostalgia is an enormous part of what makes my life enjoyable, but being stranded on the rocks of the past is different than wanting to preserve and nurture warm memories of that time. But it's rather ironic to listen to George Lucas talks much about the necessity of moving on with life in the commentary to this film, to leave behind the things of the past. But a quick look reveals that pretty much his whole movie career after THX 1138 is memorializing a romanticized view of the past in movies such as the swashbuckling Star Wars and Raiders of the Lost Ark which hearkens back to the serials of Buster Crabbe and adventures of Errol Flynn, and this movie which is a milestone marker for a time when "innocence" was possible in a dark dim world.

It seems that  Lucas is also a collector of Norman Rockwell paintings, works that themselves point backwards to a shining idealized past. While Lucas as been enormously successful as a director and even more so as a producer, his advice to go forth and conquer new realms tends to thud on the sharp stones of reality a bit.

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Artifact From The Future!

Long before Star Wars was no more than a potentiality there was THX 1138, a movie which its creators describe as an "artifact from the futre". The conciet here is that this is a flicker from another time and place with a host of cultural background details that are never explained just we don't expect films from say Japan or China or New Jersey to fill us (the audience) in on all the myriad details that inform the narrative. It's a cute notion and lets them get away with some vague nonsense but I'll bite.

This movie is the only movie ever produced by the original American  Zoetrope, a fledgling but hopeful film company wrought by Francis Ford Coppola, George Lucas, and their film student friends as the Vietnam War was hotting up. They were bright eyed idealists who wanted to drink, smoke and create. (Not all of them did all of them it should be noted.) The peculiar movie THX 1138 is the one tangible flicker they made and it was mostly the work of George Lucas and Walter Murch.

 

It's based on a student film THX 11238 4B produced by Lucas which was highly regarded in its time by those who saw it -- a fifteen minute burst of avant-garde visual storytelling about a terrible future in which underground people allow themselves to be numbed to the truth of the world around them by various means and spend all their time participating in a mindless game of consumerism. Love is outlawed and  being sober is a crime, which alas doesn't stop the film from featuring some really weird and dangerous driving.

Lucas keeps saying this movie is a comedy and by that I think he means it's an example of an absurdist attitude, because a laugh riot it ain't. We see desperate people trying to make sense of a nigh hopeless existence and are rewarded in some instances with obliteration. Maybe my fun meter needs calibration because while I saw a few sequences in the movie that were ridiculous (a robot cop bouncing into a wall for instance) I never much felt like chuckling as this rather grim and ironically sobering effort moved forward.

I do like the movie, but like I find is often the case, it's creators don't seem to fully apprehend the effect of their little monster. This is a movie that makes me want to cry for our situation, and hope that I find something akin to the strength of purpose of the hero who just wants to face the truth. That's hard stuff.

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The Darkseid Of Darth Vader?

Who created Star Wars? Well the easy answer is George Lucas and the myriad talents who he assembled to bring the incredibly influential little sci-fi epic to the screen  many decades ago. But some say to hold onto that for a moment and probe more deeply. Some suggest that to find the source of Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker you need look no further than the Marvel Age and The Fourth World

They suggest the story of a son who doesn't know his true father and must battle against that father for the sake of the universe is a story told by Jack "King" Kirby in the pages of New Gods and beyond in the earliest years of the 1970's. Orion is a young man bartered for the sake of peace and so estranged from his true heritage but who is destined to rediscover that heritage and with the defeat of his father bring about a new order to the universe itself. Luke Skywalker must learn over the course of some time he is the son of Darth Vader and with that knowledge know also that he must do battle with this aspect of the dark side. 

And what of that "dark side"? In the Lucas saga we find that darkness hidden beneath an enigmatic mask, part of a full set of protective high-tech armor, which at once protects its wearer and obscures the true nature of the man beneath the mask. Where have we seen this before? Of course in the pages of Fantastic Four in the form of the grand villain Doctor Doom. 

So there you have it. George Lucas didn't think up Star Wars, at least not on his own. But do I really believe this theory? I confess that I don't simply because the ideas which motivate the saga are so broadly known and so generic that it's really impossible to suggest so close a connection. Rather I think it's a matter of two creative minds finding sustenance from the same sources and making similar repasts. There's evidence that Jack Kirby felt that Lucas might have been borrowing from him, but that doesn't constitute evidence really. Short of Lucas saying this is what he did there's little to prove the point, but like so many controversies about such ultimately insignificant things it's fun to ponder.

More to come tomorrow. 

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