Review of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008) by Earl N — 06 Jun 2014

A significant dip in quality for this installment. You'd think with almost twenty years of downtime, Spielberg and Lucas would have polished the crystal a little more (do you polish crystal? I actually don't know).

Let's start with the elements that did work. We still get to see Indy traversing the globe, investigating ancient artifacts and generally being swashbuckly. We also get a nice setup of or villains, both the generic bad-guy nameless soldiers, but also our villainess, played well here by Cate Blanchett. Finally, you get plenty of exciting action sequences involving numerous types of terrain.

Now, let's move on to some of the flaws. Harrison Ford seems really tired in this movie, almost like he doesn't want to be there. There are plot holes, and plot decisions that seem unnecessary. The computer effects tend to get in the way of the action. Finally, Shia LaBeouf seemed out of place in this movie.

There are some references to previous films (most notably Raiders), but in general, the overall quality is lower than the previous films. Take it or leave it.