James said:
Yes, the immediate, smaller threat is well-established, but then, it is in every film.
What's the immediate threat in Crystal Skull, again? Spalko put a sword to Mutt's neck; he combed his hair. Dovchenko put a gun to Marion; Indy made a quip. You never thought for one second that Indy wasn't in control or that the Reds actually intended to hurt them. Compare that to what the heroes' situation looked like when they first peered into the sacrifice chamber in Temple of Doom.
James said:
The great irony of the entire series is that it always comes down to Indy needing to rescue a kidnapped victim(s), while the artifacts themselves are more or less revealed to be useless in the enemies' hands.
The artifact is always revealed to be useless in the enemies' hands, but it isn't always true that the artifacts would necessarily have been worthless to them. The Sankara stones looked like they were serving the Thuggees just fine, and Donovon died because he chose the wrong grail. True enough, being confined to a chamber as the price of immortality probably wasn't what he had in mind, but presumably the immortality he claimed to want would still have been granted. The grail still "works," in other words.
In the case of the skull, it's only apparent use is to drive you crazy so that it can use you as a means to get back to Akator, and that's only if it deems you the "right kind" of person to communicate with, and Spalko doesn't even qualify. It's truly just a hinky looking paperweight in her hands, and if Indy had never gotten involved, the Soviets would have caused no harm and would still have met their demise. With the Thuggee cult, you're left with a pretty strong impression that bad things would have happened had Indy not intervened.
You can say the ark would have still melted the Nazis heads off with or without Indy, but the thing about the ark is that it was actually properly built up as an epic archeological find to the degree that you actually want to see Indy attain it for that reason alone, whereas the presentation of the skull's mythology is completely perfunctory. Similarly, the Grail find is rooted in a story about an estranged father and son finding each other. With Indy4, neither the thematic elements nor the characters engage on a comparable level, so we're left with "Because it told me to" as the primary motor for the entire third act. And that could still have worked if sufficient excitement had been mustered up, but it simply wasn't. Raiders, for instance, is pretty satisfying for awhile as a pure chase movie. Who knows how much it might have helped if Indy4 had, say, managed to make the Ugha's appearance into something compelling and fun?
James said:
The Soviets "banking on" being able to harness the skull's power is no different than the Nazis hoping they can somehow utilize the Ark or the Grail.
I agree with you, which brings us back to the movie relying on the immediate threat, or some other motivation, to make us actively interested in seeing the artifact out of the hands of the enemies. It doesn't matter how simplistic and ham-fisted it is in comparison to non-escapist films - Raiders of the Lost Ark made you love to hate the Nazis and want to see Indy come out ahead. Indy4 just takes it for granted that you'll root for the good guys and hiss at the bad guys. I don't argue that, on a high level, it's all conceptually comparable, but execution doesn't happen at a high level.
Besides which, the structure of Raiders of the Lost Ark is such that the supernaturally charged climax is supposed to work as something of a surprise. Sure, there's foreshadowing, but opening of the ark is designed to be the big reveal that the audience was not necessarily expecting. In the case of Crystal Skull, the audience is well aware that the impossible is possible, and given that the movie seems to want to be open with the 50s stuff given the prologue, it's bizarre why the movie is so slavish to the template of Raiders, when the story might have been better served otherwise. There's a reason Temple scheduled its equivalent of the ark being opened at the halfway point.
James said:
Regardless, Mola's threat is essentially backed up by a small Thuggee cult- one that isn't even equipped to deal with rifles. The threats in the other three films are backed by Germany's Nazi force and Russia's red army. I'd say there's a significant difference there.
Those difference are all theoretical though - how do we feel about the threat when we're actually watching the flicks? I would agree that the nondescript villains in all four movies are fairly bumbling by design, but when Indy, Shorty and Willie are captured by the Thuggees in the catacombs, they're in a pretty grim, however inevitably temporary, jam, and one that you're really interested to see how they escape from. To me there's just no comparison between that and the corresponding scenes in Crystal Skull when the heroes are "prisoners" at the Russian campsite.
Besides, you act as though Indy is literally pitted against the vast armies of entire nations in the other films, but those larger forces are ultimately as part of the background as the hypothetical armies Mola Ram hopes to raise in his long-term plans. The teams led by Dietrich, Donovan and Spalko are specialized, perhaps even secret, expeditions. The rest of the Soviet and German armies were probably, you know, fighting the war.
James said:
(In both cases, the mere threat of the other country acquiring the device is cause enough for concern- as Lucas and Spielberg acknowledged during the very first Raiders script meeting. This is especially true for the Cold War era, given how critical a perceived stalemate was.)
It's not the viewer's responsibility to imagine how imposing the threat might have seemed when Steven Spielberg described it in a story meeting we weren't invited to. It's the movie's job to convey that sense and convince the audience sitting in the movie theater that the threat of the other side getting their hands on the device is a cause for concern. For me, Indy4 utterly failed to sell that point, and I think the lack of commitment when it came to Spalko's psychic powers played a role in that. If anything, citing better elucidated explanations of these ideas in behind-the-scenes discussions or unused script ideas makes the failing all the more unfortunate because that just goes to show that the ball was dropped despite fertile material.
James said:
The first is just an example of what effect the stone's power could have on a very small, localized level. I'm not disputing that it was a source of natural energy- just that the power is never shown to have far-reaching effects.
Temple of Doom is by design a much more claustrophobic film than the others, and so "localized level" is kind of misleading, as the perimeter of Pankot is essentially the movie's world. Even still, the implication that Mola Ram went from being alone to successfully taking over the entirety of Pankot Palace, including the brainwashing of its ruler and even our eponymous hero is a pretty effective demonstration of the stones' power.
James said:
As a result, they (both the Thuggees and the script's writers) have to resort to an entirely separate form of magic to carry out their plans: The "blood of Kali". This also muddies the exact method behind the human sacrifices. One could just as easily argue it was dependent upon hallucinogenic drugs, induced belief, and demonic invocations as the fact that they had three of the five Sankara stones.
The "exact method" of the human sacrifices couldn't be any less significant, and no amount of hallucinogenic drugs explains what Indy, Shorty and Willie witness. I mean, there's no ambiguity about Mola Ram sticking hand in the guy's chest and ripping out the heart. To me that's part of the reason it was filmed as graphically as it was.
James said:
Either way, it's still presented as a very local effect which must be carried out under
very controlled circumstances. (And as I noted earlier, Spalko is the only champagne villain who is clearly shown being able to physically kick someone's ass. For ****'s sake, Mola Ram ran from Indy, feebly attempted to hide behind his own men, and fell off a bridge ladder!
)
Mola Ram being a cad is part of the fun of his character. Spalko was decidedly a different kind of villain, but I don't see how that excuses her from coming off as weak. What it comes down to for me is that Mola Ram, cowardly bastard or not, poses a real threat to the good guys, whereas Spalko, despite being more interesting at a conceptual level, is too undefined to be intimidating.
James said:
Regardless of the method employed, the fact remains that Indy's mind was invaded by an outside force.
But that was never my issue.
James said:
Time has given way to a sort of unspoken belief that the original trilogy was comprised of three flawless films, all of which were hailed as instant classics upon release. As I'm sure you know, in reality, it wasn't like that at all. I would not be a bit surprised if KOTCS was viewed in a more favorable light 10 or 20 years from now- especially if it ends up being followed by an Indy 5. There are already younger fans on the board who have a clear passion for the "first" Indiana Jones film they really got to be a part of.
It works both ways. I've seen people conveniently and condescendingly write off criticism against what they like as being the folly of blind nostalgia just as much as I've seen people stubbornly rejecting the new for being new and looking at what they've grown up with through rose-tinted glasses. Everyone is incurably guilty of both mindsets to varying degrees - recognizing that fact is the starting point for discussion based on reason.
