Movie Reviews

Rated: PG-13 for adventure, action, and violence
Release Date: May 22, 2008
Starring: Harrison Ford, Cate Blanchett
Director: Steven Spielberg
Distributor: Paramount Pictures
Film Genre: Adventure, Action
Country: USA
Official Website: Indiana Jones Official Website

Finally, people will stop saying Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom was the bad one. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull opens during the height of the Cold War, with Soviet agents forcing Indiana Jones (Harrison Ford) to retrieve a mysterious artifact of great power. This early sequence, and a few that follow, show the Cold War theme and anti-communist paranoia most clearly.

However, shortly after, the story shifts to an extraterrestrial theme, which feels incredibly heavy-handed. The film briefly mentions Indy’s service as a colonel during World War II and his role as a double agent in Berlin. Personally, I would have much preferred a movie titled The Treacherous Colonel Indiana Jones and the Valkyries of the Führer. It’s not that the alien plot disappointed me—it didn’t—but once Crystal Skull delves into that mystery, it loses the suspense and horror vibe of 1950s genre films that it should have been emulating.

Those 50s movies were charged with the public’s fears: the Cold War, nuclear weapons, communist subversion (or satirical takes on the unfounded fear of it), etc. Spielberg touches on these themes, but misses the chance to explore the subtext so effectively used in that era. The only time Crystal Skull briefly engages with these themes is when the Soviet agent Irina Spalko (Cate Blanchett) describes the power of the titular skull: mind control. This reminded me of the classic Cold War paranoia film Invasion of the Body Snatchers, though without any subtlety. Aside from that description, we never really understand what the skull’s power is—we never see it in action. Spielberg breaks the first rule of the very adventure storytelling he perfected: show, don’t tell.