Put That In Your Fridge And Nuke It
Here’s the latest from /Film
Sitting down to watch “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull” during its opening weekend in May 2008, it was hard to know exactly what to feel. Indy’s return to the big screen after a 19-year absence was certainly cause to celebrate, but was there any way the film could live up to nearly two decades of hype? It didn’t help that, just a few weeks earlier, a little movie called “Iron Man” had burst onto the scene. Already, there was a sense Harrison Ford’s crusty, whip-cracking archaeologist and his adventures were about to become relics of a bygone age of action cinema. One might say they … belonged in a museum.
Ironically, it’s “Crystal Skull” that, in many ways, feels less dated than “Iron Man,” looking back 15 years later. While Jon Favreau’s superhero film is a politically suspect military fantasy, “Crystal Skull” grapples with questions about patriotism and the horrors of the Atomic Age. By that same token, Tony Stark’s billionaire playboy has lost much of his charm, and the idea he could actually have a crisis of conscience seems almost dangerously naive in the face of real-life soulless tech magnates like Elon Musk (who even cameoed as himself during “Iron Man 2”). “Crystal Skull,” on the other hand, was the first film to give us an older Indy who’s shed his more toxic qualities, yet still has the sparkle of a scoundrel in his eyes…
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