Spoiler Alert

I saw the fourth installment of the Indiana Jones series last week. Dear God, I hope it’s the last. A wooden script, a vague and tenuous plot, and an ending that made me think “What the fuck?” If this was the best they could’ve come up with after nineteen years, they really should’ve let the series die a dignified death. The Last Crusade was an amazing movie – not just a great Indy movie, but a great movie – and a satisfying, fitting bookend to one of the most exciting series in movie history. I approached the release of this film with a mix of anticipation and dread: Was I excited that Indiana frickin’ Jones was coming back? Hell yes. Did I believe that the filmmakers would be able to match the awesomeness of the last one? …not really. But you’d best believe that I expected more than this.

The movie opened in a promising fashion. Seeing the opening sequence was kinda fun, and the re-introduction of the Indy character and musical theme was admittedly awesome, but it devolved pretty damn quickly. Surviving a nuclear explosion inside a lead-lined fridge? Yeah. Almost as believable as Cate Blanchett’s horrendous attempt at a Russian accent. I don’t get it – apparently they spent a great deal of time and effort to ensure that the Russian soldiers were authentic, and then they go and find a Brit with a terrible accent to play the Russian with the most lines? Wacky. Also, the pacing was all wrong; I felt like I was watching The Mummy rather than an Indy flick (which is fine if the stars are Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weisz, but y’know… this is Indiana frickin’ Jones). There was a sense of awe and mysticism present in the first and third movies (not so much in Temple of Doom) that just didn’t exist here… all the films touch on the supernatural, but I just found it very hard to care about this plot. But when Shia LeBeef (I don’t care about the correct spelling – “LeBeef” is funnier) entered the picture as a character named Mutt, I just knew that the screenwriters would be so shortsighted and predictable to make him be Indy’s long-lost son. Sure enough, after the whole escapade he had with the Ark of the Covenant, he probably had a lot of sex with Karen Allen’s character and then left her to go rooting through spiders, snakes, rats, and other ugly beasties to find artifacts and other old things (like his father). So yeah, it’s not too difficult to figure out that Henry Jones Junior’s kid is, well… Mutt. And he’s also a Henry (shocking, I know). But would the screenwriters be so banal and unoriginal as to end the movie with a wedding? Nah… they wouldn’t do that.

Oh… wait. They did. And seeing Indy in a white suit tying the knot was about as natural as an oral bowel movement (yes, I quoted Clerks). Forget the paper-thin plot of a race of alien superbeings who contacted the Mayans thousands of years ago and left them with technology, civilization, crystal artifacts, and herpes (okay, I made that last one up)… and wasn’t that the plot of Alien Vs. Predator? Forget the complete X-Files ending ripoff. Forget the blatant Disney-fication of having Mutt swing on vines with monkeys. Indiana Jones is the guy who sifts through dirt and finds clues and decomposed bodies and ancient tablets, then gets to screw the hottie that’s with him… and then gets to do it all again with different clues and different women in the next movie. He’s like the James bond of adventure movies. Bond works, in part, because the audience never really cares about the fate of the girl. Next movie, same Bond, girl from previous movie is gone (although I could watch Sophie Marceau in every Bond movie and be perfectly happy). Same principle with Indy, and Lucas et al should’ve listened to Sean Connery’s line at the end of Last Crusade: Febtober "Let it go." I’m glad that Connery chose to stay out of this one.

Adding to the movie’s crappiness was the couple sitting behind me. Please realize that I went to see the film directly after work on a Thursday evening, hoping to avoid crowds, children, and rude teens. To my delight, there were only eleven people in the theater when the previews started. And then a couple came and sat directly behind me. Yippee. At least they were Korean, so their semi-whispered conversations during the movie didn’t really register as annoying because I couldn’t understand them. But seriously, the theater had 250 seats. Eleven were taken. Get a clue. And the guy kept burping.