Ariel: Okay, first off, before anybody even starts asking if it's time for our readers to put their spoiler blankets over their heads, I've got to say something.
Sasha: Wow, okay, what is it?
Ariel: It's a spoiler. And I know it's bad of me, because we hate spoiling things, but I've just got to.
Sasha: Um, you know, even though we didn't say for people to put their spoiler blankets on, you kind of just alerted them that you're going to do a spoiler.
Ariel: Oh, geez -- don't put your blankets on, anybody! You've got to hear this spoiler, seriously!
Sasha: Hopefully you caught them in time. So what is it?
Ariel: It's just that people are so dumb.
Sasha: Well ... I don't know that anybody reading this is going to have anything spoiled by that, but ... do you want to be more specific?
Ariel: About this movie, I mean! Claire and MSG and Elle and Hettie all agree that everybody except them hates this movie, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. And I was like, okay, good to know we should watch that one first, and then all the other Indiana Jones movies will be better than the first one we watch, so we're not as likely to get all disappointed.
Sasha: So ... but ... didn't it occur to you that if they don't hate the movie, probably you wouldn't hate the movie either, since mostly everybody around here likes the same stuff?
Ariel: Oh. I mean, now that you say that, it does.
Sasha: How about if we jump into talking about the movie, so we can find out why you didn't hate it. Do we need to tell people to put on their spoiler blankets now?
Ariel: I don't know why -- they're going to hate the movie no matter what, since everybody does. Except us weirdos.
Sasha: Well, I'm still going to say that people should read on at their own risk if they don't want things spoiled about Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.
Ariel: Spoiler alert, this movie is about a guy named Indiana Jones and a crystal skull, but there's totally no kingdom anywhere in the movie. It's like, it starts off in the United States and then goes to South America, and none of the countries they visit have kings.
Sasha: I don't think they literally meant "kingdom" in the title. I think it was just a cooler-sounding word than "Land" or "City" or "Place" or "Weird-Ass Ruins."
Ariel: Those would all be true, though! And I don't think "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull" sounds all that much better than "Indiana Jones and the Weird-Ass Ruins of the Crystal Skull." No, wait, now that I said it out loud, the one they went with definitely sounds cooler.
Sasha: Plus, it's not exactly a super-accurate or realistic movie, so I don't think we need to hold the title to a really high standard of descriptive perfection. How about if we move on to the movie?
Ariel: Right! So the movie starts off, and there's this mound of dirt, and a cuuuute furry gopher burrows out of it! Or maybe it was a groundhog. Or maybe a prairie dog. I don't know, I'm not a burrowologist. The important thing is, it was soooo cute! And then, ZOOM! A hot rod almost runs right over the cute little burrowy guy! My heart started pounding so hard, I was really worried about him. But it looked like he got out of the way in time, whew. So then the hot rod is driving across the desert looking very cool and fast, and I was like, "Okay, calm down, Aers. Pay attention so you can find out which one of these people in the hot rod is Indiana Jones." Except, of course, it was none of them. So many twists and turns right off the bat in this movie! Only not literal twists and turns, because the hot rod was mostly driving straight and then started racing against an army convoy that was also mostly driving straight. Only it turned out the army convoy was actually a bunch of Russian army guys disguised as actual army guys, so they could do a bunch of bad stuff. More twists! And turns!
Sasha: I was enjoying myself too. It really seemed to be off to a good start.
Ariel: Right? And then the bad Russian army men pull up at the top secret warehousey place and it turns out they've got a couple of guys stuck in the trunk of the lead car of the convoy. And do you know who the second guy they pulled out was?
Sasha: I mean, we did watch the movie together, Aers. It was Indiana Jones.
Ariel: No! I mean, yes, but when I first saw him, I was like, "Hey! It's Han Oldo from the Star Wars movies!" Only not quite as old as in the ones where he's Han Oldo.
Sasha: Still pretty old compared to the Solo movie, or even to the ones where he's Han Older Than The Solo Movie Solo.
Ariel: I'm thinking even though he's old, though, he must be pretty badass because the first guy they pulled out of the trunk the Russians just kinda threw to one side and ignored, but now with Han Oldo being pulled out, they like, surround him with a dozen guys pointing machine guns at him.
Sasha: He's totally smooth about it, too. Like he's used to having dozens of machine guns stuck in his face.
Ariel: And then the big bad guy shows up! Major Accent Agent Lady!
Sasha: Only I think she was a colonel, not a major.
Ariel: I meant her accent was major. But we can call her Colonel Major Accent Agent Lady if you want. Or maybe shorten it to Major Accent Colonel Lady or Major Accent Agent Colonel or --
Sasha: Why don't we say she's Colonel Agent Major Accent Lady, which we can abbreviate to "CAMAL" and then since it sounds like "Camel" just call her Camel Gal.
Ariel: Wow. That's an awesome solution, Sash.
Sasha: Thanks!
Ariel: So then there's a bunch of weird stuff with magnets and gunpowder in the warehouse and they find an alien in a coffin and Han Oldo makes a super-exciting escape swinging around on a whip and fighting a giant Russian dude and then getting jetted out of the warehouse basement on a jet sled!
Sasha: That was a pretty hoppin' scene.
Ariel: But then .. the next scene.
Sasha: I know. Crazy.
Ariel: First, all you readers need to know that I made them pause the movie so I could say, "What the heck? I thought you said people hate this movie! So far it's awesome! When do we get to the part that they hate?" And do you know what they said?
Sasha: Yes, because I was there, remember?
Ariel: I'm asking for the audience. But I'll just say it. They wanted me to believe that some people right away hated the groundhog!
Sasha: It felt like a very weird thing to hate.
Ariel: Yeah. I told them they could go ahead and just push "play" again if they were only going to lie to me, and then they said, "Actually, this next scene coming up has one of the things people hate the most about this movie, because they think it's so ridiculously unbelievable." So I said, "Okay, but don't tell me what it is. I'll see if I can guess."
Sasha: I remember how that worked out.
Ariel: I know, right??? There I am, watching Han Oldo finding his way out of the desert by spotting this town down below some rocky or mountainy place he had climbed up on. So he climbs down to the town and gets there right as some of the Russian army guys show up in a car, and they barely miss spotting him. And then things start to get all weird. Like he climbs a fence and is in someone's back yard and walks past a bunch of super-stiff clothes hanging on wires, so I said, "Is that the unrealistic thing, these clothes that look all flat hanging from wires for no reason?" But they said no, people used to dry clothes that way after they washed them. And then he goes in the house and nobody answers him when he says, "Hello? Hello?" Which didn't seem super unrealistic because maybe they weren't home even though they left the TV on. And then he tries to get a drink of water from the kitchen sink but nothing comes out, so I almost asked if that was the unrealistic thing but then I thought, "Heck, it's a desert, so maybe they're on water rationing."
Sasha: That was good thinking.
Ariel: But wrong.
Sasha: But still good!
Ariel: And then I'm like, "Aha! Here's the unrealistic part!" because he goes in a room and thinks he sees people and tries to talk to them, but they're just dummies. Like department-store dummies, not dumb-people-who-think-this-is-a-bad-movie dummies. "Why would there be a house full of dummies in this town, and isn't it pretty unlikely he would accidentally find the house full of dummies instead of a normal house with normal people?" But MSG said, no, that wasn't the unrealistic part. And then he runs outside in the front yard and there are more dummies! Including dummies walking a dummy dog! And I'm like, "This is obviously the unrealistic part. Why is there a whole town that's just dummies in the desert? Who would build that?"
Sasha: Only Elle said, no, that's basically historically accurate.
Ariel: Right! And then I'm like, "What? Were people in the 1950s just crazy?" and Hettie said, "No comment." So then some announcement starts, and Han Oldo starts running around like he's panicking, and the Russian guys in the car drive by and they're panicking too and then there's another long-distance shot of the town, only this time there's a big tower in the foreground with a bomb on top of it. And I said, "So this is the unrealistic part. They're scared of a bomb that's obviously way too far from the town to be dangerous, plus who puts a bomb outside of a town full of dummies. Is it a dummy bomb?" And Claire says no, this part is all real, and they're scared because it's an atom bomb.
Sasha: Which is where you started getting kind of wigged out.
Ariel: I know! I'm like, "WHAT. THERE'S A TOWN FULL OF DUMMIES AND AN ATOM BOMB AND SOMEBODY I GUESS THE GOVERNMENT IS JUST GOING TO SET OFF AN ATOM BOMB AND BLOW UP A TOWN FULL OF DUMMIES??? JUST FOR KICKS??? AND THIS ISN'T THE UNREALISTIC PART??? W. T. A. F.!!!"
Sasha: I thought it seemed pretty unrealistic too. But I looked it up later and then I felt pretty ignorant about the 1950s.
Ariel: So I'm freaking out because this CRAZY A.F. setup is actually real, and Han Oldo is about to get atomized by a freakin' ATOM BOMB and there's obviously no way he can get out of there in time and he climbs in a refrigerator and there's a label that says "Lead lined for your safety" or some crazy thing like that and then the atom bomb goes off and there's this super flash of light that burns all the dummies up just from being so bright and then a shock wave that rips the whole town apart and it's the scariest most bizarre unbelievable thing I've ever seen and the refrigerator gets blown clear of the blast and tumbles down this long, not too steep hill until it stops and Han Oldo rolls out and gets up and is just standing there looking at this absolutely hellish scene with a big mushroom-shaped cloud growing up out of this disintegrated town in the desert. And then when it's over everybody tells me that the unbelievable part was the refrigerator surviving.
Sasha: You didn't think that was unrealistic? I thought it was pretty unrealistic, but it was fun so I didn't care.
Ariel: I totally thought it was unrealistic! But I also thought it was the most realistic thing in the whole scene! If you didn't know all that other stuff was real, like I didn't, why in the world would you think the fridge part was the most unrealistic part? I mean, I'm obviously pretty ignorant about history and physics and atom bombs, but everything in the whole scene was bat-poop insane! And it turns out 95% of the scene was actually pretty close to the effed up reality that was normal for people in the 1950s! Only these movie watchers in the 2000s got upset about the 5% that was a silly fun escape for a made-up character in an over-the-top action movie? No. Just ... no. That's bonkers.
Sasha: Wow. You're still upset. I thought you seemed really offended when we were watching and you found out why people didn't like the scene, but I figured by now you would have chilled out a little more than this.
Ariel: Sash, it was literally one of the most mind-blowing scenes I have ever seen in a movie in my life. Not only was it crazy exciting because I was sure Han Oldo was about to die, and not only did it just, like, almost explode my eyes from how amazing the special effects were, but I totally freakin' learned things about real life that I didn't want to know and that I'll never be able to get out of my brain from now on. And people hate it because the fridge thing is goofy?
Sasha: Pretty head-scratchity. All I can figure is, when we watch the other movies we'll see that they don't have goofy unrealistic escapes like that in them.
Ariel: Whoosh. Okay, I think I'm all worn out now. Look at my hands!
Sasha: They're shaking!
Ariel: I can't even think about that scene and about the idea of people hating it without feeling like the universe is completely breaking up around me.
Sasha: Maybe we should stop for now, then.
Ariel: Yeah, definitely. I think that was really most of what I wanted to say anyhow, since from that point on I told everybody not to tell me what parts people hated about the movie. I just watched it and enjoyed it and assumed it was all the best parts that all the nincompoops thought stank.
Sasha: Well, they can think what they want. We know a good movie when we see one!
Ariel: I need a milkshake or something now.
Sasha and Ariel: Goodnight everybody!
