Why Indiana Jones Is Like Current John Byrne Art

I will punch you in the throat if you're telling your friends that Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is even half as good as Raiders of the Lost Ark. You and me, we're blood enemies at that point. I slap your cheek with my gauntlet and spit on your shoe.

That being said, it's not a "terrible" movie, as one guy I know insisted over and over during conversation. I didn't walk into the theatre expecting a friggin' Mamet piece.

I was fine with the opening warehouse sequence, I laughed at Spielberg's tongue-in-cheek method of introducing Indy to the "Cold" War, I was only slightly distracted when "Janitor" from Scrubs appeared and gave Jones the third degree, and I thought the ending was entirely apropos for late-'50s-era genre movies.

What was missing was the magic.

I'm not talking a lack of CG or extended action sequences. This had those in abundance. No, I'm talking about the magic found in the details.

27 years ago when Raiders took the box office by storm, my favorite artist was a guy named John Byrne. He was the talent behind several seminal runs in comic titles like Uncanny X-Men, Superman, and Fantastic Four. He was awesome because of the attention to detail he lavished upon every panel. As the years went by, Byrne took on more and more projects and his lack of passion soon became clear on the page. He chalked it up to an "evolving" art style.


The left panel shows Byrne at his peak, circa 1982. Click on the image and compare it to the panel on the right from '99 (which I believe was the last time he drew the FF for Marvel).

This is my roundabout way of telling you that Spielberg and Lucas have drawn the latest Indiana Jones adventure with much broader strokes than they once did, and the result is a pale imitation of the globe-trotting archaeologist I came to know and love.

My favorite moments in Raiders were the little ones. Remember when the rolling boulder came down the incline and Harrison Ford had that look in his eyes that said, "Jeez!" Or when the bald, bare-knuckled Nazi hit Indy so hard his legs wobbled? What about when Belloq was monologuing like a good villain should and that fucking bug crawled into his mouth while he talked--and he didn't notice?!

Magic moments like those are entirely lacking in Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. And lingering on a portrait of Sean Connery doesn't count in my book.

I expect shabby work like that from George Lucas, but not Spielberg.*

Now if you'll excuse me, I just dug out a pile of FF comics from the '80s and they're calling my name.

* I can think of three moments in War of the Worlds alone that qualify as proof that Spielberg still knows his shit: the thrown-sammich-on-the-window scene, the swooping tracking shot in and out of the family's car as it races down the highway, and the lingering shot on the basement door when Cruise confronts Tim Robbins.