Okay, okay…no more mentions of Uncle Festus. The first-anywhere teaser for Indiana Jones and the Temple of the Crystal Skull is a kind of comic-flamboyant Festus refutation. Too old and tired to play Indy again? Too much of a graybeard Hillary Clinton supporter to direct an Indy film as well as they were directed 21 to 27 years ago? Eat our dust, Festus naysayers!
After the reviewing-the-last-three-Indy films intro (which consists of 40% of the teaser’s length) and an homage to the iconic Indy fedora, it starts off with a clip of a cockney-accented Ray Winstone saying, “This ain’t gonna be easy” and Harrison Ford, standing next to him, saying, “Not as easy as it used to be.”
Then comes the heavy artillery: a series of Harold Lloyd-like CG action sequences that show the past-retirement-age Ford doing stunts that are much wilder and more acrobatic than anything he’s ever done before in these films. Got it.
Then comes the “sell” footage that assures that Crystal Skull is just as much of a popcorn wow as the others. There’s a glimpse of a scene in a warehouse with thousands of wooden crates (the same one in which the Ark of the Covenant was stored at the end of Raiders?), six or seven clips of the South American action scenes with sexy Russian baddie Cate Blanchett barking orders, spear-carrying natives in loincloths, four ancient stone pillars coming together to form a single column….lots and lots of CG that looks like CG. This in itself clearly sets this latest Indy against all the others, which used visual effects, of course, but none this lavish or show-offy.
No aliens, of course. Depicted, I mean. The closest it gets is a very brief clip of a box with the words “Roswell, New Mexico, 1947.”
It looks great, lots of fun and thrills, a barrel of monkeys, I’m there, etc.
He protected the power of the divine. He saved the cradle of civilization. He triumphed over the armies of evil. He smoked a lot of pot and fell asleep in the back of a car once next to a soundstage, but he ate healthily and watched his weight and worked out like a demon before shooting started.
