I have been meaning to start the Second Take series for a while, I foreshadowed it a couple of times when talking about movies that I was disappointed in such as X-Files and of course Indy 4.

The basics of the Second Take are simple, sometimes I’ll watch a film and have a certain reaction to it which seems to be the polar opposite to a bunch of other people.  I mean sure, people have different tastes etc, however more often than not the differences in opinion that I take notice of are from people I respect.  So I figure there must be something there, and many times I’ve promised myself that I will go back and rewatch the movie in question with an open mind to try and work it out.

The first film I’m doing this with is Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (Indy 4).  I warn you now that there will no doubt be spoilers in this article and I won’t be offended if you don’t read on, also this is a very long post and those of you with Hulk like attention spans may wish to skip to the end and leave the obligatory ‘I read the title but didn’t bother reading the article’ comment.

When I first saw the trailer for Indy 4 I felt a stirring in my heart as I watched a childhood hero being resurrected especially as the trailer seemed to really capture the greatness of Indiana Jones, I wrote about how excited I was and what a great idea it was bringing the character back.

When I actually saw the film I was crushed.

It was awful, horrible and insulting.  At least that was my initial reaction and I quickly made my way online to bathe in the glow of millions of other Indy geeks declaring the same thing and yeah, there were plenty of others out there who felt the same way, but then there were a bunch more who actually liked it!?!

It made a bunch of money, not that this is an indication of success but word of mouth certainly didn’t seem to dent the film.  Did I just not get it?  Was I too attached to the old ways that I judged it too harshly?  Surely Temple of Doom wasn’t as stupid?!

Time to find out.

So I knew they were coming up front and so I prepared myself for them but honestly unnecessary CGI gophers outside of Caddyshack are always going to get me offside.  They are as bad as I remembered and so stupidly out of place that I groaned out loud seeing them again.  But that being said the opening car scenes are all fine, they set the tone of the era and get the action rolling immediately and my complaints about the lack of security at Area 51 are easily put aside.

Harrison Ford is still Indiana Jones, he’s great, the age of the character doesn’t worry me in the slightest.  His ‘double double agent’ friend on the other hand is stupid, sooooo stupid and obvious.  The villains are generic and I think I hated them more because of the overall film rather than them as villains so I have no real issues there on second viewing.

I do have to talk about the fridge scene though before moving on.

Dumbest scene ever.

This is the problem, I am being slapped in the face as an intelligent viewer of the film when you ask me to believe that anyone would have survived the explosion, the heat, the radiation and the smashing into the ground.  Suspension of disbelief is one thing, complete and utter abandonment of any sensible notion of reality is quite the other.  Don’t try and defend the scene, I watched it again, carefully and I can’t forgive it.

Stupid.

Enter Shia LaBeouf as Mutt, Indy’s long lost son.  Initially I disliked his Marlon Brando impression but in the second take it doesn’t really bother me and he is completely passable, to me he seems like a good enough actor given some horrible stuff to work with (no doubt the same as his role in Transformers).  I could do without The Wild One homage as it steals his own introduction to the film.

The magic hat.

Being details driven I often find it distracting when things are missed, Indy loses his hat I think three times in this film only to have the magic hat come back which is good and all as it is a very iconic hat but it doesn’t actually much very much sense.  Of course this is a nit pick.

I am uncomfortable with the way they awkwardly included references to Brody and Jones Sr, including that horrible statue scene and the publicity photos on Indy’s desk.  Of course I’m descending into more nit picking, although you have to forgive me one last nit pick.

When I was a young man and Temple of Doom was just released I joined some Indiana Jones club which sent me one whole newsletter and some stickers.  In that newsletter it talked about vines in the jungle and how Tarzan couldn’t really swing through the jungle because most vines are connected to jungle floor as well.  Then it is twenty something years later and Mutt goes swinging through the jungle using the very vines that the Indy newsletter told me that they couldn’t use.

That just hurts man.

The alien storyline doesn’t even irritate me, I don’t think it did the first time around either but I know a lot of people hated that aspect of the story, frankly I found the CIA / Military stuff more unwatchable.  The skull’s mysterious powers grew more and more confusing as they came and went depending on the need of the storyline and I don’t really feel the climax to the skull’s storyline really paid off.

The wedding sequence right at the end seemed as awkward as Karen Allen’s grin is all through the film, and groans of  stomach turning ensues with the magic hat trying to latch itself onto Mutt.

The final word is that I feel justified in disliking this film on its own merits, in fact it is my love of the franchise that is constantly fighting and trying to convince me that the flaws aren’t nearly so bad as they are.  The cast are all excellent and I enjoyed seeing Ford as Indy again but the little face slaps all through the film force me not to love it.

Verdict: I was right the first time.

PS The Indy 5 podcast should be up for this weekend, tell your friends, tell your enemies, just don’t tell Emma…