INDIANA JONES AND THE KINGDOM OF THE CRYSTAL MOCKINGBIRD

Snakes. Why did it have to be snakes?

Instead of writing a film review of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, I've decided to randomly reimagine the plot of To Kill A Mockingbird if the novel had been touched up by the writers of this latest Indiana Jones flick.

Note: Spoiler alert! Seriously, don't read further if you plan on seeing the movie.

To Kill A Mockingbird

Originally written by Harper Lee
Amended by George Lucas and David Koepp

At the height of the Red Scare, Atticus Finch works as a criminal defense attorney in the town of Maycomb, Alabama. After a decade of fighting Nazis, Atticus begins his vigorous defense of an indigent African American defendant named Tom Robinson, who is falsely accused of raping a white woman.

After fleeing a mob of angry townspeople trying to lynch him, Atticus unknowingly wanders into a nuclear testing zone. After leaning on a plastic lawn ornament, he accidentally detonates a nuclear bomb. A second before the blast, Atticus takes refuge in a lead refrigerator. The force of the atomic explosion sends the icebox hurling over the mushroom cloud and safely dumps Atticus back into town.

When the leader of the mob - a Russian dominatrix with a quasi-British accent - spots Atticus in a diner, Tom helps them both escape on his motorcycle. At the end of a long pursuit through town, the pair slide underneath a row of tables at the courthouse library. When the motorcycle finally comes to a screeching halt, one of Atticus's other clients calmly asks Atticus if his pretrial motion hearing can be postponed.

Meanwhile, Atticus's children, Jem and Scout, become fascinated by their reclusive neighbor, "Boo" Radley. Scout is so curious about Boo that she makes up stories about him and drops out of school. Unbeknownst to Jem and Scout, Boo leaves the children a gift of a crystal skull. When Scout stares too long into the eyes of the magnetic crystal, she receives secret instructions on how to discover a city of gold.

After Tom's trial, Bob, the alleged rape victim's father, vows revenge upon Atticus. One day, when Atticus picks up Jem and Scout from school, Bob chases them into the Amazonian jungle. After nearly escaping quicksand and blow darts, the Finches escape death when Boo picks them up in an army jeep, uses the crystal skull to ward off flesh-eating ants, drives over a giant cliff, lands on a tree, survives three giant waterfalls, and wards off a tribe of Incan / Mayan / South American / Latino / Indegenous / Hispanic / dark savages.

The Russian Dominatrix also catches up with them, but her plot is yet again foiled when Jem learns to swing on vines like a chimp and leads a barrel of monkeys to stop her.

The plot thickens when Atticus uses his knowledge of Incan hieroglyphics to discover that he is Boo's father.

Finally, when Boo and the Finches discover the path to gold in the city of Akator, Bob attacks again. Jem and Boo kill Bob in self-defense.

When Maycomb's sheriff arrives upon the scene to arrest Jem and Boo, the crystal skull suddenly floats on top of a crystal torso, which is seated in a tribal council of twelve other crystal skeletons. The sheriff decides not to arrest them after the floor becomes a giant spinning wheel of fortune and the skulls form a single extra terrestrial, which converts the Mayan ruin into a giant flying saucer and flies off into space.

After learning that gold is really a metaphor for knowledge, Scout learns that she should stay in school.

The End.

--Junichi