An ode to Däniken

 

So I recently watched “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull”. I reviewed it before, and I haven´t really changed my mind about the film. Sure, it´s great fun if you´re into the Indiana Jones concept, no doubt about it. All the usual plot elements are there, except ten times better (or worse)! Paranormal archeological artefacts, extremely exaggerated stand-offs with the bad guys (or situations in general), meetings with ancient spirit-beings and, yes, Indy´s bad love affairs. The Nazis have been replaced by Communists, and Dr Jones works with his son rather than his father, but these feel like logical changes since the plot takes place during the Cold War rather than the 1930´s. The film contains one major gaffe: Indiana says at one point that he wants to move to Leipzig to teach, but at the time, this particular location was controlled by Communist East Germany! Hardly a good hang-out for an American guy in a cowboy hat and a “I like Ike” bumper sticker.

Fanboys of Erich von Däniken or really insane alternative history scenarios might also appreciate this flick, which often comes across as an extended episode of “Ancient Aliens”. Indeed, the speculations of Indiana Jones and his long lost friend Oxley are just as confused and absurd as those in “Ancient Aliens”. Indy supposedly learned Quechua (a Peruvian Native language) while riding with Pancho Villa in Mexico, space aliens marooned in the Amazon speak Mayan (a Central American Native language), and what have you. Heck, it seems everyone in Peru is Mayan, LOL. There are tie-ins to the Roswell UFO crash, the search for El Dorado, the Mitchell-Hedges skull, elongated skulls, Nazca, the legend of Akakor, and God knows what else. Entertaining? Well, yes, unless you think Hollywood films should be proper science education (or basic geography)! Somewhat ironically, real archeologists *have* found a lost civilization in the Amazon, although not nearly as dramatic as the one depicted in this production. Last time I looked, they hadn´t found the Holy Grail or the Lost Ark, though.

The Communists are actually quite fascinating. For starters, doesn´t their female commander Irina Spalko reference “The Invasion of the Body Snatchers”? Probably not a co-incidence. It´s also intriguing that “Stalin´s favorite” believes in the paranormal quasi-religious scenario even more fervently than Indiana Jones himself. I kind of always suspected that all kinds of more exciting or downright crazy ideas were pursued in Red Russia and its satellite states behind the smokescreen of strictly scientific socialism. I mean, Erich von Däniken´s books were legal in Leipzig, yes?  

With that, I close this little review.