I went several places as a child, but the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena might have been my favorite. For those of you who don’t know what JPL is, it’s a NASA facility that, among other things, is responsible for the launching of the Mars rovers, which I saw up close. But growing up, I wanted to be an archaeologist because of Indiana Jones. In fact, I tinkered with the idea of majoring in archaeology when transferring from my junior college to the four-year university I’d eventually attend. Unfortunately, I didn’t really get science, so I had to abandon that idea after barely receiving a “C” in my first anthropology class.
I don’t remember the first time I saw an Indiana Jones movie. Heck, I don’t remember the first time I saw the original Star Wars movies either. All I know is that I have watched each movie in each series at least 100 times (the prequels, except for Revenge of the Sith are a different story).
It’s these movies that created what I consider to be my relatively expansive imagination. Because of Star Wars, space went from an empty desert to a jungle full of adventures around every star. And with Indiana Jones, the adventure was here, on Earth.
I knew that what Indiana Jones did in those movies wasn’t really archaeology. I knew all of the movies were provided a loose interpretation of history as their settings. I knew that the villains were mere caricatures. But I knew that none of those factors really mattered because that’s not why George Lucas made Indiana Jones. Lucas made Indy because he wanted audiences to have fun. He wanted to prick the imaginations of youngsters the way the serials and pulp adventure stories pricked his imagination when he was a youngster.
Who could imagine going to the movies to have fun?
Well, Lucas said as much in USA Today before the opening of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull:
“We came back to do (Indy) because we wanted to have fun,” he says. “It’s not going to make much money for us in the end. We all have some money. … It would make a lot of money if you weren’t rich. But we’re not doing it for the money.”
Still, as the date approached for The Kingdom of the Crystal Skulls to come out this weekend, I couldn’t help but think in my head, “I’ve got a bad feeling about this.”
I knew I’d like the movie. It was Indiana freakin’ Jones!
I wasn’t disappointed. In fact, I loved the movie. I hadn’t had more fun at the movies since Transformers and the original Pirates of the Caribbean before that.
My “bad feeling” stems from what I have perceived about the current generation of moviegoers. This generation of moviegoers, which seems to generally consist of anyone born after 1984, is cynical and expects one of two things:
1. They expect to see stupid people do stupid things and then laugh at them (see Wayans’ Bros. movies).
2. They expect to learn something. And it’s usually something that reinforces their general belief that there are reasons to doubt the institutions that they do doubt. (see National Treasure movies and the DaVinci Code.)
Taking these two things into consideration, I knew that this generation would have trouble suspending reality for two hours while watching Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Aliens? A 65-year-old action star? I didn’t see anyway that this movie, no matter how good, would be able to capture the imagination of the youngsters the way Raiders of the Lost Ark did for me.
And my suspicions have been pretty accurate so far. My 14-year-old punk of a brother told my dad, “I don’t want to see an old man running around.” While most of the students I’ve talked to at school who saw Kingdom of the Crystal Skull said, “Eh, it was OK, but really unrealistic.”
I’ve also heard, “Oh, c’mon, Shia Labeouf swinging from vine to vine like a monkey? How lame.” (Kids, that was Lucas and Spielberg paying homage to the great Tarzan movies of the 1940s,1950s and 1960s when they were kids.)
Highlight the empty space below… I don’t want to spoil the movie for anyone who hasn’t seen it.
You aren’t supposed to think that it’s possible to swing from vine to vine, just like it’s not possible to jump from car to car sword fighting, or like it’s not possible to get eaten down to the bone by killer ants, and like it’s not possible to survive dropping over three killer waterfalls. But these things are FUN! And just think, “what if?”
When I walked out of the theater Thursday morning, my imagination had been pricked once again. Really, who gives a damn about critical acclaim (even though a 79 percent on Rotten Tomatoes isn’t too bad, nor is a 3-minute standing ovation from the audiences at the Cannes Film Festival)?
There’s no doubt that recent Oscar-nominated movies like No Country for Old Men and There will be Blood are better “films” than Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Those are two well-made, message-wielding movies.
But if it’s a Saturday and I’m home and want to relax, I won’t watch No Country for Old Men. I’d pop in any of the Indy or Star Wars movies, throw some popcorn into the microwave and travel to a different world for two hours doing my best to forget about the state of suckiness that often infects “reality.”
So please, I beg you, when you see Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, go to have fun. Let your imagination run wild. Don’t infect your mind with what can’t happen. For two hours just think, “what if?”
