Summer of Spielberg: Blockbustin'

Part 2 of 8

Most people don’t ask for much when they go to the movies, particularly in the months between May and September. After Steven Spielberg ostensibly invented the summer blockbuster with Jaws in 1975, he would spend much of the rest of his career exploring the genre which he had helped create. Many have tried to recapture the energy of Spielberg’s films, but, obviously, none have truly come up with a worthy duplication. Even weaker Spielberg blockbusters still have a magic and wonder about them that other films lack. Over the course of the next two weeks, we shall be exploring the various ways in which Spielberg tackles his large-scale material. Next week we will focus on his forays into science fiction and extraterrestrial life, but this week is all about the two huge action franchises he helped create: Indiana Jones and Jurassic Park.

In a way, these projects are comprised of the simplest films he’s ever done. There are almost no subplots or dillydallying to be found in either of these franchises. Watching an Indiana Jones or Jurassic Park film is simply a journey from point A to point B. But, oh, what a journey it can be. Ever since Susan Backline first took a swim in the New England waters, Spielberg has proved time and time again that he can put together a darn exciting scene with almost no effort. Raiders of the Lost Ark and Jurassic Park go about their respective adventures in two very different ways, but the result in both cases is top-notch popcorn entertainment.

The best of the films I’ll be discussing this week is undoubtedly Raiders of the Lost Ark: an idea that began wholly in the mind of George Lucas, who initially considered making the film back in the ’70s. However, he put the idea on the shelf and decided to work on a small science fiction film called Star Wars. Once he released the film—and got more money than most of us could ever dream of—he had a conversation with his friend Steven Spielberg about what to do next. When Lucas brought up his idea about an archaeologist with a whip, the two decided to pursue the project together. With Lucas’ born storytelling ability and Spielberg’s directorial chops, the two were sure they’d come out the other end with a terrific film.

Well, they were right. Raiders of the Lost Ark is the rare film where just about everything went right from beginning to end. The casting of Harrison Ford in the lead was dead-on, and Karen Allen proved to be a formidable female counterpart. Yet the real fun of the film comes from Spielberg’s insistence that he make the film as quickly and cheaply as possible. When they initially pitched the project to the major studios, they were met with a great many scoffs. The budget for the film was to be $18 million (around $47 million today), and nobody believed that such a feat could be accomplished. As far as the executives were concerned, this sounded like an epic, expensive production. This was not how Spielberg saw it; he wanted the film to be two hours of easily-digestible excitement.

This comes through in the final product. Raiders of the Lost Ark is a film that looks expensive, but that is because of what Spielberg was able to accomplish with so little. It is a film full of great visuals, but it doesn’t waste its time on grand spectacle. It’s about nothing more than the adventures (and misadventures) of its protagonist, and the imagination that went into creating them. The first 20-or-so minutes of the film is a string of unforgettable scenes that have been endlessly parodied and saluted in pop culture hundreds of times. Few things are as indicative of art’s greatness as the tendency of other art to imitate it. On that count, Raiders of the Lost Ark is one of the greatest films of all time.

Raiders of the Lost Ark would also the first Spielberg film that seemed as if it could begin a series. Not even a decade earlier, Spielberg dismissed the idea of a sequel to Jaws as “a cheap carny trick.” (They made it anyway, just without him.) I’m not entirely sure what changed his mind between the ’70s and ’80s (money), but after Raiders became a smash hit it seemed to be a foregone conclusion that a sequel would be made. After a couple years making other projects, Spielberg and Lucas got around to creating their follow-up: Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.

This is a film that has gotten a lot of flak over the years, even from Spielberg itself. Many of these criticisms are apt: the film is far too dark at times, and it lacks the sense of guilt-free fun that was found in Raiders. Also, Kate Capshaw’s character is a complete ditz. She does little more throughout the film than scream and put herself in danger. I am not opposed to this just because of the obvious feminist reasons; it’s more that I like my ears and I don’t enjoy the sound of Capshaw’s screech every five minutes. While the damsel-in-distress character was found in many of the serials from the ’30s and ’40s that the Indiana Jones films regularly mimic, that does not make her palatable several decades later. Capshaw is a fine actress, but holy cow is her character grating.

For many, these flaws overshadow the terrific adventure film that lies beneath them. Temple of Doom piles ridiculous action sequence on top of ridiculous action sequence, and it doesn’t stop until the credits roll. As strange as this might sound, it’s at its best when it is little more than a string to hang the action sequences on. When it gets into all that “plot” garbage, it becomes much less interesting. In any other film I quite like the idea of a man who can pull someone’s heart out, but the Thuggee cult sequences clash with the usual light-and-airy tone that the Indiana Jones films are supposed to thrive on. Still, any film in which the protagonists jump from an airplane with nothing but an inflatable raft and land safely on solid ground can’t be all bad.

The good news is that everybody involved with the production recognized the problems with Temple of Doom, and they decided to come back five years later with a film that almost entirely recaptured the magic of Raiders. Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, the third film in the series, may lack the adrenaline rush of the first two films, but it more than makes up for it in some good old fashioned Spielbergian magic. It relies heavily—perhaps too heavily—on comic relief, but the film’s great masterstroke was the casting of Sean Connery as Jones’ father. Yes, the age difference between Connery and Ford isn’t so great (12 years), it still seems like an apt choice. There likely would be no Indiana Jones series without the James Bond films, even if they aren’t incredibly similar per se.

After Last Crusade was released in 1989, Spielberg’s career hit something of a speed bump. His next two films—Always and Hook—would turn out not to be his best work. They were hardly financial trainwrecks (anything but), yet Spielberg is a director who has long prided himself on making commercial work that was also well-respected. On top of that, these films just seemed minor in comparison to the powerhouses that were Jaws, Close Encounters, E.T. and Indiana Jones. For example, it was only recently that I learned a film called Always even existed. It was hardly an extended nadir, but for once things weren’t necessarily going Spielberg’s way.

Then came the glorious, glorious year of 1993, which saw the release of two Spielberg films which are remembered to this day. On one hand, he made the Holocaust drama Schindler’s List. On the other hand, he made the dinosaur blockbuster Jurassic Park. Where one film mourns the loss of human life at the hands of the Nazis, the other looks on with glee as Wayne Knight is mauled by a Dilophosaurus. Not only do we accept this strange contrast; we celebrate it. So long as the man is able to entertain us, audiences aren’t prone to nitpicking.

Revisiting Jurassic Park for the first time in several years, it surprised me to discover just how flawed this movie actually is. This film is not about the story, but instead the spectacle is the entirety of its substance. The human characters aren’t all that interesting, and they serve little purpose beyond becoming dinosaur food. We know which characters are the good ones, which are the bad ones, and which are expendable. There are no shades of gray in Jurassic Park; despite his capitalist naiveté, the film takes the not-very-subtle stance that Richard Attenborough’s John Hammond was wrong to create and open this park. On a plot level, Jurassic Park reminded me of James Cameron’s Avatar more than it did Spielberg’s own Jaws. It’s a technical showcase with a bunch two-dimensional characters thrown in.

Yet Jurassic Park remains a thrill for one simple reason: Spielberg uses the spectacle to create genuine excitement and suspense while Cameron used kiddy gloves. The obvious example is the sequence outside the T-rex barracks, which is one of the best scenes of suspense Spielberg ever directed outside of Jaws. Even in his lamer efforts, Spielberg has always had a knack for building up a scene until the big climax. Any moments in Jurassic Park that feel subpar are quickly undone once the dinosaurs start attacking. It doesn’t quite match the pure man vs. nature thrill of Jaws, but at its best Jurassic Park can be just as exciting. It’s one of the more flawed blockbuster efforts from Spielberg, but it’s seen as a classic for a reason.

As stated before, the greatest accomplishment of Jurassic Park is how it brought the idea of CGI in cinema forward a few decades. This was a film made back in the early ’90s, yet the computerized dinosaurs still seem incredibly real. (The only thing truly dated about the film is how the characters dress.) This was not a film that used CGI just because it could; it used it to create realistic dinosaurs inside an actual, physical world. Jurassic Park was the film that showed many how powerful CGI could be, but even 18 years later there seem to be too many filmmakers who don’t know how to use it well. There are stories that George Lucas was inspired to go ahead with his Star Wars prequels once he saw the dinosaurs Spielberg was making, and it wouldn’t be long before he found himself lost in a land of CGI weirdness.

Speaking of CGI weirdness: Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Let’s face it: we were all peeing in our pants waiting for this film to come out. As a result, when we finally watched it we tried to convince ourselves that what we saw wasn’t kind of terrible. Unfortunately, it was. I’ll admit that it has its moments, but Crystal Skull lacks all the quick-and-dirty urgency that makes Raiders such a wonder to behold. Instead of shooting everything practically—like Spielberg promised he would—the film seemed to be lost in a green screen wasteland. I’ve harped on this more times than I can count already, so I’ll sum it up nicely: despite what Lucas may believe, it is easy to tell what is real and what is fake onscreen. If there is too much fake, the audience will become detached. Where the original Indiana Jones trilogy was gritty and exciting, Crystal Skull is overly-polished and tame. I will admit that the good far outweighs the bad in the film’s first half, but the ending is little more than a series of incorrect decisions.

In theory, a fourth Indiana Jones film probably sounded like fun to Spielberg. However, I’m of the belief that it ended up feeling more like an assignment for him than anything. Perhaps this is why the last film I’ll be talking about—The Lost World: Jurassic Park—falls similarly short of expectations. Spielberg is not one who works well with overly-derivative material, as his passion is likely in creating something entirely new.  With the source material for the Jurassic Park films, there is only so much you can do, so a sequel is sure to seem extra-redundant. The only obvious next step would be to bring the dinosaurs back to the mainland, but that just seems like a silly idea. Oh, wait…

What makes The Lost World so much less effective is very simple: it’s just not as fun. Yes, the decision to bring back Jeff Goldblum as the protagonist was a good one, but the film around him just feels like perfunctory audience-pleasing. As Goldblum’s character so eloquently puts it toward the beginning of the film: “Oooh ahh, that’s how it always starts. But then there’s running and screaming.” In just a few seconds, he lays out the film’s entire screenplay. What’s problematic is that The Lost World has all the running and screaming but not enough of the ooohs and the ahhhs. Some of the best scenes in the original Jurassic Park came when the characters looked in awe upon the dinosaurs Hammond had created. There isn’t nearly enough of that here; it’s just a film about a lot of dinosaurs eating a lot of people with no real reason to connect.

To make a great blockbuster film, Spielberg needs a special hook to grab onto. In the case of the first three Indiana Jones films, it was the then-brilliant storytelling of George Lucas. In Jurassic Park, it was the possibility of bringing realistic, terrifying dinosaurs to the big screen. When there’s nothing all that original for him to do, the results are likely to be less spectacular. When he started production on The Lost World, its predecessor had already proven what could be done with the technology. The only thing the sequel could offer was more of the same. Likewise, the fourth Indiana Jones film was bound to be little more than fan service, yet the film that was released proved to eschew everything the fans liked about the original trilogy in favor of overused CGI and strange fridge-nuking gags. Spielberg is always a man with a story to tell; you just have to make sure it’s worthwhile first.

Next week: Spielberg makes three great films about extraterrestrial life, and what they might do if they ever came to Earth.

P.S. - As I will be traveling over the course of the next couple weeks, it is possible that these posts will be up later than Sunday. (In fact, next week it’s almost a guarantee.) Just bear with me, and they’ll be up before you know it. I’m just apologizing in advance.