Flasz On Film

With the recent release of Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, the series about the iconic maverick professor-turned-graverobber – according to many – has joined the club of the recently resurrected properties with the use of the Hollywood’s dark magic of nostalgia. But as the world was coming to terms with their position on this new addition to the franchise and whether it would have been a better idea not to drag Harrison Ford out of his armchair for one last hurrah, we somehow forgot that the Indiana Jones series had already had its go at the nostalgia roulette, and that in fact it could be held at least partially responsible for why we have seen so many of our favourite characters come back for more.  

Now, the concept of a nostalgia or legacy sequel isn’t new at all and if you squint, you could probably appropriate a definition that would include Martin Scorsese’s Color of Money or Jack Nicholson’s The Two Jakes as legacy successors to The Hustler and Chinatown respectively. And indeed, as you sift through the data you will find isolated examples of – usually stunningly unsuccessful – returns of once well-regarded movies. Have you seen Blues Brothers 2000? Even The Godfather Part III would probably be filed under N for Nostalgia, if we were to apply the consensus understanding of what a legacy sequel is, which is an addition to a longstanding franchise made long after (Ten years? Fifteen years?) the last instalment had seen the light of day where old characters are brought back to coexist with a new generation of leads.  

Similarly to early comic book movies, nostalgia-driven sequels have always been present in the zeitgeist, but until a critical mass was reached, they could never get their heads enough above the parapet for people to take notice, and more importantly, for Hollywood bean counters to latch onto the possibility of making money from their intrinsic powers. Again, similarly to comic book movies, I think the turning point came in 2008. We all can recognize how in the same year The Dark Knight and Iron-Man saw the light of day and showed that (a) comic book movies can be more lucrative than anyone ever dreamed, and (b) even so-called B-tier superheroes had the potential to make bank. This was the watershed moment for a craze that turned a comic book movie into not only a genre unto itself but into essentially the western of our time, but it wasn’t the end.  

2008 also saw the release of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, the fourth addition to the iconic franchise. It came nineteen years after The Last Crusade, reunited Harrison Ford with Karen Allen and introduced Shia LaBeouf’s character as a prospective torchbearer for the series. It had the Soviets instead of the Nazis, a bunch of truck chases, a nuclear explosion and Cate Blanchett as a rather formidable villain. And, despite the fact it had a mixed reception at the time, it still made nearly eight hundred million at the box office, thus convincing studio moguls that it was after all possible to make loads of money out of properties they had in storage. The stage was set for Jurassic Park, Star Wars, Star Trek, Tron and literally every movie you can think of to come back over the course of the next fifteen years with at least one, if not more, legacy sequels.  

What remains even more intriguing in this regard is the simple fact that Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is almost never mentioned in the conversation about nostalgia sequels, let alone as a key element of why this trend has become so popular over the years. In fact, you are much more likely to find a listicle online mentioning the 2006 Rocky Balboa as an early example of a nostalgia sequel, a movie which made considerably less money at the box office than The Crystal Skull. And it is even more fascinating if you dig into the history of how this movie got made, how long it took to get it off the ground, how many people and of what calibre were involved (M. Night Shyamalan and Chris Columbus had a poke at writing a draft, and Jeffrey Boam who had penned The Last Crusade, was also approached to write his take) and just how much tugging and pulling producing this movie took. It’s a miracle The Crystal Skull exists and probably now, as you are reading it, you are more likely to react to the word “miracle” with disgust of a cat who just came across an onion, than with genuine appreciation for this feat.  

Look, the movie came out in 2008 and made nearly a billion dollars at the box office. In fact, adjusted for inflation, it made just about as much as Barbie did this summer. It was an outright success, especially in a year of diminished receipts and overall economic instability. Against the backdrop of the US housing market collapsing on itself and the world economy creaking at the seams as it contracted, the fourth Indiana Jones movie came third at the domestic box office and second worldwide. It was a blockbuster, alright? And somehow, it is always derided as a failure.  

Is it because of all the aliens-related stuff? It must be; because everything else in the movie is just about what you’d expect out of an Indiana Jones film and in fact, it is what this movie would look like if you wanted to make another nostalgia sequel in the series today with Spielberg at the helm and Janusz Kaminski behind the camera. The only point of contention seems to be the plot element involving the titular crystal skull, its origin and the fact it spins out of an UFO-related craze America went in the 50s. And what’s a little bit ironic about that is that the “space archaeologist” angle was a nostalgic item for both Lucas and Spielberg who grew up watching The Thing from Another World, Invaders from Mars, Them!, etc. So, the filmmakers’ nostalgia was not the right kind of nostalgia needed to make a nostalgia sequel… which is a bit bizarrely unfortunate. But then again, these trailblazers simply didn’t know that had they adopted the optics of a fan who grew up with a poster for The Goonies on his wall and whose dad may have taken him to see The Last Crusade when he was nine or ten, it would have been a much better move for them.

Nevertheless, as time went on, The Crystal Skull became synonymous with “the worst movie in the franchise” despite the fact it was immensely popular at the time. Clearly, viewers in 2008 didn’t mind it all that much and the negatively slanted consensus must have crystallized afterwards, as though to retroactively knock this movie down a peg or two. And if you ask for my opinion, you might as well sit down because I honestly believe that Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is by far and away the second-best entry in the series, behind the frankly untouchable Raiders of the Lost Ark. It’s appropriately serious in its attempt to craft propulsive action set pieces, its villains are formidable and interesting, and it’s all held together pretty well by the central relationship between Indy, Marion and Mutt, aka Henry Jones III… aka the would-be torchbearer for other sequels that never came. It’s nowhere near as infantile as Temple of Doom (not many things are as infantile, come to think of it), Kate Capshaw is not in it and I’d hazard the opinion that Shia LaBeouf’s rapport with Ford is much more organic and convincing than whatever chemistry Ford and Connery had in The Last Crusade.  

Therefore, I’d be willing to adopt a firm stance on this film, which I believe has been unfairly maligned and which seems to have been a pivotal piece in the evolution of the zeitgeist. It seems the arrival of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull and its stunning box office performance contributed to tipping the collective Hollywood mindset busy looking to make a good return on investment with low levels of risk towards adopting these inward-looking returns to franchises long forgotten. Thus, partially thanks to Spielberg, who once in the past played an instrumental part in the genesis of the blockbuster, we have entered the era of legacy sequels in 2008. Together with Indiana Jones. 

Ironically enough, how I feel now about the concept of those sequels is best approximated with the iconic imagery from Raiders of the Lost Ark where Indy swiped a gold statue while replacing it with a bag of sand. It looked like a great idea in principle, but it turned out to be a disaster and now we are all being chased by a big legacy sequel boulder. Still, it was fun at least for a little while and now it feels great to be able to connect this phenomenon to Steven Spielberg himself. And being able to advance at least a somewhat rational argument for why The Crystal Skull is not a bad movie feels even better. So, there.