I Hate Indiana Jones: Day 40

Day 40: Indiana Jones and the Idiotic Archaeologist

Throughout these entries concerning Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Plastic Skull, you may have noticed certain themes beginning to crop again and again. Some of these are the normal kinds of things you'd seen in any bad film, such as incompetence at basic filmmaking skills, or contempt for the audience. The most stunning thing I've come across while recapping the film is that the filmmakers seem to be bound and determined to make Indiana Jones look like as much of an idiot as possible.

I can't begin to imagine the motives behind these choices, they could run anywhere from the filmmakers genuinely thinking that their audience were idiots, all the way to assuming that if they made Indiana Jones look terrible it would make new (hopefully franchise) character Mutt Williams look better without actually having to make him interesting or likable. It's even slightly possible that they had some kind of crazed grudge against the character. Whatever the motive that lay behind their actions, it's undeniable that through those actions they took a mallet to a character beloved by millions and turned him into a moron who likely should not be allowed outdoors without supervision.

CSI Monday!

The scene: A party was 'crashed' by a man on fire! Then his barbecued corpse is examined by a sexy lady who, surprise, surprise, is the new medical examiner. After determining that he was doused in something an set on fire, the ME points out that as a living human body burns, the muscles curl up, locking him in the pugilist's pose.

SEXY M.E. WHO ISN"T WEARING A HAIRNET: From the latin 'pugil-' which means "Fights with fists."

(Horatio Caine puts on his sunglasses)

HORATIO CAINE: A fight... To the death.

Batman's Not-Very-Secret Identity

Batman's been around for a few decades now so, despite the fact that he was semi-rebooted back in the 80s, he's got a long enough history that more than a few people have either figured out, or just been told his secret identity. If 2003's "Batman: Family (issue 7)" can be believed, he's just getting lazy.

The setup: After WayneCo CEO Lucius Fox suffers a stroke, Bruce Wayne is convinced to put a mysterious old woman in charge of his multi-billion dollar empire, based solely on the fact that she used to be an acquaintance of Bruce's mother. Unsurprisingly, it turns out that she's the head of a 'family' of criminals out to steal all of his money. In the following scene, Batman has locked one of the 'family' members in a glass cage which, while escape-proof, is by no means soundproof:

I Hate Indiana Jones: Day 39

Day 39: Indiana Jones and the Pathetic Trap

Trap rooms don't make the most sense, do they? As conceits go in adventure films, they're among the bigger ones. In an earlier post, I mentioned the invisible bridge from Last Crusade as being especially egregious, but the truth is every film in the series suffers from the problem to a certain extent. Questions about what exactly was powering the crushing ceiling from Temple of Doom, or the Behead-O-Tron from Last Crusade don't go away easily, and it takes a little mystery out of Raiders once you start to imagine the Hovitos creeping into the secret temple, crawling behind walls, and turning elaborate crank systems to reset the spears that skewered Forrestal. And though I've committed the entire film Raiders of the Lost Ark to memory, even I don't have the slightest idea what all those snakes were eating.

This is another one of those areas where the audience is asked to suspend a lot of their disbelief, and as a rule, they're more than happy to, so long as the traps involved are interesting, and put the main characters in a some great degree of threat. Which, naturally, brings us to the single trap room featured in the search for the Crystal Skull. Although, in point of fact, it barely qualifies as a trap room, because it lacks such basic elements as cleverness, originality, or danger of any kind.

I Hate Indiana Jones: Day 38

Day 38: Indiana Jones and the Blase Secondary Protagonist

So Indy shouldn't have been able to find the graveyard, the appearance of the natives was kind of silly, and showing the entire fight scene from Indiana Jones' sidekick's perspective was an incredibly stupid move, but the most offense thing about the whole fight scene is Shia Laboeuf's reaction to it. Or really lack of reaction to it, I should say.

While the audience is well aware that fighting karate monkey death Indians is a fairly run-of-the-mill afternoon for for Indy, the entire experience pretty much has to be the most interesting thing that has ever happened to Shia Laboeuf, as well as the closest he's ever come to dying. Now, I'm sure he had a few close calls down at the garage, you know, what with cars falling off lifts and such. And there's every chance a few of those of malt shop dust-ups have gone pretty rowdy, but there's a pretty big difference between getting into that kind of trouble and having prehistoric kung fu style monsters shooting poison darts at you in a South American graveyard.

I Should Really Stop Watching Terminator

If it's just going to make me angry. This week, we discovered that Cameron was based on a real person. This isn't a surprise, per se - obviously the Terminators would have better luck pretending to be actual people they killed rather than just random faces.

My problem wasn't with that conceit, but rather that the evil Cameron (as seen murdering the real person she was based on) was making wacky quips to corpses even before she was switched into read/write mode. What possible purpose could quipping to corpses serve a computer?

I Hate Indiana Jones: Day 37

Day 37: Indiana Jones and the Off-Camera Action

As if the very existence of the kung fu monkey man zombie natives wasn't bad enough, the way the film chooses to deal with them is even worse. When you've got an idea this bad, finding a way to make it worse seems like an amazing feat - but one should never underestimate these filmmakers, and their dedication to awfulness. So how do they do it? Instead of just having a fight between Indiana Jones, Shia Laboeuf and a number of the monkey men, they move the fight off-camera so that the audience doesn't get to see it.

That's right, you're not reading things, in this movie a fight happens that the filmmakers didn't think was important enough to let the audience see. This isn't used as an off-camera joke either, like Marion knocking out the Arab with a frying pan, then having the body flop out of the doorway into frame. This is an entire action scene that no one seems to think it's a good idea to bother getting on film. For more than a minute Indiana Jones chases natives through the graveyard, running through caves, popping up in unexpected places, doing interesting visual things. Instead of showing them to us, the camera decides to stay with Shia Laboeuf, who stands still with a confused look on his face as if he's having trouble comprehending what's going on around him.

I Hate Indiana Jones: Day 36

Day 36: Indiana Jones and the Inexplicable Attackers

Today's entry concerns a sequence in the film that I found puzzling at the time, and which has only gotten more and more confusing in retrospect. It's a sequence which has no real precedent in the Indiana Jones series, or any decent film for that matter. I'm speaking of the sequence that have occurs right after Indiana Jones in Shia laboeuf arrive at the graveyard, as they're attacked by natives who've made themselves up to look like skeletons from the graveyard.

The question I had at the time which has only grown more relevant in retrospect is: who exactly are these natives? While I'm surprisingly willing to believe that at one time the natives who worship the crystal skull aliens at one time had a large enough kingdom that this graveyard could logically be part of it, the film gives us no reason to believe their numbers are anywhere near large enough to maintain that kind of a presence today. The graveyard is presumably near near the decent-sized city where John Hurt was recently institutionalized. I say presumably because, as mentioned previously, the audience was given no real idea where this graveyard might be or how Indiana Jones found it.

What's Wrong With Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles?

Is it the title? Possibly. My associate Mer-Man tells me he hates the show because every time he's flipping through the channels on his digital cable and sees the word 'Terminator' his hopes are raised for a second that the amazing film Terminator is on, or even the fractionally less amazing film Terminator 2: Judgement Day, and then he has to deal with the crushing realization, as he turns the channel, that he won't have the opportunity to watch either of those films.

Personally, I blame the show's utter lack of quality on a fundamental failure to understand what makes Terminator interesting. This is a show that had John Connor, after being flung into the future in an attempt to race the clock and stop Skynet from even going online, then be enrolled in High School. Really? That's the best possible use of his time? History class? Sure, he's sixteen, but in the second episode they went and bought fake IDs - they couldn't have made his ID say he was 18?

That's not the biggest problem, though. No, the biggest problem is how talky every single one of the terminators are. With Summer Glau's terminator (ear-gougingly named "Cameron") it almost makes sense, as I'm sure she was set to read/write mode in the future.

Turns Out I Was Wrong

About Wire in the Blood. The episode I was watching actually was the season ender. The entire Michael thing is wrapped up in the last ten minutes of the episode, in yet another act of stupidity on the part of Tony and the cops.

As Kevin's driving Tony home from a funeral, suddenly the low fuel light comes on. Despite Kevin's protestations that he filled the tank up the day before, neither of them finds the whole thing suspicious, allowing Michael to abduct Tony at the gas station.

I Hate Indiana Jones: Day 35

Day 35: Indiana Jones and the Unmotivated Natives

When we last left Dr. Jones and his motorcylce-loving sidekick Shia Leboeuf, they had just arrived at a ancient Conquistador burial ground they'd found through the magic of bad writing. It's Dr. Jones' theory that his old friend Harold "Ox" Oxley, as assayed by John Hurt, found the mysterious crystal skull here and then, based on the symbol return etched into his cell wall, brought it back when he was done with it.

What's Going On, Tony Hill?

I watch Wire in the Blood for one reason, and one reason only. The main character, Doctor Tony Hill (Robson Green) is the most interesting profiler in fiction since Cracker, and his theories about crimes are always thoroughly entertaining. The most notable thing about his character is that he, unlike every other profiler in the history of fiction, has absolutely no major mental problems or tragic backstory motivating him. No, Tony Hill solves crimes because he believes that his skills can be used to assist in catching murderers. Is any more reason necessary?

I Hate Indiana Jones: Day 34

Day 34: Indiana Jones and the Uninformative Map

I believe that audiences, mindful of the restrictions put on filmmakers' time and resources, as well as the fact that a summer blockbuster can only be somewhere in the neighborhood of two and a quarter hours long at most, will accept a little bit of dramatic shorthand. This is especially true when characters travel from one place to another. We don't really ask, so long as restrictions placed on their travel are not a vital part of the plot, just how they manage to get from one place to the next in a certain amount of time. This is why in Raiders of the lost Ark when Indiana Jones announces that they have to go to Cairo and in the next scene they've gone from Nepal to Egypt, we don't bother questioning it even though we didn't see scenes of them purchasing tickets, flying to Cairo, or dodging Nazis at the airport.

A little more questionable is a similar scene from Indiana Jones and the last Crusade, in which Indiana Jones and his father Sean Connery take an emergency biplane out of a zeppelin and land somewhere between Germany and Turkey. The next time we see them they're deep within the Middle East, overlooking the German convoy that had at least a two-day head start on them. How'd they get there? Excellent question.

I Hate Indiana Jones: Day 33

Day 33: Indiana Jones and the Redundant Revelation

Today's entry is a bit of a stunner. I say this because while many of these entries have focused on the film's ineptitude in a variety of disciplines, today's entry is the first one that suggests the filmmakers had a fundamental lack of familiarity with the nature of storytelling, and how to structure an interesting tale.

I'm speaking of the film's decision to not just telegraph but outright reveal one of its bigger surprises at two separate points in the movie before it's really relevant. That surprise? That the crystal skull in question, the Central MacGuffin around which the film is built is not merely some piece of South American art, but rather the actual skull of an actual alien.

I Hate Indiana Jones: Day 32

Day 32: Indiana Jones and the Not-So-Hidden Valley

I've spent a few days now chronicling Harrison Ford's trip to the Valley of the Crystal Skull, but I haven't mentioned the single most ridiculous thing about it: just how amazingly easy the valley should have been to find. Really, it's barely hidden at all.

The film makes a great deal of hay about how incredibly hidden the mysterious temple of the skull is, and how people have been searching for it for hundreds of years with only the slightest amount of success. That, however, was before the advent of aeroplanes. It seems that the valley, while surrounded on all sides by thick jungles and raging rivers, is completely visible from the air. There's no overhanging canopy, or optical illusions created by waterfalls, or even thick foliage within the valley that might obscure it from the sky. No, all the valley contains is a square mile of surprisingly well-groomed grass, and a gigantic pyramid.