Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull has a high gloss, high lighting ratio look similar to many modern comic books—pulp, updated. Crystal Skull is built to be fast, too fast to be weighed down by encumbrances like a sensical plot or the laws of physics. Everything is subservient to speed, which is part of why this movie is so disarmingly weird: as far as I can tell, both good guys and bad guys want to accomplish the same goal, returning the title's crystal skull to its home, but must pointlessly squabble en route. Why? Because that's how these kind of films work, it is their formula. At least the camera doesn't shake so much as to make me nauseous, like the last two installments of the also formulaic Bourne Identity series. (Side track: how eerie is it that Joan Allen replaced Chris Cooper as the spying face of the U.S. government, and they look like male and female versions of exactly the same person?)
Another part of the Indiana Jones formula is a component of the mystical. Any mythology can be raided for this purpose, from the Old Testament refry of Raiders of the Lost Ark to the Sir Arthur C. Clarke sci-fi refry of Crystal Skull. Is belief in everything that different from belief in nothing? Maybe, as this is a film where the Ark of the Covenant is relegated to a cameo. Unfortunately we still can't seem to believe our way to a role of any import for a non-white actor and are instead stuck with the usual killer “native” tribes nonsense. Those falsely accused of Communist sympathies, perhaps in some kind of belated comment about the Hollywood Black List, are treated with plenty of sympathy, but persons of color are again a racial Other.
There will always be room for the entertainments Spielberg has shown himself a virtuoso of, and I wouldn't have it any other way. Cinema, with its taste for engaging image after engaging image, loves speed. But Crystal Skull is never as entertaining as Spielberg at his best. The primary fault, I believe, lies in an unwillingness to develop any situation whatsoever, instead relying on bigger explosions, bigger waterfalls, etc., to the point where the explosions (nuclear) and the waterfalls (Iguazu) are literally the biggest in the world. Spielberg might consider the advice Cate Blanchett gives while sword-fighting Shia LaBeouf, each on a speeding jeep. She tells him, “You fight like a young man, eager to start, quick to finish.” Then she punches him in the stomach. Classic.
Like a pink tee-shirt with “it takes a real man to wear pink” printed on it, Made is obsessed with being a “real” man while assuming stereotypes of the feminine. At times this comes across as unintentional parody, like the odd moment where Patrick Dempsey competes in a caber toss while wearing a too short kilt. Or, when Patrick Dempsey's buddies come over to help him make bridal shower baskets one of his buddies can't handle it and leaves, saying, “See you ladies ... I'm going to a strip-club to drink a beer and eat a steak.” Who talks like this? Four credited writers and not one axed this line? Apparently, maintaining Dempsey's masculinity was enough of an issue to the makers of Made that they included a character, Tiny Shorts Guy, to point to as different—not a “real” man, a sissy. The audience is supposed to laugh at Tiny Shorts Guy and to deride him, excluding him just like he is excluded from full participation in the group of “real” men. This schtick is old and offensive, and anyone who thinks otherwise should read Vito Russo.
There's another connection between Made and Kiss Kiss (Bang Bang), cinematographer Tony Pierce-Roberts, who brings great visual depth to Made. All of Made is well shot, but Pierce-Roberts' camera really excels in the diffuse outdoor light of Scotland, and my favorite parts of Made are the shots of sheep hanging out in the glens. Comedic lighting is generally flat and bright, the one surprise about Made is how hard it strives for a beautiful image. Too bad these carefully constructed images are un-Made by the content.
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