Lego managed to successfully follow up its highly entertaining and replayable Lego Star Wars games with Lego Indiana Jones: The Original Adventures. It plays with the same format as the Lego Star Wars games, looking almost like another sequel than a brand new game, but including new elements that make sense for Indiana Jones, like searching for tools to unlock various parts of levels and repair broken machines, and stealing the bad guys’ weapons and throwing various objects. The two player drop in/drop out co-op is still these games’ strongest element. It’s a format that lends itself to any number of other games with liscenced characters Lego might think to use.

Up until now, Lego has been working with film trilogies. Each game gets a total of eighteen levels, six for each film, which plays through the entire trilogy. Many of the levels are quite extensive and with all of the extra things you can’t get to in story mode, which you have to go back to find in free play, these games are very long and the levels are worth coming back to more than once. Lego Batman: The Video Game comes out in September, and it’ll be the first one not to use this trilogy format. It’s also the first not to be based on films, and it contains its own original story, one in which all of Gotham’s villains escape from Arkam and Batman has to round them all up. I’m interested to see how well the story holds up in comparison to the other games, especially since they already had a road map laid out for them by the film trilogies.

As popular as these games have been (and I imagine Batman will prove to be Lego’s most successful) I doubt Lego will stop with Batman. I’d eventually like to see a return to the film trilogy format, and I have some ideas for candidates that would make very good Lego games.

Lego Jurassic Park

Jurassic Park has a lot of potential for a Lego game because A) It’s a trilogy, B) there are plenty of built in action scenes, C) watching Lego characters get eaten and trampled on by dinosaurs is nothing short of hillarious, and D) it’s another Spielberg property. Both Star Wars and Indiana Jones are Lucasfilm movies, but since Spielberg also partially owns Indiana Jones, it’s possible that might make it easier for Lego to get permission for this game. In fact, they might not even need it– there have been Jurassic Park legos in the past, with their Jurassic Park III line. Keep in mind that Lego only makes video games that it has also made Lego sets for.

The only real problem with a game for the Jurassic Park trilogy is that the films get progressively worse. The most fun in my mind, at least to design, would be the sets from the first film, because we would get to see the whole theme park in Lego. The Lost World was a decent movie and still has Lego potential, but most of it is in the jungle without many structures to work with. Most of what could be built with Legos would be vehicles. And Jurassic Park III… was boring and far too short. They’d be hard pressed to come up with six good levels for that movie, and they’d have even fewer man-made structures to work with. Then again, some of Lego Star Wars’ best levels were from the unforgivable Attack of the Clones, so maybe they could work a miracle.

Some other folks have built some Jurassic Park sets and vehicles out of their own Legos, and they look pretty good. If Lego ever thought to make this game, perhaps some of it would look similar to this.

Lego Harry Potter

I would bet money this game really is coming. Lego already has the rights to Harry Potter, and there are a good number of sets already out from the film series. The problem with making it into one of these games, though, is that it’s much longer than a trilogy. I suppose they could go ahead and release the first three in a game, wait for the last two films, and then make the last four into a game… but that’s lopsided and a little strange. More likely, they’ll wait for the last two movies and then release one very large game. Seven films broken into six levels apiece would have been too much for the PS2 and XBox, but the nextgen systems could handle it, as evidenced by the fact that both Lego Star Wars have been released as one big game on those systems just recently.

A lot of new concepts would probably need to be introduced– I wonder how magic wands would work in a Lego version? Probably a lot like the Force. Something glows, you point your wand at it, it explodes and studs pop out, or you move it to build something. But wands do all kinds of other things in Harry Potter, so it would be interesting to see how it was handled. The Quidditch scenes would probably be a lot like the ship battle scenes in Star Wars. Every film has a lot of potential for interesting levels, and unlike with Jurassic Park III, these movies would be hard to break down into only six levels apiece. 

The Lego Matrix

A lot of fans have envisioned this one too, and there are several Lego Matrix fan videos (most of them not especially impressive) on YouTube. Whether you like the last two movies are not, this is a trilogy where every film lends itself to a game like this. The first film has the big hellicopter sequence, the second has the fight with a bazillion Agent Smiths and the fight on the freeway, and the last film has the epic battle for Zion. Getting to see Legos in bullet time is reason enough to make this game, and I imagine, if it could ever get off the ground, it would be one of Lego’s biggest sellers and maybe even the best Matrix video game, considering some of those that have come before it. One thing that could hurt this as a possibility though, is that it would promote a Rated R franchise.

Lego Back to the Future

As far as action scenes go, this would be more in the vein of Lego Indiana Jones, where goons would run into a room and you’d punch them all to pieces. And the problem there is that really all the bad guys would be either Biff or Biff’s thugs. Other than figuring out who Marty and the Doc would fight though, a lot of really neat Lego sets could be built and as classic as these movies are, all three with plenty to offer a Lego game, the best part would be the animated film sequences in between levels. This one would be great for the co-op because you could be Marty and the Doc most of the time. The Lego games have also used their films’ music throughout the levels, and Back to the Future would be great for that, as well. Maybe it would even give Huey Lewis a comeback. Like The Matrix, there haven’t been Back to the Future Legos before, but I think it could happen, especially with the mass nostalgia around today.

Lego Spider-Man and Lego X-Men

Both have three movies. Both have a lot of characters, especially X-Men, which would work in their favor, as it’s good to have a lot of people to unlock and choose between in free play mode. One of them already has Legos, and that’s Spider-Man. If I had to guess, I’d say Lego Spider-Man is probably the next game that really will come out. The X-Men films would lend themselves better to a game, I think, again because of all the characters, but also because of the sets. The Lego X mansion, Lego Cerebro, Lady Liberty from the first movie, Stryker’s base from the second… and although X-Men: The Last Stand was pretty awful, I think it would still make for some cool levels, especially Magneto moving the bridge and some of the stuff with the Phoenix. We haven’t seen Legos have to push against wind yet… for that matter, we haven’t seen a Lego with a healing factor yet! But Spider-Man could be fun, too. Lego web-slinging sounds hillarious.

Regardless of what gets made, the sky is really the limit. We’ve all imagined our favorite films, comics, and tv shows as Legos. Virtually every property has its own Mini-Mate set (or some equvialent) now, and although those lines are really funny, you have to assume we have our nostalgia for Legos to thank for a desire to see cute, plastic, disproportionate versions of our favorite charcters.

Mini-Mates Back to the Future

Mini-Mates 24

Mini-Mates Star Trek

Mini-Mates Rocky

I don’t know if a Lego Rocky game would work or not… but it seems to me that if Mini-Mates could get the rights to so many liscenced characters, Lego shouldn’t have a problem.

LLAP

-Cap’n Logan

BEWARE THE SPOILERS

One of the things that made me greatly apperciate this movie more than most is that I had almost no idea of the plot before walking into the theater. Though Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull has been all over the place in merchandising and advertising, the trailers are mysterious and careful to give nothing away except that it’s Indiana Jones, it’s set in the ’50s and there are Communists, and there will be no attempt at hiding Harrison Ford’s age. So if you haven’t seen it yet, I strongly urge you to go before reading any more of this review. It’s the kind of movie I can’t begin to talk about without giving away all the things that will either really jazz you or really turn you off. Don’t read any more until you’ve gone to the theater.

It’s been 19 years since the last Indiana Jones movie, and the film is set exactly 19 years later. Like The Last Crusade, and unlike the other two, the film is very aware of its time in history and uses major events and issues of the time to its advantage. In Temple it was Nazis, here it’s Communists, and like everyone else in 1957, Indy is accused by the FBI as being one of them. I absolutely love this plot point and I wish more had been done with it. Indy gets kicked out of his school for it and then, just when you figure some dry FBI agent who serves for comic effect will follow Indy throughout the whole movie, it forgets about this and instead focuses on the mystery of the Crystal Skull and on Indy’s convoluted past over the years his character has no movies made about him. But I’m getting ahead of myself. At the end of the film, Indy has saved the day, somehow proving he wasn’t working with the Commies at all (I guess) and he’s promoted to assistant dean at the college he was just fired from. The historical context was great for a minute, but ultimately amounts to very little except providing us with the villains of the film.

One of the film’s greatest strengths was something I never would have expected would work, and that’s taking Indiana Jones into the realm of science fiction. This movie continues the franchise’s tradition of revealing every myth or legend that comes up as being entirely real. The previous films did two Christian legends and one Indian one, so why not deal with Roswell and aliens? Myths surrounding those things are just as legendary today and get a lot of attention on the news stands and on the History and Discovery channels. So this time, it turns out that the great Crystal Skulls are actually from aliens, and the power the legend claims whomever returns the final skull will gain is the power of knowledge. Following classic Indiana Jones formula, Irina Spalko (the lead female Soviet soldier played by Cate Blanchett of all people) does get this promised “power” and it destroys her. I was a little worried when she was revealed to be a telepath in the first twenty minutes of the film, because it didn’t seem to fit in the realm of the Indiana Jones universe. Then it was revealed that power came from the skull, and I was fine with it. The age-old knowledge-is-power theme is, of course, very relevant in today’s Internet culture, and I found it very appropriate for Indiana Jones to tackle it. In the context of 1957, the film very effectively brought home the message the knowledge is important, but that human beings should be humble enough to admit that too much knowledge can destroy.

Education was a big theme, and rightly so. Indiana Jones is a college professor and is immediately taken aback when his new sidekick Mutt Williams tells him he dropped out of school because he learns better on his own. At first, Indy tells him that’s okay as long as he does what he loves to do, but it’s obvious he doesn’t entirely buy his own advice. Especially since he takes it back halfway through the film when he discovers– in the film’s biggest mistake– that Mutt Williams is actually Henry Jones III, Indy’s son. Once he knows that, Indy insists that Mutt will go back to school, regardless of everything he said earlier.

I really resisted this dynamic. Though it makes no bones about Indy’s age (there’s a nice moment when Mutt says, “What are you, 80?”) the film, for the most part, doesn’t beat us over the head with it. At least, not until the tired old son-he-never-knew-about plot comes into play. Indy and Mutt had some fantastic chemistry early on. Both had something to learn from the other and their banter was cleverly written and delivered. This really broke down once the father-son issue popped up. The plot with the Soviets, the Crystal Skull and the missing professor who is obsessed with the Skulls was already very strong and reminiscent of the earlier pictures. Why did Lucas and Spielberg feel the need to add the most contrived idea they could possibly come up with?? It’s a fall-back idea, the thing you do in a “many years later” scenario because you can’t think of anything better. It’s Superman Returns in a nutshell. But they already had a solid story, so they didn’t need it. Mutt Williams (played by the always-fantastic Shea LaBouf) could have very easily been taken in by Indy, like the son he never had because he never settled down, instead of actually being his son, with a convoluted past where Indy got back together with Marion from the first film, got her pregnant but didn’t know it, ran off, and apparently was with the military at some point (because of “all those medals” he won).

Most of it’s problems stem from an attempt at tying up loose ends that were never there in the first place. I’m usually a big proponent for continuity– but not in this case. The original trilogy is three separate films, not one big story like Star Wars. There is some continuity; there are some references and call-backs in some films to earlier ones. But in order to get everyone into the theater for this one, it seems that Lucas and Spielberg wanted to try and use this one to tell us everything we always wondered about… except none of us were wondering. The movie seems to pretend Indy and Marion ever had any chemistry at all in the first film, just to force this father-son plot. Karen Allen returns to play Marion and she’s not bad… per sey. Honestly, she doesn’t do much of anything, and after her initial introduction into the movie where she and Indy fight just like they did in the first movie, she stops even seeming like the same character. Later, when she and Indy all at once seem to decide to get back together, they keep having these weird googly-eye moments. These are not Clark Kent and Lois Lane. Why are we expected to assume they were always supposed to be soul-mates? When she asks Indy if there have been other women, he says yes, but the problem was, none of them were her. That’s cute, but I don’t buy it.

But this is to say nothing negative about Mutt Williams. At the end, we’re given the impression that he’ll follow in his father’s footsteps and become the next Indiana Jones. I have no problem with this. If there’s a spin-off planned, I’m all for it. But I wish he hadn’t been Indy’s actual son. There was an attempt to parallel the relationship between Indy and his own father, and it just didn’t work. Too much fan service in a film that was already working in its self-contained story.

Happily, Harrison Ford is still very much Indiana Jones. I never felt like he tried to play it too old or too dark. He was a little rougher around the edges, but he had been through a lot, and he went through more in this movie than in the other three combined. He gets beat up, blown up, dropped from high places and almost sucked under ground in this movie. The film was trying to prove that Harrison Ford could still do the stunts and that Indy was still the same character no matter his age, and I loved it. Okay, so maybe the nuclear test scene where Indy rolls a hundred times in a refrigerator was a little much… but it was awesome.

That being said, there was far too much CGI. It had a white-washed look that successfully made much of it feel like the earlier pictures, and I appreciated that. But there were places where I was taken out. The CGI wasn’t such a problem with the real big special effects– the pillars that rose at the end, for instance, looked great. What I couldn’t get over were the cartoon gophers and monkeys. Not kidding. They looked like Dreamworks computer animated movies and they had no business being in the movie. Completely misplaced.

All-in-all, though, it was Indiana Jones and it was well worth it. It had its scenes that could have been in any of the first three, and that was great. Probably the best being the scene where Indy is sinking in a sand pit and Marion and Mutt are trying to pull him out with a snake. Indy won’t grab on unless they call it a rope. Priceless.

LLAP

-Cap’n Logan