Nuking the Fridge: A Reexamination of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

Recently I saw Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull in theaters for the second time. I'm a true Indiana Jones fanatic--hung above my desk, right next to my computer, are all four movie posters, framed--so when I saw the film for the first time, most of my response to it was as from the view of a fan who had read over ten years' worth of rumors and reports (basically, from when I first got internet access) about a fourth Indiana Jones movie. Even so, my analytical brain went into action when I saw it the first time, and there were a number of things that intrigued me about the film. I don't consider it a particularly good movie: I think it's certainly the weakest of the four, and what I have to say here is not meant to elevate the quality of the movie in any way. But there were things that seemed to deserve further thought than usual with the simple popcorn entertainment that I consider Indiana Jones, and so on my second viewing I went in with an eye for something more. Spoilers from here on, for all four Indiana Jones films.

What I realized, or decided, or constructed, was that The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is not just a new movie about Indiana Jones; it is a movie about the death of Indiana Jones--the idea of Indiana Jones, the persona separate from the person of Henry Jones, Jr. Upon thinking about it, this is really strikingly obvious. After all, the film ends with Indiana Jones getting married, something that could not even be contemplated with regards to the Indy of the original trilogy, and an almost literal passing-of-the-hat to Indy's son (although "Mutt Jones and the whatever" doesn't seem to me as something that would play well on a movie poster). But it's not simply the death of one man's adventuring career, it's the death of the entire idea of adventuring for "fortune and glory" (as Indy famously quips in The Temple of Doom), of death-defying stunts against insidious villains, of mysterious artifacts of ancient and unknown power. More than that, it's the death of the unrepentant American optimism of the thirties and forties, when Americans believed in an American dream despite the Great Depression and later believed in their absolute righteousness in the fight against the Nazis, so gloriously demonstrated in the adventure serials that the original Indiana Jones trilogy were inspired by. The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is about the end of an era.

In the real world, that unrepentant optimism and absolute righteousness was brought to an abrupt, shocking halt by the atomic bomb, and so it is in The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. There are signs throughout the opening scenes, of course, but the audience doesn't want to see them. At this point we're still looking for another Indiana Jones story just like the previous three (or more, if, like me, you've read the books and played the video games). There's something dark and violently wrong about bringing Indiana Jones to The Warehouse, the site where the Ark of the Covenant was housed at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark by the US government; in Raiders it represented the Ark's being once again lost and forgotten. To return to that mythical place, to identify it (as Area 51, according to the gigantic numbers on the warehouse doors), to violate it and bring it into reality, and then to go even further and rampage through it recklessly in an elaborate chase sequence is very, very disturbing to anyone intimately familiar with the original film. But we--or at least I tried to--write it off as a bizarre anomaly but nothing more, ignore it, wait for the film to get to the real Indiana Jones.

Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)
That all ends with the nuking of the fridge. Urban Dictionary already has it listed as the new "jumping the shark". (Unfortunately, I doubt it will supersede the old term despite its colorfullness simply because "jumping the shark" is a very well-entrenched phrase.) Indiana Jones, finding himself in an absurdly chirpy reproduction of a fifties town being used as a test site for an atomic detonation, hides himself in a refrigerator. The nuclear blast destroys the entire town and sends the helpfully lead-lined fridge flying several hundred yards (if not more); somehow, Indy emerges relatively unharmed. It's an absolutely absurd and incomprehensible moment that makes the various stunts of the earlier movies look positively mundane. But, I say, that's the point.

In my Facebook Flixter review (God forgive me), I asked, "What is the use of the Ark of the Covenant or the Holy Grail in a world with the atom bomb?" The answer, of course, is none. But what I failed to realize then was that the atom bomb not only obviates the desire for those ancient powers, but makes impossible the quests that sought them. We might believe that Indiana Jones can survive a giant pit filled with deadly snakes or a battle with a tank, but we cannot ever believe that he could survive a nuclear blast. No one can. The atomic bomb means the death of one man making a difference, the death of death-defying stunts that thrill and amaze, and the death of adventurers seeking fortune and glory. How did Indiana Jones survive the nuke? Any realistic answer to that question is of necessity not exciting and not Indiana Jones-like. Maybe the Russian jeep he passes actually picked him up (although it's later shown destroyed in the blast); maybe he simply wandered in the other direction when he got lost in the desert and never ended up there in the first place. Whatever the answer is, it's not the answer we want to see. And so the film gives us what we want to see, even though it's impossible, and we hate it for it.

(If you doubt that this is the intent, consider the moment immediately after Indy emerges from the fridge. He climbs the hill to view the aftermath of the destruction, and the famous Indy silhouette, which introduced the character in Raiders, is framed against the mushroom cloud. For a fan of the series it's a perverse and disturbing image, even moreso than the return to The Warehouse. And again, that's the point. It's the most direct statement of what the film is about, beyond dialogue or characters or plot.)

(Consider also that whereas in the previous films, Indy displayed a general disdain for governments and authority in general--e.g., his interaction with the US government agents in Raiders, of course, but also his apparent total disregard for laws regarding the extraction of antiquities hinted at in the opening of Raiders ["I won't ask how you got them, of course," Marcus says knowingly] and referenced throughout all three movies--in The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull Indy has apparently served not just in the military, which would be expected due to the draft in World War II, but also as a field officer of the CIA, an association that bears little relevance to the plot and struck me as exceedingly unlikely and disturbing on my first viewing. But I think it can be explained as a facet of the same phenomenon: in the atomic world, Indy can't do the work he did and can't survive by himself. The new adventurers are spies, funded and supported by governments, not lone agents working for themselves.)

The flip-side of the atom bomb, which I just touched on above, is the death of the idea of the power of the ancients. Hitler was famously obsessed with the Occult and the secret weapons he believed it could provide him, the obsession that served as the basis for the Nazis' being Indy's perennial foe. In the world of the atom bomb, no one needs the Ark of the Covenant, but it's more than that. The atom bomb represents the greatest accomplishment of science; it is the end result of the forward-thinking, optimistic Scientific Revolution that jubilantly declared the irrelevance of the past and a bright future in which mankind would "know everything" as Cate Blanchett's villain cries near the conclusion of The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. (Shortly after the development of the atom bomb, the conclusions of quantum mechanics became better known and the idea of anyone ever knowing "everything" became laughable.)

Indiana Jones--both the character and the original films--live on the idea that we don't know everything. They are centrally about mysteries, ancient unknown power, the things we do not know. In Raiders, while the Ark of the Covenant is discussed as a religious artifact, Indy initially dismisses any divine power as "hocus pocus" and even with the eventual revelation of its power there is nothing particularly divine about it. There is no message from God at the end of the movie, just some kind of spirits that slaughter the Nazis who dare open it. It could be the power of God, or it could be an alien device left over from an ancient visitation, or it could be something else. We don't know, and that's the point. The final film in the original trilogy, The Last Crusade, makes this point even more explicit, with the Holy Grail that cannot be removed from the remote, hidden temple that holds it; an attempt to do so results in the death of the heroine/villainess and the near-death of Indy, who only survives when his father convinces him to "let it go".

At left: Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989). At right: the atom bomb detonation over Nagasaki (source).
This is in obvious contrast, of course, to the conclusion of The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. There's no mystery as to what created the eponymous artifact: it was a race of "extradimensional" creatures, aliens, who came to Earth long ago to guide the peoples of the Earth and study them. (And consider the archaeological nature of the aliens: instead of pursuing ancient peoples, Indy finds himself pursuing an ancient, alien version of himself. There is no greater sign of the death of mystery when, looking for it, you are confronted only with a mirror.) There are coy references to Roswell and beings not of this Earth throughout the film, but like the Warehouse and the nuke, we don't want to see that--at least, when I first saw it, I was completely convinced (despite rumors I had heard to the contrary) that Cate Blanchett's villain would turn out to be wrong and Indy would be vindicated in his laughing disregard for her ideas of "men from Mars". (The first time I saw the movie, I honestly almost felt like crying at the end, but I was too baffled and confused to do so.)

Ironically, I'm an atheist with a great interest in science and an intense desire for knowledge and learning; yet I was distraught at the death of mystery the film told. Perhaps it's because I'm a die-hard Indiana Jones fan, and therefore was looking for more of the same, or perhaps it's because in my own search for knowledge I've realized, too, that knowledge is infinitely ephermeral. But the film seems to realize this, too: when Cate Blanchett's character asks the alien visitors, in return for returning the crystal skull, to "tell [her] everything [they] know", begs to "know everything". . . her head explodes. Literally. You can't know everything, and to try means self-destruction. But the film also won't allow its characters to stay in the dark. Some mystery must die; some progress is inevitable.

For all the lost mystery and adventure and fun and optimism and innocence, however, there is a bright side; or perhaps, better put, there is a dark side to all that The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull takes away. The film ends in marriage, remember, something impossible to concieve of in the earlier films. Why? Because Indiana Jones is a serial womanizer. While perhaps not a sexist of the calibre of James Bond (if only in that he usually sticks to one woman per film), the constant appearance of a new "love" interest (and undiscussed disappearance of the old), a characteristic of the same serials and a trope of the same era that inspired Indiana Jones, is undeniably an ugly blemish on the character and the films. They're sexist and arguably misogynist. (For a long time I thought of Raiders' Marion as a strong female character. Then I went back and actually watched the movie with an eye for it. Despite her personality, she spends most of the film captured and needing rescue from Indy, and rarely does she actually accomplish anything for herself. I was quite disappointed to have been so wrong for so long.)

With the death of mystery and adventure, there comes also a birth of responsibility and respect. In the world of the atom bomb Indiana Jones can no longer make his way through life doing whatever he damn well pleases, surviving by the skin of his teeth with sheer determination. He has to learn to take responsibility for his actions and respect others. Indiana Jones has to grow up.

At left: Sean Conner as James Bond in Dr. No (1962). At right: a wedding (photo by Ziko van Dijk).
On my first viewing it was surreal to listen to Indy, after learning that Mutt is his son, telling him (contrary to what he said a few scenes earlier, before he was aware of the boy's parentage) that he has to go back to school, and generally talking like a parent. Indiana Jones is not a parent, and cannot be a parent, although Henry Jones, Jr., might be. He knows it, too, and fears it just as much: whereas in The Last Crusade Professor Jones told his students that "ninety percent of all archaeology is done in the library" and that archaeologists "do not follow maps to buried treasure, and X never, ever marks the spot", in The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull he tells a student he needs to "get out of the library", and his highest praise for Professor Oxley is that "he spent most of his life in the field". The young, adventuring, globe-trotting Indy who spent his days in search of fortune and glory could tell his students that archaeology was done in the library; but when that has become the reality for him, when adventuring and mystery are dead, he urges them to seize what they can of what remains.

There's a moment near the middle of the film, just after Indy learns that Mutt as his son, when after escaping a dry sand pit in the jungle with the help of a snake he comments under his breath, "This is intolerable!" Indy fans recognize this immediately as one of the catchphrases of Henry Jones, Sr., in The Last Crusade, and here it's a sly (or not so sly, depending on your generosity) reference to the evolution of Indy into the father and authority figure he spent the original films avoiding (and avoiding being--compare his treatment of Short Round in The Temple of Doom to his treatment of Mutt in The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull). It's a sad moment, really, because the evolution to parenthood, authority, maturity should not mean becoming your parents--if that was the case, how would anything ever change? Every cycle of growth and rebirth would be the same. But I think it's just a knowing wink, not a statement of intent of character development; Indy is not about to become his father, just a father.

There's of course been much discussion of the conclusion of the film and its apparent passing-of-the-hat to Mutt and Shia LaBeouf. And while I don't doubt that Spielberg and Lucas and their production companies are seriously considering continuing the franchise in such a fashion, it's hard, watching The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, to see exactly where they expect to go from here. In the world they have presented--a thematically faithful world of the fifties, I think and have argued--there's no room for Indiana Jones, or anyone like him. That's the point of the movie: Indy, and everyone else, has to grow up. So what do they expect their Henry Jones III to do? I don't know, and I expect they don't either, but--for better or for worse--I'll probably be there to watch it, because no matter what they do, I'm an Indiana Jones fan to the end. Who else could write this bullshit justification for a mediocre movie?