2023-11-27 11:33:00
Cannes, Sunday May 18, 2008, 8:30 am: festival-goers and designers, after having necessarily spent a short night, stopped en masse in front of the Grand Théâtre Lumière to go to one of the events in the programs: The screenings are the official selection out of the competition of the new film by Steven Spielberg, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.
In the room, the excitement was palpable, and we heard, just before the lights went down, the audience cheering to John Williams’ famous song from 1981. Two hours later, the lights came back on and mixed applause. with very loud ears. The fall is hard. But what could happen?
Despite this mixed reception in Cannes, the reviews will be very enthusiastic from the Anglo-Saxon press (summarized by a score of 77% on the site Rotten Tomatoes), and in relation to the friend from the French side, the attention to capital sympathy -city of Spielberg- two Ford. But in the years that followed, on forums with increased power and social networks, the film was ridiculed, especially for its introductory scene during which Indy protects himself from the nuclear fire by taking shelter in the refrigerator, but also, and above all, for the second half, we travel through forests full of sloppy computer graphics images.
The saga is not yet receiving its first poison arrow: after considerable critical and public success of Raiders of the Lost Arkwe remember thatIndiana Jones and the Temple of Doom has been criticized for its influence and its darkness, when Indiana Jones and the last crusade Some have already read it to be an overrated movie. But the situation of this fourth part is not comparable, its shame seems to be very deep.
Such a long wait
The first reason is perhaps the most obvious: the result of a very long pregnancy (almost twenty years between the third and fourth parts, the longest hiatus the saga has known), Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull was to appeal to an audience of early admirers, that of old, while flattering a younger audience, not necessarily sensitive to the trappings of characters with whom they did not grow up. To do this, Steven Spielberg has to take a big step that always gives the idea that the producer is trying to make something new out of something old, to provide surprises and fun to everyone, while respecting the numbers of the foundation.
The most important of these principles is of course Harrison Ford’s presence in good shape to show himself, at 65 years old, the most famous celebrity. On this side, the deal has been fulfilled: nineteen years later Indiana Jones and the last crusade (and fifteen years after his brief appearance to open and close an episode of Adventures of Young Indiana Jones), the actress, seductive and squeaky as hell, will be a hero who is certainly old, but still alert, helped by a few well-thought lines, characteristic of the saga.
In terms of plot and action, the show of events (ending with the famous refrigerator robbery) and the investigation which leads our heroes from a motorcycle chase to an adventure in a gothic cemetery (full of masked killers, twirling and equipped with deadly guns) put on a very good show.
The problems began soon after, the fruit in particular of the previous production which saw many screenwriters succeeding themselves (including Jeb Stuart, Jeffrey Boam, and Frank Darabont, already the writer of the scripts for the television series dedicated to the hero) before Jeff Nathanson and David Koepp (a regular collaborator of Spielberg) did not sign the final version of the script, drawing on ideas from the work of their predecessors.
A chaotic confusion of feathers in part explains the muddled plot (a chase with Soviet agents, there is a scientist, an unrecognizable South American and the suspicion of extraterrestrial interventions… yes, yes), with a plethora of the characters surrounding Professor Jones. On the positive side, Ray Winstone in the role of Mac, the true false friend, and Shia LaBeouf as a student student appear rather comforting.
The same will not be said of Karen Allen, keep the mark as a revenge Marion Ravenwood and laugh beatifically, and even less of the great John Hurt, who seems not to really know what to do with a character of There is still a need to be found. .
Among the gangsters, the question is more thorny: it did not arise much in the first three films, where Ford’s love and the work were enough to maintain the attention of the viewers. Who remembers the truth about Paul Freeman The raider of the lost ship or Julian Glover and Alison Doody The last crusade ? Inside Indiana Jones and the Temple of DoomThe character of Mola Ram made a strong impression on the viewers, but in the West, everyone still forgot who his interpreter Amrish Puri, the star of Indian cinema, is.
Indiana Jones’ Gentrification
A sign of a gentle gentrification of this fourth opus (which remains, with 185 million dollars, its director’s most expensive film), Steven Spielberg sought Cate Blanchett to play the antagonist. Already with an Oscar (well deserved) for his portrayal of Katharine Hepburn The Aviator by Martin Scorsese, the brilliant actor seems singularly out of place in this fanciful universe, and creates a villain with the consistency of a cartoon character instead of the expected nemesis.
The second pillar (first, some would say) of the failed company is obviously its director, Steven Spielberg. It is true, but you must remember: the Steven Spielberg of 2008 is not the Steven Spielberg of 1989. In almost twenty years, the director has changed fundamentally and so has the animated cinema. Schindler’s List etc We have to save soldier Ryan shows the worst side of Spielberg’s cinema. As well as blockbusters, like Difference Report or World Warwhich shows his cinema grapples with more tragic themes (especially of Purple color or Empire of the Sun had begun to take this path a few years ago) and above all the darkest beauty.
Because the real schism in Steven Spielberg’s filmography is perhaps his decisive meeting with cinematographer Janusz Kaminski, for those who take pictures of the picture. Schindler’s List. Until then, the director changed cinematographers depending on the type of project: Allen Daviau for films that focused more on characters (E.T, Empire of the Sun…), Dean Cundey (former collaborator of John Carpenter and Robert Zemeckis) for films using various special effects (Cough, Jurassic Park) and Douglas Slocombe for the first three Indiana Jones. And it was the work of Slocombe, a veteran of British cinema (he was already 60 years old and had more than seventy films under his belt when he started filming. Raiders of the Lost Ark) which largely creates the aesthetic of the adventureIndy.
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull: lame digital effect
When the fourth part began construction, cinematographer August was almost a hundred years old and almost blind. And Janusz Kaminski has somehow become a part of the work of Steven Spielberg. If some attempts are made to try to capture the style of Douglas Slocombe in the first act of the film, the naturalism of Janusz Kaminski quickly returns in a gallop: burning whites, lights diffused by artificial fog, a film that has a lot Marked: Indiana Jones is definitely not like the previous ones. Purists will appreciate it even less.
Behavior within The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull and the previous parts are all the more gaping as the movies that have been desired by the computer generated images since the beginning of the 1990 fourth opus is not behind, unfortunately, for the worse. Rather discreet in the first half of the film, computer-generated imagery bursts into the second, a long sequence of chases and fights in a South American jungle.
Moreover, it is this second part that brings together the most damaging mistakes of the film: The plot is scattered in unnecessary plot twists (we can no longer read Mac’s jacket changes), while the characters are surrounded by enormous scenes: the three dimensions sink into the dizzying. digital waterfalls do not forget the amazing process in the airship at the speeds in the beginning ofIndiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.
The slowness of the action, combined with the unrealistic scenario and the lame digital effects, thus weigh on this second act, which does not redeem the open epilogue, certainly touching, but it is correct. Citizens were not hard at that time, which gave the film an enviable place at the box office in 2008: second after The Dark Knight by Christopher Nolan, for his international exploitation, and third in the United States, after the same The Dark Knight and another superhero movie, iron Man by Jon Favreau. A sign that a new era has begun for animated cinema.
So, in light, The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull ? Not necessarily. Like any episode of the saga that sold our youth, we agree with its (big) mistakes, even if it is clearly below what we have the right to expect from a Spielberg film. And after all, Hollywood has made us very bad blockbusters. part five, Indiana Jones and the Clock of Destiny, which will be screened on the Croisette this Wednesday evening (May 18, like 2008!) and will be released in theaters on May 28, will it redeem this mistake? There are still doubts!
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