Indiana Jones and the Big Pile of Crap
I have a stubborn streak, and sometimes it doesn't serve me all that well. At crucial times, I have a tendency to ignore well-informed advice from others, and this can sometimes lead to bad consequences.
I made that same mistake again today; I've been told by several people not to waste time or money on "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull," and I ignored that advice. I should have listened to them.
The Indiana Jones movies (especially the first and third ones) are classics, and I think it was at least partially due to nostalgia that I chose to see the latest installment in spite of the warnings. Surely, I thought, after 19 years, Lucas and Spielberg would come up with a fourth installment true to the spirit, humor, and integrity of the originals. Man, was I ever wrong.
The script is nearly devoid of the humor and wit that made the earlier films so enjoyable. The story is a muddled, decrepit mess, meandering without direction or goal, all while mangling the totally independent histories of the Aztecs, the Mayans, the Incas, and the Nazcans into one big unintelligible swamp of bad ideas and stupid writing. The return of Marion Ravenwood was a golden opportunity wasted by terrible storytelling. The cinematography was lazy and uninspired, the action sequences were dull shadows of their predecessors, and, to cap it all off, it seems that Lucas and Spielberg became confused and thought they were making an "X-Files" movie.
What a sad coda to an otherwise remarkable series.