Lucasfilm is currently hard at work on a fifthIndiana Jonesmovie. Steven Spielberg has stepped down from the director’s chair, but Harrison Ford is still donning the fedora (despite the fact he’s pushing 80). The purpose of this new sequel is supposedly to make up forthe disappointment of the previous movie, 2008’sIndiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.
But even if the script forIndiana Jones 5is masterfully crafted from start to finish andSpielberg’s replacement James Mangoldbrings the same bittersweet sense of finality that he brought to 2017’sLogan, the new Indy movie will inevitably end up doubling down on the biggest problem with the last one.
RELATED:Indiana Jones 5 Has The Perfect Director To Replace Spielberg
There’s certainlya lot wrong withKingdom of the Crystal Skull. The pacing is uncharacteristically slow, the fridge-nuking scene is ridiculous, Shia LaBeouf’s Mutt Williams is nowhere near compelling enough to take the torch of the franchise from Indy – the list of egregious problems with this movie is practically endless. But, specific issues aside, the main problem withCrystal Skullwas simply that a fourthIndiana Jonesmovie wasn’t necessary.
1989’sIndiana Jones and the Last Crusadealready provided the perfect ending for Indy’s story, so any sequel would inevitably feel contrived (and, unsurprisingly,Crystal Skulldid). The point of the fifth movie might be to make up for the disappointment ofCrystal Skull, but that’s inherently impossible because it’ll justtake Indy further down the reboot rabbit holeaway from what was already the perfect conclusion to his on-screen adventures.
The emotional crux ofLast Crusadeis Indy’s relationship with his estranged father Henry Jones, Sr., played by Sean Connery, and the MacGuffin is the Holy Grail, arguably the most famous fabled artifact of all time. The opening sequencegives Indy a spectacular origin storywith a young River Phoenix masterfully capturing the essence of Ford’s performance with more boyish naivety. And in the final scene, after Indy has saved his father’s life and takes his advice to let the Grail go, Indy, his father, Brody, and Sallah all ride off into the sunset, like the final shot of so many classic westerns, set to John Williams’ “Raiders March.” It’s one of the greatest movie endings of all time, and the ideal stopping point for Indy’s adventures.
All signs pointed toLast Crusadebeing the big finale. In fact, its title basically means “final adventure.” Indy reconnecting with his father – played beautifully by Ford and Connery, who are surprisingly convincing as a father-son duo – provided the character with more emotional depth than either of the previous movies, and gave the audience closure on his backstory (and his bright future). But, Hollywood being Hollywood, a fourth movie was eventually produced. And fans didn’t like it, so a fifth movie is also being produced to redeem the mistakes of the fourth one. This is an ultimately futile effort, though, because the fourth movie’s biggest mistake was existing.
The originalIndiana Jonestrilogy stands asa near-perfect masterpiece of action cinema. These newer movies with an older Indy and a bunch of CGI feel more like an afterthought or an epilogue than a real addition to this iconic story. There is some hope in Mangold’s hiring.Loganoffered the perfect conclusion to Hugh Jackman’s on-screen arc as Wolverine, so there’s a chance that he has the same thing planned for Harrison Ford’s stint as Indy. But what are the chances of catching lightning in a bottle twice?
The only newIndiana Jonesmovie that fans would welcome would be one that recaptures the pulpy spirit of the original trilogy. Butthe old-school filmmaking techniquesthat made the Indy’s original adventures so visceral and thrilling are no longer used in today’s Hollywood. This was an issue withCrystal Skullthat will only be exacerbated in the Marvel-dominated industry of the 2020s. After the first three movies offered some of the most impressive practical stunt work ever captured on film,Kingdom of the Crystal Skullwas awash with hideous CGI.
What’s worse is that these effects were used to create characters and scenes that should never be in anIndiana Jonesmovie anyway: Shia LaBeouf swings around the jungle with a bunch of computer-generated monkeys and the climactic set piece has a bunch of computer-generated aliens sitting in a circle.Indiana Jones 5will undoubtedly make the same mistake, because it’s in studios’ best interests to follow industry trends than to go against the grain.
As disappointing as it would be forKingdom of the Crystal Skullto be the definitive conclusion of theIndiana Jonesseries, the fifth movie has no hope of improving on it, because fans already got the perfect ending to Indy’s story. No version ofIndiana Jones 5could provide a more satisfying conclusion to this series than Indy riding off into the sunset with his father and his two best friends.
MORE:Indiana Jones 5: Now Is The Time For A Satisfying End To This Franchise
