Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skulls of Doom

Having just seen the latest Indiana Jones offering from Lucas and Spielberg, I will give a mere nod to my one semester post graduate work in Film and offer one comment as a Movie Critic rather than a TH Blogger. The film makes it obvious L&S are, as Indy is, no longer young.  Where the other Indys romped, this one jogs–with a stitch in its side. Still worth seeing, though.

Spoiler alert! I will now discuss my OTHER problems with L&S with references to the Film.  If you don’t want to know, don’t read further.

If I said to you, "1957", what’s a good Ann Coulter fearing, TH reader like yourself going to think? The Myth of McCarthyism (sp?) right? We now KNOW, from Coulter’s research, other books,  various de-classified intercepts, the Mitrokhin KGB files etc, etc, etc, that Joe was RIGHT and there WERE a BUNCH of Reds in the States working very hard to destroy us. The Mitrokhin Files revealed every single department of FDR’s Wartime Cabinet had a Code Named Soviet Agent IN PLACE! Wallace, FDR’s first Veep, had already picked two for Secretary of the Treasury and Secretary of State should FDR have croaked earlier. Is it reasonable to believe they all packed up and went home at the end of WWII?

And consider this, while at Duke, I had a conversation with a grad-student who had worked with a scholar researching McCarthy. He said the research now shows it was NOT TV or Hollywood that brought an end to the hearings, but IKE, when the Truth Light got turned on the PENTAGON! Ike covered for his ring-knocker West Point buddies.

So, given the fact the TRUTH is now quite easily learned, it is a BIG Disappointment that L&S can’t resist the inertia of the Hollywood Big Lie concerning McCarthy. Note the following annoying incongruities–discontinuities in film jargon.

SPOILER ALERT!

The film opens with a Spetnaz (did they call it that in 57?) unit shooting its way into Area 51!–AND a Nuke Test site. So we’ve already established, in the first ten minutes, that the Commies ARE in the US, quite undetected, and capable of great damage! They KNOW that Alien remains are there. Now how did they find THAT out? Then Indy’s bud from MI-6 turns out to be a Red Double Agent! And we do KNOW that the Brits were COMPLETELY penetrated from the 30's on! The Head Red (Boris and Natasha with no Boris, but with skills and a killer tude) throws up to Indy the quote from Oppenheimer (sp?) "I am become the destroyer of worlds", but neither Natasha, or ex-OSS Indy seems to know that members of Oppenheimer’s team were SOVIET AGENTS! L&S seem to have forgotten this too.

By the way, I’d sure like to hear how Lucas figures the God of the Ark (the "top men" put it in the same warehouse with the alien) who kicked some serious Nazi Asz, feels about the Saucer Driving Hive Mind of this installment. As Indy says, "depends on who your God is". One wonders about Lucas’. The Aliens were hors de combat when the Ark was beamed up and sent back down. Different group of Saucer Men, George?  Later on Indy finds artifacts from "every ancient civilization" at the saucer site and theorizes of the aliens "they’re archeologists". So how come THEY didn’t have the Ark?

By the way Number 2. Would some great researcher out there determine if the term "Deity Object" had really replaced "Idol" by 1957 even if only in Academia? Was political correctness THAT early?

To continue: Then there is the chase scene through the College Campus. All the student activists are holding up RED banners that say, if I read it right, "Better DEAD than Red"! Now that, as I recall, is the exact OPPOSITE of the saying common among commiequeers of the time (and we now KNOW that every major anti-nuke group was being manipulated by the Commies–hell even M.L King had one on staff). "Better Red then Dead" was the Ban the Bomb Phrase and it came STRAIGHT from Moscow! Indy tells us he is ex-OSS and had spent "years spying on the Reds", and he doesn’t know this?

Rather he gets all bent outa shape when the FBI has problems with his friendship with a now KNOWN Commie double agent! He complains that "our Government is telling us there are Reds everywhere!" Well DUH, Indy–didn’t you just SHOW us THERE WERE!!!? Of course Indy gets blacklisted and his Dean resigns and they both complain bitterly about McCarthyism without ever using the word. Indy’s army buddy rescues him from the FBI saying "not everybody in the Pentagon is a commie." Does Lucas now admit some WERE!!!?

It’s not only the same ol same ol Hellywood Commie Propaganda, it’s not even INTERNALLY consistent in the Narrative of the Film. I think it was Spielberg, though it might have been Lucas, that was quoted as saying during the filming of Indy 1, "we’re making a B movie here folks." Well, Indy 1,2 and 3 proved not to be. I’m afraid 4 is, and it is L&S’s commiequeer inertia that makes it so. Shopworn is the word.

 Part 2–"he Kingdom of the Crystal Skulls of Doom"follows.

The big mick