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For KINGDOM OF THE CRYSTAL SKULL Spielberg has been quoted as saying that advances in film technology would not alter the ‘heart’ of this film, that there would be real sets and real stunts and that it would be approached in a traditional way. This turned out not to be the case. Whereas in the first three films everything on the screen existed in reality, be it in model form, matte painting or a blue-screen effects shot; for the latest movie the inevitable Industrial Light and Magic CGI has been employed. Visual effects supervisor Pablo Helman:

“He (Steven) thought maybe we should just go back to the way we did things before, like matte paintings on glass and things like that. We entertained that idea for a little bit, but we realized we could serve the story better by using our digital tools. The only reason why they weren’t using computer-generated effects back then is because they weren’t invented yet, but they were using the most up-to-date technology at the time. So it only follows that we would do the same thing now.”

So, maybe the ‘heart’ of the film may not have been affected, but its appearance has, and it has to be said, some of those deteriorating head effects at the end of RAIDERS do look a little hokey, and did so even at the time. However, all is not lost. Director of Photography Janusz Kaminski has studied the three previous movies so as to emulate the great Douglas Slocombe’s distinctive style (Slocombe was Director of Photography on the first three movies and is a legend in cinema with titles like ROLLERBALL (1975), THE GREAT GATSBY (1974), THE MUSIC LOVERS (1970), THE ITALIAN JOB (1969), THE LION IN WINTER (1968), DANCE OF THE VAMPIRES (AKA THE FEARLESS VAMPIRE KILLERS (USA) (1967), THE BLUE MAX (1966), GUNS AT BATASI (1964), THE L-SHAPED ROOM (1962), KIND HEARTS AND CORONETS (1949), DEAD OF NIGHT (1945) and scores more under his belt. He is also famous for never using a light meter while shooting RAIDERS).

The INDIANA JONES series has also had the benefit of input from some of the best stunt co-ordinators and stunt men on the planet. Not least Vic Armstrong, Harrison Ford’s regular stunt and body double (remember that scene in BLADE RUNNER, in the darkened bathroom, where Deckard picks up the snake scale from the bath? That was actually Vic Armstrong). Vic looked so much like Harrison that they were often mistaken for each other on the RAIDERS set. Vic’s wife also doubled for ‘Indy’s women’; it was Vic and his wife who tumbled down through the awnings of the ‘Club Obi-Wan’ and dashed down the rapids in TEMPLE OF DOOM. Vic was also one of the first ninjas to drop down through the volcano in YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE, which gives us a nice link of course with Sean Connery, aka Henry Jones Snr. Sadly Vic Armstrong doesn’t take part in his alter-ego’s latest adventure, having commitments elsewhere, ironically on an INDIANA JONES derivative THE MUMMY sequel, but I have no doubt he’ll have had some input somewhere along the line. But needless to say, the best are still there. Irrespective of those incredibly talented, and frankly ridiculously brave, stuntmen themselves, the stunts are also of the old school. A prime example is the famous scene in RAIDERS where Indy drops from the front grill of the German truck, is dragged along under the truck, and using his whip, manages to cling on, work his way underneath between the rapidly moving wheels, to finally get a purchase at the rear end and then claw his way back to the cab. This stunt was a tribute to Yakima Kanutt, a veteran stunt man and later stunt co-ordinator, who did a far more complicated variation on this in John Ford’s STAGECOACH (1939), where he leaps onto the backs of the charging horses pulling the aforesaid stagecoach, falls beneath them, then is dragged between the wheels of the stagecoach itself before finally climbing up the rear end and clambering his way back into the driving seat. Kanutt also choreographed the chariot race in Heston’s BEN HUR.

An integral part of INDIANA JONES’ world is of course the music.
It is said that John Williams, with his STAR WARS score, reinvented, or at least reintroduced the audience to, the classic, epic cinema sound of the golden age of Hollywood; the swashbuckling scores of Eric Von Korngold and Alfred Newman. In the early 60s it was in fact that same legendary composer/conductor Alfred Newman who noticed Williams’ natural abilities in orchestration and steered him toward orchestrating the scores of other composers. He then found himself working with such talents as Lionel Newman, Dimitri Tiomkin, Jerry Goldsmith, Elmer Bernstein, Franz Waxman, and Hitchcock legend Bernard Herrmann.
Music is clearly his driving passion and one in which he takes great joy. May be this is the key. As a listener you can feel the emotion that goes into all of his pieces, whether it is the excitement and fun of STAR WARS, or the deep tragedy of SCHINDLER’S LIST. His themes are also always instantly memorable. Who didn’t come out of the cinema whistling the SUPERMAN theme? This memorability is no accident. On his theme for the eponymous hero INDIANA JONES, an apparently ‘simple’ little motif, Williams says:

“It’s a very simple little sequence of notes, but I spend more time on those little bits of musical grammar to get them just right so that they seem inevitable, seem like they’ve always been there and seem so simple. I spend a lot of time on simplicities, which are often the hardest things to capture, I think, for anybody.”

It’s now an unbelievable 27 years since we first heard that ‘simple’ little motif.

Apart from the music, the INDIANA JONES films also have their own unique sound, thanks to Sound Designer Ben Burtt:

“I grew up loving those sound effects. I could tell you whether it was a Paramount movie or a Warner Bros movie just by the face punches and the thunderclaps. I was crazy enough to be interested, so it worked out great for Indiana Jones, because I could draw on my love of the classic sound effects repertoire.”

Burtt has created an entirely new library of sounds for all of Indiana’s adventures, where everything is exaggerated. Pistol shots are Winchester rifle shots; rifle shots are Howitzers. Almost all the sounds are created using traditional recording methods, similar to those employed by the back room boys on radio. The sound of the big rolling stone ball at the opening of RAIDERS was the recording of the tyres on a road as Burtt’s car freewheeled down a hill; the rats in LAST CRUSADE were speeded up chicken sounds; the sound of slithering snakes in RAIDERS was a pair of hands stirring Burtt’s wife’s cheese casserole. Electronically created sounds are only employed when something ‘electronic’ is happening on screen and even then, when those lightening bolts were shooting out of the Ark and blasting the Nazis, the sounds were lifted straight from Kenneth Strickfaden’s laboratory’s equipment designed for the original 1931 FRANKENSTEIN.

Steven Spielberg has stated that one of the most important parts of an INDIANA JONES film is the humour. For INDIANA JONES he believes that the old fashioned approach is more appropriate. Also, with it being based on a 30s/40s and now 50s style movie presentation, the gags should be presented equally so. This is why we get the corny, and deliberate, Abbott and Costello type humour around the dining table in TEMPLE OF DOOM, with the monkey brains and the ‘snake surprise’; the ’11 o’clock? What’s happening at 11 o’clock?’ in LAST CRUSADE just before Jones Sr. shoots the tail off their own plane, and the wonderful, beautifully timed, folding of Toht’s sinister coat hanger in RAIDERS (a sight-gag originally planned for German U-Boat Commander Christopher Lee in Spielberg’s 1941, but who couldn’t get it to work). In Spielberg’s words:

“…to do the shots the way Chaplin and Keaton would, everything happening before the eyes of the audience, without a cut. To get the comedy I want, you have to be old fashioned.”

Shame it didn’t work in 1941 Steven.

However, INDIANA JONES AND THE KINGDOM OF THE CRYSTAL SKULL is now out there, in all its unwieldy titled-ness. I have to admit that I was disappointed with it, but this not a review. Many others (many, many others) will do that. I will always remain an Indiana Jones fan, irrespective, simply because of the sheer stubbornness, fallibility and bloody-mindedness of the man.

As to the ethos? I’ll leave it to an earlier fedora-clad hero to have the last say:

It’s “… the stuff that dreams are made of.” (THE MALTESE FALCON)

And even THAT wasn’t new – it was paraphrased from Shakespeare’s The Tempest – Now that’s a real Raider of the Lost Arts…

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