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PREMIERE'S REVIEW (posted 5/22/08)

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull's opening sequence makes it clear that this is quite a different time than when we last saw our hero. A car full of teenagers races across the American desert to the tune of Elvis Presley's "Hound Dog" and briefly engage a military Jeep in a drag race. As it turns out, the Jeep is en route to a nuclear testing facility, and it's full of Eastern European engaged in a Soviet operation to locate relics with paranormal military applications. Welcome to the Atomic Age.

In the action-packed opening 45 minutes, Spielberg and Lucas have recaptured the magic of the Indiana Jones franchise with its signature blend of mysticism, adventure, red-blooded action, and slapstick. The world-weathered hat, the bare-knuckled fisticuffs, the full-throttle chases, and the narrow escapes are all there — yet, everything is different. Of course, Ford himself has aged considerably in the past twenty years; he's as competent and cunning an Indy as he ever was but the world around him has changed, as have the viewers.

Fans have waited twenty years for the return of Indiana Jones, the WWII-era action hero that fought the evil of Nazi imperialism while protecting both American ideals and religious relics. However, this proves much more difficult in the contentious and vague climate of the arms race and the Red Scare. Who do you trust? What is good and what is evil? Spielberg and Lucas seem to have just as hard a time answering these questions as Indy does.

Instead, the filmmakers give Indy's return to the big screen a '50s sci-fi angle. What emerges is a convoluted plotline in which the villainous Soviets, led by the steely Stalinist Irina Spalko (played with a clever combination of ferociousness and tongue-in-cheek pulpiness by Cate Blanchett), are in search of a legendary Mayan artifact said to possess supernatural powers. Jones follows the bad guys to Peru when he realizes that the relic, the crystal skull (which looks mostly plastic), is the key to the ultimate weapon.

The resulting second act is a fun and fast-paced barrage of refreshing throwbacks to the original films, complete with killer critters, nasty natives, ancient riddles, and exotic locales. Another welcome return is Karen Allen reprising her role as the headstrong Marion Ravenwood. All the nostalgic elements are in place, but Lucas and Spielberg cannot resist tweaking the franchise with computer-generated effects.

It's clear the creators wanted to bring our hero back but were uncertain where to put him. Sadly, Indiana Jones is not relevant amidst the atomic blasts and disillusionment of the Soviet era, and he's not even recognizable in the pixilated universe of recent cinema. To quote the great Dr. Jones, "It belongs in a museum!"

— Gregory Christie