Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is not only an abomination of the entire film industry, it might be the worst film ever made.Where to begin. The action sequences were executed with B-movie results - inexcusable for a George Lucas/Steven Spielberg movie that cost $200 million. Shia LaBeouf's outright hilarious jeep-spanning swordfight was a lowlight, as were the lazily executed CGI monkees (who were apparently very anti-Communist). The stellar cast acted as if they wanted the whole thing to just end. Harrison Ford ambles into every scene like he's on drugs - and seeing as he just qualified for Medicaid, may just have been the case. LaBeouf's clueless performance did as much to advance his career as his decision to rob a Chicago Walgreens months after filming (apparently he was looking for acting skills on the budget rack). Even the great Cate Blanchett acts as if she just entered an SNL set with Chris Farley.
And the aliens? There is no surer sign that Lucas just doesn't get it anymore than the news that he reportedly was talked into reducing the role of the aliens in the final film by Spielberg. In fact, the worst ten moments in Crystal Skull were solidly baser than any moment in the entire Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy. This is no small thing, given that the latter is a stuttering piece of swashbuckling, action/adventure masturbation. All pleasure and no point.
Compared to Pirates, however, George Lucas' crime is tenfold. He engages in an equally vile session of adventure film self-gratification, and he does it in full view of the legions of fans who carried some expectations into their initial (and in all likelihood, final) viewing of the film. When a movie script generates a buzz, acquires a top director, enlists A-list actors (or any combo of these), people are certainly disappointed when it doesn't work out. The popularly-panned Istar is such a movie. What is worse is when a film is a known series that inherits these expectations and makes the same mistakes.
When the audience entered the theaters to see Star Wars I: Phantom Menace, they were not expecting the movie to be anything but spectacular. I have a hard time believing anyone walked into Gigli expecting it to be a great movie (and I have an equally hard time believing that anyone walked out of the theater shocked that it wasn't). The series history of Star Wars up to that point, however, had suggested that any further movies in the series would meet certain standards: quality actions sequences, reasonable acting and script quality. Does it need to be Casablanca? Of course not. But a movie with a poor script, far-flung logic, and a lack of believability can do little to aid any effort to please - even if that effort is primarily to entertain audiences in an action/adventure genre.
People waited in line for days to see Phantom Menace. Some dressed in full costumes, laser blasters and light sabers to boot. They waited in line because that movie franchise had established standards of excellence that had not been compromised up to that point. They all walked out of that theater with puzzled expressions and some seriously limp light sabers.
Then something happened that revealed a lot about what Lucus (and to a lesser extent, Spielberg) doesn't get. The disgruntled Star Wars fans and critics began posting their views ... and Lucas criticized the American media for using fan opinions from the Internet as a reliable source for their news stories about the film's reception (ignoring, with all the logic of a Jar Jar Binks dialogue meeting, that news articles about a film's reception are about fan/critic reactions). Fan opinions, you see, have little consequence for a man who locked himself away in his Marin County mansion with a pencil and notepad and emerged with the blueprint to eviscerating a franchise.
Contrast this with what Peter Jackson did with his Lord of the Rings trilogy. Jackson actively sought out J.R.R. Tolkien fan groups and involved them in aspects of the movies creation and script. Peter Jackson wisely recruited Alan Lee and John Howe, the artists most responsible for depicting Tolkien's world visually at that time, as production designers, further ensuring that the world the fans had grown up with would be depicted relatively seamlessly on screen. In order for the film to work (and even improve), Jackson reasoned that it would be foolish to disregard the opinions of the very people who had created the desire for the project in the first place.
The fans turned out to be pretty good advisors, as the trilogy went on to win 17 Oscars. This included Best Picture for The Return of the King, an honor thought almost impossible for a Fantasy/Sci-Fi film.
Granted, the Lord of the Rings wasn't created by Peter Jackson, and thus he had people to answer to from the estate of Tolkien, the author of the books the movies are based on. Lucas did not inherit these limits, and it is understandable that as the creator of the story he is less likely to be as pragmatic about control/script decisions. But does that make it any more right?
When a film series takes on an iconic status, it ceases to become an entity that is owned exclusively by the movie studio, screen writers, and producers. The money, yes. But not the spirit of the film. The fans own a large part of Indiana Jones' larger-than-life status because they were the ones who made it larger-than-life. An iconic movie series becomes one because of the audience it draws. No audience, no iconic status. Lucas and Speilberg gave us the clay, but the fans breathed sweet life into the celebrity status of Indiana Jones and Han Solo.
If Lucas had used fan opinion as a reliable source for creating the films, as Peter Jackson had in the Lord of the Rings, he would have had a substantially better movie on his hands. In Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, the opening sequence did nothing but flesh out the story behind certain characteristics (his use of a whip, his fear of snakes) that came to symbolize Indiana Jones in the eyes of the fans. When you introduce entirely new twists that contrast with the fans' notions of the characters/story (such as the introduction of midi-chlorians, organisms that make the use of the force possible, in the Phantom Menace), anger ensues.
There are many reasons one could construe a movie to be a failure. Ishtar lost money. Gigli was a star vehicle for the stars' relationship. Pluto Nash was a comedy that wasn't funny. I submit to you that what George Lucas and Steven Spielberg did with Indiana Jones in The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is the highest kind of bad movie crime - defamation of a beloved movie series that is also a bad movie. It deserves the death sentence: worst movie ever. Lucas and Spielberg may have earned a lot of money with Crystal Skull, but Indiana Jones lost his strut - and his fans.
