Over the weekend, I went to watch the highly-anticipated Indiana Jones movie. Initially wanted to watch the 9.30pm show but my ride came late and we didn’t buy our tickets earlier (or reserve any seats) so I kinda expected that we might not be able to make that show. It being the 3rd day since its premiere, I was right. We arrived at the Star cineplex at 9pm and by then, the only seats vacant were those at the very front rows! STIFF NECK ALERT!!! So, we decided to catch the next show instead – 10.30pm – and even that was almost full already. Fortunately, we managed to get seats on the G aisle – just nice…
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of The Crystal Skull
And the movie? It was freakin awesome!!! 
I remembered watching Indiana Jones movies of yesteryears on TV when I was young and I remembered liking every bit of it – eventhough I might not really remember the story-line but the very lovable Indiana Jones, his quick-wit and his larger-than-life adventures were something I’ve never forgotten. Well, this fourth movie (and first time on the big screen) definitely brought back those same feelings all over again!!! Despite some 20years gap in between!!! (Heck, I wasn’t even born yet. Guess what I had watched were the re-runs of the movies.)
Warning: Long recap (of my fave parts in the movie and even scripts!) and spoilers ahead!
(So if you’re lazy to read…just see the pics lah. A picture’s worth a thousand words? LOL!)
Anyways, the movie is set in the 1950s (and bravo, the set and visuals looked just as old for a new movie!) and it all begins when a convoy of some we-were-led-to-believe-to-be-US-army soldiers break into a US Army facility. Once in the facility, they dragged out two men from the trunk of the first car. Initially, I had thought they were the bodies of the soldiers guarding the facility whom they had shot dead when they broke in. Anyways, it wasn’t. These two men were pretty much alive.
The first man was Mac (not a new character either but I don’t quite remember him 
)and the second was none other than Doctor Jones, of course played by Harrison Ford, himself (all season-ed now) but still looking as sharp as ever. Apparently, they had been kidnapped by the “US soldiers” who we learnt then were actually Russian KGB. *and the plot thickens*
Cate Blanchett as scary KGB lady
So what did the KGB want with them? Evidently, as some scary KGB lady explains, they needed Dr Jones’ “help” to locate a “box” which contained a “mummy” they wanted. And all the action begins…
Indiana searching for the “box”
Long story short, because I find recapping everything to be tedious, Indie finds said box which contained some eerie content which is supernaturally magnetic, escapes for his life when Mac betrays him, almost got killed in a nuclear explosion (if it were not for a refrigerator? ), lives to get a radiation scrub-down shower and is then suspected to be on the enemy’s side due to his history with his betraying friend. That eventually leads him to be “suspended indefinitely” from the University where he was teaching Archaeology.
This somehow reminds me of Oliver Twist and Grease…
Then just as he was leaving the States on a train to go back to London (he’s a British? I forgot.), a young lad wearing a leather jacket cruised onto the scene on a motorbike and hollered at him through the train windows.
“Hey! Old man! You! Doctor Jones?”
I love the lad already. 
LOL.
The young lad was “Mutt” Williams (Shia LaBeouf). They sat down in a bar and he explained he was very close to a Professor Harold Oxley, an old friend of Indie’s and according to Mutt, the Professor was missing and so is his mother Mary Williams when she went to look for him. And before she dissapeared, she mailed him some letters Ox had written and told him to look for Dr Jones saying that he could help.
Mutt then wondered: “What are you? Something like a grave robber?”
Indie: “I teach Archaeology.”
Mutt: “Great!”(sarcastically?) A teacher!”
Doctor/Professor Henry Jones Junior aka Indiana Jones
Or something like that.
I was actually distracted during the whole bar-conversation scene by Mutt dipping his comb in the drink of the jockey at the next table and later lifting a bottle of beer off the waitresses’ tray (which Indie returns). Suddenly, after he passes the letters over to Dr Jones, two men in coats suddenly approached from the bar and walked up to their table.
Coats: “What is that?”
Indie: “What?”
Coats: “We saw him giving you those letters.”
Mutt: “Do I look like a postman?” Hahaha…
Henry Jones The Third? aka Mutt Williams/Jones
Coats didn’t find it amusing though and apparently meant business with guns under their coats when Indie was unarmed and Mutt only “brought a knife to a gun-fight”. So the two obliged and started to make their way outside the bar. At least until Indie tells Mutt to punch the said jockey (above) after which a Leathers vs Jocks fist-fight ensued which gave them the cover to escape on Mutt’s bike
I love these pics…you can “hear” Ford thinking: “I’m too old for this…” LOL!!!
– but not for long as Coats pursued them in cars…
Classic bike-and-car-chase with some acrobatic moves from Indie…which eventually ends in a library where, after motorbike, Mutt and himself sliding across the library floor, Indie finds the time to end it with an advise to his student: “If you wanna be a real archaeologist, you gotta get out of the library!”
Long story short, after that, Indie manages to decipher the letters which sent the two and bike all the way to Nazca, some very remote place. There they traced for signs of Ox whom they later discovered had been admitted into a sanatariom as he was said to have lost his mind…Oh, and Mutt tells him that he quit school as that was not what he wanted to do, to which Indie says if that is how he feels he should not let anyone talk him into doing otherwise.
From there, it lead them to some ancient thombs which had a sign which Mutt read aloud: “Grave robbers will be shot.”
“Thank goodness we’re not grave robbers.” Indie replys.
So they enter the eerie thombs in the spooky night, but not without any complications…in this case, I guess they were the protectors of the thomb?, some spooky characters with blow-pipes, and also Mutt doing a lil dance trying to get rid of scorpions…”When it comes to scorpions, the bigger the better” – Indie.
“What’s this?”
There in the thomb they find the Crystal Skull and when they exit the thomb the next day, they find the enemy waiting for them. Dang!
So they were caught and Indie is tied to a chair and Mac, the betrayer, was trying to coax Indie to join him but was cut-short when scary KGB lady came and made Indie look into the eyes of the Crystal Skull so that he can “communicate” with it and with Ox (to find out where to return the Skull) – as that was what Ox had been doing which in the end caused him to lose his sanity…He was there too, doing some groovy rain-dance-a-majig… Anyways, it was also revealed then that the Skull belonged to some alien lifeform that was similar to the eerie content in the box they took in the early part of the movie.
After Indie “connects” with the Skull, he was then released and immediately punched Mac for his betrayal. But that too was cut-short when he had more important things to do…like find out where they were supposed to return the Skull (as that would give the person who returns it – that is what the scary KGB lady is after – would be able to control its supernatural powers bla bla bla).
Indiana and Marion sinking in quicksand…
It was also then revealed that Mutt’s mother is actually Marion Ravenwood (Karen Allen), Indie’s old flame. A quicksand moment later, she blurted that Mutt’s real name was Henry (as is Indiana’s), Indie interjects that she should not force him to continue his studies and she reveals that he was actually Indie’s son Henry Jones The Third (Big surprise? Nah…kinda expected it from the very beginning. LOL.) to which Indie turns a 360degrees and yells, “And you let him quit school?!” Yeesh! Haha…
And I forgot that Indie has a fear of snakes but he made it absolutely clear that he was more willing to sink in quicksand than to grab hold of a snake to pull himself out. In the end, Mutt and Marion had to coax him to grab hold by calling it a “rope”. LOL. Silly old man …Oh, and lesson learnt: NEVER ask a crazy person to “go get help” cos he just might bring the enemy to you and think he’d done a good deed.
Imagine this as your family! COOL.
So, daylight the following day, the Family (Indie, Marion and Mutt) were squabbling about the past and Mutt was in denial that Indie was his father. It didn’t help either that the first thing he said to Mutt was:
“You’re going back to school!”
to which Mutt reminds him:
“What happened to not letting others tell you otherwise?!”
and Indie yells back:
“That was before I knew I was your father!”
and Mutt retorts:
“You are NOT my father!”
Oh my
…but their squabbling irritated the guard much and as he was gagging Marion, Indie and Mutt managed to kick him senseless and everyone escaped their bonds…Sweet.
Next comes my fave part in the whole movie. Well, all I’ve mentioned here, including the script were my faves but this is the favouritest:
“Get yourself a weapon Boy!” - says Indie to Mutt
“Care to fence?”
The car fight scene…super awesome…with “catch-the-Skull”, fencing and also some Tarzan scenes as well and followed by what seemed like an amusement park ride over three waterfalls after surviving the onslaught of some crazy huge ants! *Phew* Oh, and they got the Skull and lost the bad guys.
Entering the temple aka Kingdom of the Crystal Skull…
And finally, after many obstacles, the five (Indie, Mutt, Marion, Ox and Mac, who joined them after the car fight – he explained to Indie that he was actually a double agent for the CIA) arrived at the temple where they were to return the Skull and place it on the head of one of the 13 “aliens” there. At this point in time, scary KGB lady caught up with them thanks to the trail of blinking red lights left by Mac, who lied about being a double agent, and took the Skull from Ox and placed it on the 13th alien. Afterwhich it used Ox as a medium to speak in Mayan (language) that it was grateful for them for returning the Skull and would like to give them something in return. Scary KGB lady insisted that she wanted to know everything! EVERYTHING! So the aliens granted her wish but being human, she cannot absorb such vast amount of knowledge and that led to her downfall and the downfall of the whole temple, which turns out was built on top of a spaceship which later dissapeared into thin air with our heroes Indie, Marion, Mutt and Ox looking on…
And the final line between Father and Son:-
Mutt: So we’re just gonna sit here [on the moutain top]? (in disbelief)
Indie: Do you know how long it takes to go down a mountain? We don’t wanna be going down when nightfall approaches.
Mutt: I can make it. Whose with me?
Indie: Why don’t you stick around Son?
Mutt: Why don’t you, Dad?
And so he does…it ends with the wedding of Henry “Indiana” Jones Junior and Marion Ravenwood. And Indie also got his post back at the University – this time as Associate Dean.
The End.
I love them. SO CUTE!!! They look so good together! I really think they make a great Father-Son team.
Indie’s spelled with a “Y”?
Not quite. While Mutt may not get his father’s trademark hat, I believe we will see the next generation of this adventure saga – Mutt Jones with his trademark comb and knife and bike and leather jacket…
“Mutt Willians” or “Mutt Jones”…doesn’t have a ring to it like “Indiana Jones” but I think we’ll learn to accept him. I know I’ve fallen for him.
He had me at “Hey!”
Oh, btw, if you guys don’t know…Shia LaBeouf (the actor playing “Mutt”) was the guy in the “Transformers” movie. But for the record, I’ve known him since waaay before that - it kinda feels like I watched him grow (into a fine good-looking young man at that!) from his days on “Even Stevens”, him playing the main role on the Disney channel comedy TV series. Anyways, I have a feeling he will play more major roles in the not too distant future…
