Sorry excuse

As the Los Angeles Times reported last week, Shia LeBeouf recently issued a public admission of guilt for his role as Mutt Williams in the dismal Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.

“I feel like I dropped the ball on the legacy that people loved and cherished,” said LeBeouf, who was in Cannes promoting Oliver Stone’s new Wall Street sequel.

Speaking for pretentious critic-jerks everywhere, his apology is not accepted. First of all, I never actually heard the words “I’m sorry.” But more importantly, LaBeouf isn’t the one who should feel guilty about Crystal Skull. Certainly, LeBeouf swinging about on monkey vines didn’t help matters, but that film’s bed was crapped on by far more powerful people years before he was even on Hollywood’s radar.

LeBeouf wouldn’t crack my top three people who should apologize for Crystal Skull, but I’m not holding out hope for apologies from my list toppers. Steven Spielberg is too proud to apologize for such a lucrative endeavor, George Lucas has been dead to me for a decade, and there remain persistent rumors that Harrison Ford was “mummified” in 1996, and has been living as a zombie ever since.

It takes guts to snap at the hand of Spielberg, a powerful filmmaker who pretty much made LeBeouf’s career, even if it’s just to promote another pointless sequel helmed by a director (Stone) who has contributed far less to the medium.

The seemingly sincere regret expressed by LeBeouf, of whose work I am admittedly and wholeheartedly not a fan, gave me my first stirrings of empathy for the actor since the second season of Project Greenlight. There, he was a genuinely charming adolescent struggling to work with bumbling and pretentious directors.

It must have been invaluable preparation for Michael Bay … now how about a Transformers apology?