Stephen Spielberg, my mentor-turned-protege, shot me a text the other day: “Help, Georgie is on my ass again about this Indiana Jones shit! I’m an artist now, Sam. I can’t go back to his cutesy shenanigans! You gotta help me!” Never being one to leave an old friend in a bind, I immediately agreed to getting paid twenty million bucks to let some dumbass dipshit boss his “cool ideas” at me all day and call it a film. That last sentence was the text version of a Michael Bay Transformer. Just an experiment, folks.
Anyway, shit. I can point a camera at Lucas’ stupid ideas. Like I care about dignity. If Harrison ford turned out to be a turd, I could just kick his ass. He’s old. And not Rocky old, either. I’d say he’s more like Johnny Carson circa 2007 old. Plus, any pressure to live up to the originals is lost on me cause I’ve never seen ’em. They’re about rolling rocks right? Sure they are.
Ten years have passed since Indy last fought the Nazis, and the world has since swirled down the shithole. It’s all teenagers and rebellion now. That hot piece of tail you’re hitting-on might just be a man. The local radio has switched from the soothing sounds of the Soggy Bottom Boys to the wiseacre anarchy of Eminem. All the Nazis have moved to Russia, where they have mind readers and nuclear bombs. What’s an aging adventurer to do? Nothin’.
When we first see Indy again we can’t actually see him because he’s in the trunk of car nursing a pre-kicked ass. He’s also stuck in there with the rather robust Brenden Gleeson. It’s a pretty small trunk, so I’m assuming that, if only accidentally, Indy has gone homo just like the rest of the world. Once the Russian Nazis shoot their way into Area 51, he and his buddy get yanked into the movie proper.
The Russian Nazis want Indy to show them where an alien crate is. He gets all smartassy with them, so Mamma Russian Nazi steps up to read his mind. He laughs at her, and he’s right cause she can’t even read braille. This “ability” she possesses is really nothing more than a severe longing to have an “ability”. Indy makes a couple more lazy jokes before giving them what they want. “Oh hell, I’m just joshin’ you guys. C’mon I’ll show you where it’s at.”
Through the fickle science of magnetism, he finds the crate, walks them to it, and even offers them the padlock combination so they don’t waste any bullets shooting it off. They remove a crystal alien skull from the crate. “Alien skull, huh?” he says. “Pretty fancy. Say, speaking of fancy, y’all want directions back to Russia? Cause I got Google Earth on my watch here.” Brenden Gleeson shifts his uncomfortable weight. “Put your hand down will ya?” he says. “You’re embarrassing us.” They shoot him in the head, and Indy whips his way across the desert, crying for his life.
After outrunning all the bullets, he finds himself in a model town where all the people are mannequins. This is pretty exciting for him because it means all the free Ben-gay and beer he can carry. But when he checks the fridge, he accidentally falls in. Next thing he knows, a nuclear explosion blasts his fridge through the sky. He decides to do what we would all like to do in such a situation: stand on the fridge and pretend to surf! A prairie dog sits on his shoulder and does it too. Again, I just did what Georgie Porgie told me to.
The government finds out that Indy helped the Russian Nazis and make goddamn sure that he never works in Hollywood again. While bumming around, he runs into his bastard son, Bart. “Hey! My mommy told me to find ya’, old-timer. Why don’t you sit on it (my motorcycle)?” Indy says okay, and the two go drop acid. “See,” Bart explains. “My not-dad old-timer disappeared. But before he did, he told me to find you.”
“Why?” Indy asks, unaware that he has milkshake on his nose.
“He said you’d be able to help me find an alien crystal skull. Aaaaay!”
“Alien crystal skull? Is he some kind of idiot? Those things don’t exist. I’ve never seen one in my whole life.”
Bart pulls out a map with detailed instructions on it. “No, it exists, man. He says it’s right HERE, sucka. Let’s go get it, daddio.” But then the Russian Nazis show up. Indy and Bart make a getaway on Bart’s motorcycle. The chase is pretty exciting. At one point, cars flank both their sides. They each jump into a car, kick the car’s ass, and jump back onto the bike at the same time. Indy goes for a high-five, but Bart upgrades his coolness by teaching him how to “give” someone “skin”. Sweet! Then they both stand on the bike and pretend to surf! Guess who joins in on the fun…Hope you all said “Prairie dog!” But how many guessed that this time he’d be wearing SUNGLASSES?
They fly to the jungles of Russia searching for this crystal skull. Bart leads the way, but he’s impatient with how often Indy needs to pee. Eventually, he gives Indy a Rubik’s cube and finds it himself. “Check it out, Jonez!” he says two hours later. “I found that skull you said didn’t exist.” Indy looks up. “Oh that? That’s a skull? Yeah, I gave one of those to the Russians already. Geez, kid…you got any tips on how to do this square thing?”
Before Bart can show him his Rubik’s skills, they are surrounded by Russian Nazis. Mamma Russian Nazi takes the skull away. “It would appear that we need two alien crystal skulls, so I’ll be taking this one as well.”
“Why do you need them?” Bart asks.
She gazes at it, mesmerized. “If I replace my own skull with one of these, I’ll finally be able to read minds for real,” she answers.
“But why two?” he presses.
“So I can do it twice as fast, stupid boy.”
This gets him pretty upset. He pulls out his switchblade. “I ain’t no BOY, old bag!”
“Calm down,” Indy says. “These Russian Nazis are A-Okay.” He then apologizes for Bart’s behavior about twenty-five times. They shoot Bart in the head anyway. Indy whips his way to an anthill, crying for his life. While swinging, a bunch of monkeys and prairie dogs deliver the crystal skull to him. The ants carry him to a temple, and eat all the male badguys.
In the temple, Indy finds twelve aliens, two of which are missing heads. He puts the one he’s holding back where it belongs. “Where is the other one?” the aliens ask. “My Russian Nazi girlfriend has it,” he answers. Just then Mamma Russian Nazi enters the room. “Where is the last skull?” they ask her. She answers defiantly, “I ate it.”
After talking it over, the aliens decide that #13 is just gonna have to deal with having no head. The room spins around so fast that it enters the space between spaces. Mamma Russian Nazi goes with them, but the space between spaces is for mind-readers only, so she ends up in just regular old space which crushes her and freezes what’s left.
Since there’s no one left to chase him or tell him what to do, Indy just sits down on a hill. Prairie dogs give him food and water to keep him alive, but he’s eventually run over by a rolling rock. I’m pretty sure this kills him.