Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull Blu-ray Disc (Steven Spielberg, 2008)

Paramount (USA)
2.40:1 1080p
122 minutes
Audio: Dolby TrueHD 5.1 English; DD 5.1 French; DD 5.1 Spanish
Subtitles: Optional English, English SDH, French, Spanish, Portuguese
Extras: Indiana Jones Timelines; The Return of a Legend; Pre-production; The Making of Kingdom of the Crystal Skull; Pre-visualization Sequences; Galleries; trailers

Released: 14 October 2008
slim double Blu-ray case

Film scholars tend to discourage “biographical” readings of movies as it’s too easy to fall into lazy habits of attributing anything and everything to “psychological” motivations. Yet, sometimes, movies are clearly biographical. For example, George Lucas initially wanted the eponymous hero to meet a long-lost daughter in a fourth Indiana Jones effort, but Steven Spielberg wanted a father-son relationship (again). Also, Spielberg’s recent time at Paramount after the studio bought his DreamWorks outfit was beset by general unpleasantries. Therefore, Spielberg got his payback by morphing the Paramount mountain logo into a prairie dog mound that gets run over by a car.

To be honest, I’m not quite sure why Spielberg and Lucas wanted another Indiana Jones outing. Harrison Ford has been in some duds lately, but Spielberg and Lucas have enough money to bail Iceland out of that country’s bankruptcy. What we got was Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, a re-tread of Raiders of the Lost Ark (when Indy packs for his trip), Temple of Doom (Indy’s relationship with a rebellious young boy), Last Crusade (a female antagonist), and Close Encounters of the Third Kind (a climax dominated by an orgy of special effects about aliens). Okay, the whole point of sequels is to see familiar elements again, yes, but if I had wanted to sit through a “greatest hits” montage of Spielberg and Lucas’s careers, then I would’ve watched an awards show. Also, there are too many scenes with expository dialogue that cause the movie to stop dead for extended stretches.

As it is, Kingdom of the Crystal Skull has several excellent set pieces, including a jungle car chase that is as tense as any in the series. My family, my girlfriend, and I all laughed and giggled a lot during the first half. However, the second half is so over-plotted and over-populated that our minds were out the theatre door ten minutes before our bodies were.

George? I have a great title for the next installment--Indiana Jones and the Beating of a Dead Horse.

Video:
The SD DVD picture is rather soft, and the Blu-ray’s 2.40:1 1080p video presentation has similar handicaps. This can be attributed to the heavy use of CGI, which will usually look fuzzy and blurry compared to real objects. This can also be attributed to cinematographer Janusz Kaminski’s predilection for flooding the camera with a variety of light sources. I know that everyone talked about how they tried to match the movie’s visual style with the previous movies’, but Kaminski wound up doing his own thing again. The source print is squeaky clean (par for the course these days), and color hues are dark and intense. The Blu-ray’s image much sharper and more detailed than the SD DVD’s, but this is to be expected with the increased resolution.

Audio:
Lucas and Spielberg have always been enthusiastic proponents of sound as integral parts of the movie-viewing experience (even though their neo-classical style essentially negates the need for sound since visuals reinforce one another in favor of linear storytelling). Therefore, you get a reference-quality Dolby TrueHD 5.1 English audio track from the duo. The mix is quite busy and active, though during the relatively still moments, the audio does an excellent job of conveying mood and tension with low-key sound effects and a top-notch reproduction of John Williams’s music score. Dialogue is always crisp. As well as the SD DVD’s audio handled bass extensions, the TrueHD’s bass is truly window-rattling, especially during the overblown climax.

Extras:
Just about all of the Extras are presented in high-def video. The boon to having the Extras in high-def is the chance to see footage of the other three movies in high-def.

--Disc 1--
“Indiana Jones Timelines” is an interactive feature with different timelines showing the progression of the production and related incidents. “The Return of a Legend” introduces viewers to the long process of getting this movie started in the first place. “Pre-production” shows some of the preparations that were undertaken before principal photography could begin. You also get two trailers.

--Disc 2--
“The Making of Kingdom of the Crystal Skull” is a twelve-part documentary about the movie’s genesis, though to be honest, Laurent Bouzereau is too laudatory for my tastes. He makes everyone look like a genius who can do no wrong, and while Bouzereau stop short of fawning, there is no sense of perspective with his approach. While we see and learn a lot about the crew’s methodology, the documentary doesn’t impart a sense of how movies become cohesive wholes.

There are three “Pre-visualization Sequences”, which are basically animation run-throughs of camera set-ups for some of the movie’s action sequences. You also get several Galleries filled with stills of conceptual art and on-set action.