"But most impressively, Crystal Skull carries the burden of making popular entertainment that must also be taken seriously. Spielberg assumed that mandate through the conceit of planning the Indiana Jones films in the mass-art style of afternoon movie serials but with a modern sensibility that could galvanize the revanchist Reagan-era culture. It worked almost too well. The 1981 Raiders of the Lost Ark was a hyper-smart action-movie pastiche—produced by super-square George Lucas before Tarantino made such things hip. Lucas and Philip Kaufman’s story idea was written by Lawrence Kasdan in the revisionist spirit of ’70s American Renaissance movies, yet remained essentially juvenile like Lucas’ Star Wars. When the impudent, postmodern imperialism of Raiders was followed by the comic essay on the morality of speed in 1984’s Temple of Doom, both needed some crucial political correction—eventually provided by The Last Crusade’s overview of Western political and religious heritage.
First, Spielberg has to compete for his stolen, degraded audience (kidnapped by Peter Jackson and Gore Verbinski; simplified by National Treasure, Godzilla, The Mummy). Then, he needs to work through the geo-political quandary of post-9/11 pop. This is what makes the series of cliffhangers more than rote; their flamboyance becomes trenchant. Last Crusade taught Indy his place in global politics; but when that lesson was applied in Brett Eisner’s Sahara, the example of political engagement went unappreciated. Going back to the “naiveté” and isolationism of Raiders would be unconscionable, so Spielberg and screenwriter David Koepp patch together an intermediate solution: These action scenes are reminders of courageous effort, the impetus that has seeped out of American pop culture except when practiced by characters who are gangsters or drug dealers. (Courage is anathema in today’s mainstream depictions of soldiers at war.) Crystal Skull may lack the contemporary political relevance of Sahara, but it sublimates post-9/11 paranoia into a version of Spielberg’s cosmology while also depicting past political lessons about which we are no longer naive.