Review of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008) by Thedude — 23 May 2008

It's really hard to figure out what happened here. Were they trying to make this as bad as possible? Lucas and Spielberg turn the cute and the camp up to eleven, and manage to make Temple of Doom look like a classic by comparison.

Granted, it would have been hard for me to be satisfied with anything here, as Raiders of the Lost Ark is one of my all-time favorite films, but I went in expecting it to be around the quality of the Last Crusade, which wasn't too bad, or at worst Temple of Doom, which was bad but nowhere near this bad.

I just can't think of anything worthwhile about this film. The more Lucas does now, the more he detracts from the excellent work he did in the late seventies and early eighties. I will be forever grateful to him for American Graffiti, Star Wars, Empire Strikes Back, Raiders of the Lost Ark, and Return of the Jedi, but everything since then is a disaster, and this film, unfortunately, just continues that trend.