Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

Hollywood seems to be stuck in a nostalgic cycle. Sex And The City, a show-turned-film about four sex-obsessed grandmothers, is driving middle-aged women everywhere wild. Maybe after they leave the cinema they can go grab a copy of Hard Candy. The X-Files is back (what?). Comic book adaptations are even more prevalent now than they were in 2001, when all we had to worry about were the X-Men and Spider-Man. And if that weren't enough to cause a mass infantilisation of society Indiana Jones is back. It took Harrison Ford, Steven Spielberg and George Lucas 17 years to agree on the fourth entry into the franchise and nothing much has changed.

The key to Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull is the nostalgia it banks upon to jog the minds of moviegoers. Many of us are too young to have fully understood the hype behind the Indy films but I still remember being given a copy of The Fate of Atlantis when my family had just gotten our Pentium 486 (By the way, best game ever). Ford's character is an unavoidable part of our culture and it's not surprising to see so many families fill up local cinemas to catch a viewing 2 weeks after the film opened. The opening scenes set the mood perfectly, dropping Indy in the iconic warehouse from Raiders of the Lost Ark after being kidnapped by Russians, then proceeding to throw him from one immediately recognisable backdrop to the next. I won't spoil anything for those of you who haven't seen it yet but make sure you keep your eye out when you do.

As I said, nostalgia is what carries this film. Spielberg recreated the comic-book style of the previous films as closely as possible, even disregarding many of his own accomplishments as a director since 1989 to stay true to the source material. George Lucas' story (thankfully) doesn't veer into childish sentimentality and stereotyped sidekicks. Perhaps he's realised just how bad the Star Wars prequels are. Some criticism has been leveled at the perceived outrageousness of the story - clearly, these writers have either never seen the original Indiana Jones trilogy or they've just forgotten that overblown grandstanding is what makes Indiana Jones what it (and he) is. Harrison Ford is once again the star of the film. He acts well for a film that doesn't need a decent actor. His interactions with Mutt and Marianne Ravenwood are genuine and funny. Cate Blanchett also adds to the cheesiness of the event with an awful Russian accent.

What can be said about the film that hasn't been said, though? People expected Crystal Skull to be something that it couldn't be, something new. The franchise has been built on 40's and 50's serials, it was never going to break established boundaries. What it did do, and what is still does, is provide fluffy action/comedy films that are so meticulously crafted while remaining genuine that you can't help but love them. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skulls is another great entry into the series. It's overblown, funny, stupid and pointless, and that's exactly what we should expect from Indy.