[pac-man]

Gentlemen, gentlemen, you're all missing the point here.

This was a fucking Indiana Jones movie! Not National Treasure. Not The Mummy. Not Tomb Raider. You want mindless summer fare, go see those; Indiana Jones movies are that and more. It's not people of a certain age or of internet forums that govern the quality of these films, it's the film makers. Speilberg, Lucas, and Ford are all responsible for some great movie moments. They should aspire to nothing less.

Yet it seems they were all going through the motions on this one. The movie did have it's thrills, but this is a film series with a pedigree. I'd expect to see set pieces like the fridge or the vines from Brendan Fraser's character in The Mummy, but Ford's Indiana Jones character was more clever than that. Part of the charm of the series was the character's serendipity mixed with intuition. "Making this up as (he) go(es) along," as he said in Raiders. This Indy wasn't improvising, he was a set piece. Defend this CGI-laziness in today's films all you want, but I'll be damned if it wasn't more fun watching Indy and co. fall from the sky in a raft with old school special effects than it was watching Indy and co. survive three waterfalls with today's. It simply never felt like the actors were amidst the action, thus there was no suspense. To paraphrase one reviewer, it's called CGI now because special effects are no longer special.

No one mentions the weakness of this film's dungeon crawls. In the prior three, they were tense and funny. During this one there was no sense of discovery like when Indy found the shield in The Last Crusade. No sense of urgency like when he and Short Round nearly got crushed in Temple. No sense of adventure like the entire opening act of Raiders. This time, he and Mutt found a ruin, got attacked by natives that existed solely to shoot blow darts and throw karate kicks, and eased their way upon the the skull (which is magnetic when it wants to be and serves as an easy out for dangerous circumstances).

Overplayed nostalgia, underplayed sentiment. Overdone CGI, underdone plot/character development. Over the time a sequel should have been made, under the expectations of anyone who loved the originals. Was Crystal Skull entertaining? That depends on the viewer. Was it good? Not by a fucking long shot.