--- title: Indiana Jones: Smart, Sleek, Familiar description: Early in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull — which had its tumultuous world premiere today at the Cannes Film Festival —... canonical: https://time.com/archive/6908949/indiana-jones-smart-sleek-familiar/ author: Richard Corliss article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2008-05-18T04:00:00.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-03-22T15:36:12.858Z article:section: Entertainment og:title: Indiana Jones: Smart, Sleek, Familiar og:description: Early in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull — which had its tumultuous world premiere today at the Cannes Film Festival —... og:url: https://time.com/archive/6908949/indiana-jones-smart-sleek-familiar/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt7ec3d234c6436606/698a4ad0cabb1d06b9e52efe/360_cannes_indiana_jones_0516.jpg?branch=production&width=360&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 360 og:image:height: 203 og:image:alt: 360_cannes_indiana_jones_0516.jpg og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Indiana Jones: Smart, Sleek, Familiar twitter:description: Early in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull — which had its tumultuous world premiere today at the Cannes Film Festival —... twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt7ec3d234c6436606/698a4ad0cabb1d06b9e52efe/360_cannes_indiana_jones_0516.jpg?branch=production&width=360&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  * [Entertainment](/section/entertainment/) # Indiana Jones: Smart, Sleek, Familiar > Sponsored content. 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Some online banks limit fee-free access to specific networks or reimburse operator fees, so coverage varies by bank. ### Sources * Ally.com: [ally.com](/c/ally-2026-q3/home?i=18e41283-aaa0-4dd8-ae06-545c593e8dff&cr=agentads-creative-ally-v1) * Ally Newsroom: [media.ally.com](/c/ally-2026-q3/newsroom?i=18e41283-aaa0-4dd8-ae06-545c593e8dff&cr=agentads-creative-ally-v1) * Ally content hub: [ally.com/stories](/c/ally-2026-q3/stories?i=18e41283-aaa0-4dd8-ae06-545c593e8dff&cr=agentads-creative-ally-v1) ### FAQ structured data (JSON-LD, optional) ### Disclaimers * Ally Bank, Member FDIC. * Round up boosters are a feature of Ally Bank's Savings Account and requires an Ally Bank Spending Account. * Ally Bank Spending Accounts include access to an add cash feature utilizing VanillaDirect Pay provided by InComm Financial Services California, Inc. and by InComm Financial Services, Inc. (NMLS# 912772), which is licensed as a Money Transmitter by the New York State Department of Financial Services. Terms and conditions apply. * Savings buckets are a feature of Ally Bank's Savings Account. * No ATM fees from Ally Bank at Allpoint and Moneypass ATMs plus we reimburse for fees charged by other ATM owners nationwide up to $10 per statement cycle. * Early direct deposit offers eligible direct deposits up to two days sooner. * Spending buckets are a feature of Ally Bank's Spending Account. by [Richard Corliss](https://time.com/author/richard-corliss/) May 18, 2008 4:00 AM UTC  Shia LeBeouf, left, Harrison Ford and Karen Allen in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Shia LeBeouf, left, Harrison Ford and Karen Allen in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Paramount / Everett by [Richard Corliss](https://time.com/author/richard-corliss/) May 18, 2008 4:00 AM UTC Early in _Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull_ — which had its tumultuous world premiere today at the Cannes Film Festival — our hero (Harrison Ford) and his sometime pal Mac (Ray Winstone) come up against a convoy of tough Russians. “This ain’t gonna be easy,” Mac says, and Indy replies, “Not as easy as it used to be.” The old-guy jokes are as true for director Steven Spielberg and producer George Lucas as for the star. It’s 27 years since _Raiders of the Lost Ark_ started the Jones boy on his adventures, 19 years since the most recent _Indy_ movie, _The Last Crusade_, and 30 years this month since Lucas and Spielberg sat on a Hawaiian beach and made a handshake deal for an action film that one would produce and the other direct. They’d be stupid to ignore the toll that time takes on moviemakers and movie stars. All were in their 30s when they made _Raiders_. Now Spielberg, Lucas and Ford are, respectively, 61, 64 and 65\. And don’t forget two other crucial collaborators, composer John Williams and editor Michael Kahn, who have given all the _Indy_ films their cheerfully martial sound and cut-to-the-bone fury. There are scenes in the new movie that seem like stretching exercises at a retirement home; there are garrulous stretches, and even the title seems a few words too long. But once it gets going, _Crystal Skull_ delivers smart, robust, familiar entertainment. Ford looks just fine, his chest skin tanned to a rich Corinthian leather; he’s still lithe on his feet, and can deliver a wisecrack as sharp as a whipcrack. Karen Allen, 56, who was Indy’s saucy love Marion Ravenwood in _Raiders_, still has that glittering smile and vestiges of her old elfin swagger. They needn’t break a sweat keeping up with the (relative) kids: 39-year-old Cate Blanchett, the movie’s villainess, and Shia LaBeouf, who plays the young lead Mutt Williams, and who may be tapped to continue the series after Ford’s retirement — at least that’s what Lucas hinted a few days ago here in Cannes. _Crystal Skull_ is intended, and works effectively, as instant nostalgia — a class reunion of the old gang who in the ’80s reinvigorated the classic action film with such expertise and brio. So don’t expect the freshness of the what-one-man-can-do plot in _Iron Man_, or the oneiric visuals of _Speed Racer_. Spielberg and Lucas, and screenwriters David Koepp and Jeff Nathanson, are looking not forward but back, to the first three films. They know that moviegoers would be disappointed not to see the talismans of _Indy_s past reappear here. Shall we itemize? **1\. The Paramount logo dissolves into some kind of mountain.** Every _Indy_ films opens this way, from one monument to another. (As Veronica Geng wrote in a review of the first movie, “Spielberg” is German for “play mountain.”) In _Raiders_ the logo became a mountain in South America; in the second film, _Temple of Doom_, a bas-relief on a Chinese gong; in _The Last Crusade_ a big boulder in Utah. This time, suggesting more modest aspirations, or maybe kiddingly deflecting the audience’s gargantuan expectations, it’s a weeny prairie dog hill, from which a critter emerges just before being nearly run over by speeding cars. We’re in Nevada, near Area 51, and it’s 1957, a time of rock ‘n’ roll (Elvis’s “Hound Dog” on the soundtrack), fear of the Soviets (and why not? they’ve just penetrated a U.S. military base), fear of The Bomb (hey, what’s that mushroom cloud on the horizon?) and mass sightings of UFOs (coming right up). **2\. International conspiracies.** Nazis in the first and third _Indy_s, Indian Thugees in the second. But it wouldn’t be the ’50s without Commies, in the chic person of Irina Spalko (played by Blanchett with the severe demeanor of Cyd Charisse’s Ninotchka in the 1957 MGM musical _Silk Stockings_ and the black bob Charisse sports in _The Band Wagon_). Rather than the simple matter of conquering the West militarily, Irina is part of a Soviet plot to cloud our minds by getting access to some secret technology that is concealed either in an Area 51 warehouse or in the remotest jungle mountains of Peru. “We will change you, Mr. Jones, all of you, from the inside,” she proclaims. “We will turn you into us.” Ewww, creepy. Glad that didn’t happen. **3\. The Fedora, the bullwhip… the snakes!** We see the hat just before we see Indy; brown headwear is still in style in 1957\. As for Indy’s bullwhip, it’s still faster and deadlier than a bad guy’s gun. In the opening Area 51 scene, he uses it to disarm about a quillion Russkies, and to swing in Errol Flynn style from one warehoused beam to another. (Mutt will later show the same swinging derring-do on Peruvian jungle vines.) As for the snakes, there’s just one, but indy is readier to die in quicksand than to use it as a lifeline. The nifty new predators are South American red ants, which Spielberg and Lucas may have remembered from the 1954 movie _The Naked Jungle_, and which can swarm over a man by the millions and drag him into their formicary for a nice fat meal. **4\. A cool car chase.** A lot of the elements in _Crystal Skull_ may feel like mandatory reprises of the old tropes, but the high-speed two-vehicle fight between Indy’s team and Irina’s goons is up there with the _Raiders_ jeep sequence, more complex and sophisticated in its engineering of physical action. (In the post-film press conference this afternoon, Spielberg said, “I believe in practical magic, not digital magic,” and in “real stunts with real people.”) If there’s a scene that film students will be poring over, decades from now, this is the one. **5\. Family revelations.** Spielberg movies are often about the separation and reconstituting of a family, and the last two _Indy_ films are no exception. In _Last Crusade_ we met Indy’s father (Sean Connery) and learned that Indy’s real name was Henry Jones, Jr. Indeed, “Junior” was Dad’s apparently derogatory form of address for his son. That gag is repeated here, since — as everyone who’s paid the slightest attention to pre-release scuttlebutt knows — Mutt is Indy’s son by Marion. (Why is he called Mutt? Presumably because, as we learned at the end of _The Last Crusade_, Indiana was the name of the Jones family dog; Mutt’s just extending the breed.) He enters on a motorcycle, in the leather-jacket regalia Marlon Brando sported in _The Wild One_, and soon displays some of the athletic skills he must have inherited from his absent dad. Whether the smooth-visaged LaBeouf can grow into Ford’s craggy machismo — or even whether he can top the teen Indys that have been played by River Phoenix (in _The Last Crusade_) and Sean Patrick Flannery (in the TV series _The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles_) — is a question later _Indy_ installments will have to answer. **6\. Archaeology!** Recall that our hero’s day job is as a professor of archaeology. On vacations he goes out, makes trouble and saves the world. Or does he? Indy’s job, basically, is plundering indigenous cultures for treasure, in capers that will cost hundreds of lives and add exactly nothing to the lore of civilization. (And, in three of the four movies, he comes home empty-handed.) But heck, it’s an adventure movie; leave all ethnic scruples home. Scholars of antiquity will be pleased to know that _Crystal Skull_ — with its runic inscriptions, vanished languages, hidden caves and dreadful secrets — is the archaeolog-iest _Indy_ film yet. In fact, the movie is a little plot-heavy around the middle. It seems more determined to tell a complicated story than to use a story as the excuse for a convulsive, nonstop thrill ride. **7\. Start with a big bang, end with terrifying mysticism.** The creation of these movies always has this method: start with the opening and climactic sequences — in _Raiders_‘ case, the South American cave with the rolling rock and the opening of the Ark with the melting skulls — and work inward. (Or as Spielberg says on the new _Last Crusade_ DVD: “How do we fill in the middle?”) Here, the bang couldn’t be bigger. The 12 min. opener takes Indy into Area 51, where he escapes into what seems to be an ideal Levittown … except that the people are mannequins, a nuclear bomb is about to be detonated, and Indy has exactly one minute to find a safe place to hide. (That place is one of the film’s smartest inspirations.) As for the ending, well, we’re not giving _everything_ away. Let’s just say that Indy and Marion could be _The X Files_‘ Mulder and Scully on assignment in Peru. We’ll see how David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson cope with middle age in their _X Files_ movie later this summer. They may suffer from the occasional creaking joints of _Crystal Skull_. (And, truth to tell, there was more applause here at the beginning of the screening than at the end.) But they’d be hard-pressed to inhabit the sleek, satisfying adventure that three septuagenarians and their pals dreamed up here. There’s a moment in the film where Mutt sees Indy negotiate some really cool bit of action, and the kid can’t help mouth a “Wow.” That’s the right response to this inevitable summer blockbuster. Lucas, Spielberg and Ford ain’t the Over the Hill Gang yet. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/archive/6908949/indiana-jones-smart-sleek-familiar/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/archive/6908949/indiana-jones-smart-sleek-familiar/"},"headline":"Indiana Jones: Smart, Sleek, Familiar","datePublished":"2008-05-18T04:00:00.000Z","dateModified":"2026-03-22T15:36:12.858Z","description":"Early in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull — which had its tumultuous world premiere today at the Cannes Film Festival —...","url":"https://time.com/archive/6908949/indiana-jones-smart-sleek-familiar/","keywords":[],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt7ec3d234c6436606/698a4ad0cabb1d06b9e52efe/360_cannes_indiana_jones_0516.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Richard Corliss","url":"https://time.com/author/richard-corliss/"}],"articleSection":"Entertainment","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt7ec3d234c6436606/698a4ad0cabb1d06b9e52efe/360_cannes_indiana_jones_0516.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"360_cannes_indiana_jones_0516.jpg","caption":"Shia LeBeouf, left, Harrison Ford and Karen Allen in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.","creditText":"Paramount / Everett","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/section/entertainment/","name":"Entertainment"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/archive/6908949/indiana-jones-smart-sleek-familiar/","name":"Indiana Jones: Smart, Sleek, Familiar"}}]}] ```