★★★ Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

[Tiny: 3.0, Twinkletoes: 3.0, Gino: 3.0, Twoshoes: 3.0]

Tiny says: 'Well, we all saw this, and talked about it. I'm writing this two days later, and I have not warmed up to the movie. I was entertained for much of the time, but the movie did not have the smart plot I was hoping for. Things seemed a bit random and it was as though the story wasn't even important.'

Twinkletoes says: Underwhelming. No doubt the following statement is at least partially due to the fact that I am now almost 20 years older than I was when the last film came out, but this thing was just too silly and unbelievable for me to totally enjoy. The first one had a sort of indescribable realistic grit to it. The second one, while not as good as the first, I feel is perhaps the most successful at capturing that sort of fun pulpy comic book adventure vibe. The third one, well I can't really recall that one too much but I do admit to thinking it a bit too silly at the time. Still I felt that all 3 were more grounded in at least something approaching reality. The Ark, voodoo witch doctors and the Holy Grail all at least have some sort of connection to the world I grew up in. 13 mystical aliens do not.

Some other complaints:
- This thing seemed too glossy. Missing was that muted color palette that I feel made the 1st film so real and so successful.
- I felt like this thing made very little sense. Riddles were solved. Codes were broken. But I never felt that the characters actually did any of the work. Things were solved because the script needed them to be.
- I was really annoyed when Marion drove everybody over the cliff into the water. Not so much that she did it, but that she did it without first pushing the truck that the enemies were rappelling from over the cliff or getting out and cutting all of their ropes. I think it may have been the first time in the Indiana Jones films where I was annoyed at plot required stupidity.
- How does one reconcile a world where the Ark and the Holy Grail exist and have power with a world in which aliens have brought technology to humans and aided in its advancement?

Gino says: "First, I will say Twoshoes called hers an "affectionate" 3 stars. I toyed with giving it 3.5 myself, simply because it was definitely a fun movie. What is the main problem? The main problem is the same one that plagues several of the Star Wars films, as well as I think the Last Crusade episode: Lucas wants to have his cake and eat it too. Or looking at it another way, he has chosen a challenging genre: He wants to recreate the magic of the Saturday morning serials. Well, as I understand it, those films were all crap, right? and yet the production values and at least attempts at scripts aim so high in Lucas films that he undermines his goals. He needed to either make these films more pulpy with throwaway scripts, but give us 18 of them, or make them more serious or at least more focused. Raiders of the Lost Ark is about as "tight" a script as you can get, I think, and it worked marvels.

For the first 5 minutes of the Crystal Skull film there is an (inconsequential) drag race though the New Mexico desert set to an Elvis song, and at that point, I "had a great feeling about this" film. But as the movie unraveled, so did the plot and direction of the narrative. So when we get to those doors at the end, I was like "wait, why are they here again? what is supposed to be behind there?" This kind of moment should never happen in a big popcorn movie, and it never did in the previous Indiana Jones films (though Phantom Menace it surely did and still does).

I agree with almost everything you folks said, by the way. I actually didn't mind the alien aspects of the story: Lucas's idea was, having moved the film into the 1950's the type of B-movie that it should represent should move away from swashbuckling and into sci-fi. So, I bought that, but not the whole package.

I also thing that Lucas benefitted from the constraints of special effects 20-30 years ago. Two people can NOT fence on two Jeeps racing through a rainforest never ever, or survive thrice a thousand foot fall. The stunts and affects in the older films, while maybe technically as implausible felt much more real."