This movie really ruined Indiana Jones for me but I hope they make at least one more and I hope it brings the series back to the former glory it deserves. There are many missteps they took with this one that ruined it for me... this is where the spoilers lie FYI....1) escaping a nuclear blast in a fridge? Oh OK 2) the whole alien thing, too over the top and dumb 3) Shia La Beouf? WHY OH WHY??? 4) actions scenes were decent but not up to snuff for an Indy film 5) villains weren't as good as earlier movies 6) no return of Brody, Sallah or Connery characters... though two for very obvious reasons, still miss 'emJust my two cents brothers and sisters.

Loved the first 3 Raiders of the Lost Ark movies. But this movie is awful. So many scenes are way over the top and completely unreal (even for a fantasy movie).

Why all the hatred? Why so serious? Granted I'm not the most hardcore fan of the series but I don't think there's ever been an Indiana Jones' movie I didn't enjoy, and over-the-top isn't certainly a term I would use negatively to describe my experience with "Kingdom of the Crystal of Skull", that alliteration alone is worthy of praises, as the wonderful outcome of a long brainstorming between Spielberg and his buddy Lucas… if anything, this film is the work of two friends, not that it makes it better, but there's something that exudes friendship all through the film, even the nods to the previous films play like sympathetic winks to (I guess, unreceptive) fans.Now, of course the film has the kind of ludicrous premises that pay like the perfect tribute to old 50's B-movies but maybe not to the iconic flavor of the first film. Of course, the best parts of the film are those that pay tribute to "Raiders" and "Crusade", but does that make them any less enjoyable? We didn't see Ford embodying his most legendary character for two decades, watching him pick his feet with his iconic outfit would have been good enough. Seriously, every 'replay' is simply enjoyable on the basis of the 'rediscovery' effect, so why trying to wish for a more realistic plot, since when "Indiana Jones" is supposed to have substance? But that comes from someone who loved "Temple of Doom", so maybe I'm not the most objective as far as judgment goes.Well, forgive my sins, but I just love over-the-top and exaggerated (even to the point of silliness) Indiana Jones, the nuked fridge part, yeah that infamous moment was so crazy I actually admired the guts of Lucas and Spielberg, I guess it takes some moxy to risk such a crazy stunt at a time where Internet became like a real whip for the fans, where any little bit of silliness can go viral. So everyone buzzed on the infamous fridge moment, "South Park" illustrated the film with the delicate metaphor of the two bearded directors enjoying sexual intercourse, but of all the programs, "South Park" should have embraced it more jovially, the icons were iconoclasts, they didn't ruin the series, they might have destroyed the pedestal built by the fans on the basis that Indiana Jones isn't a series to be taken seriously, for all the Aztec Gods' sake! Seriously, it's not like they threw aliens in a 'James Bond' film, Indiana Jones has always been venturing in supernatural territories, and while Lucas was a sucker for sci-fi B movies and Spielberg didn't want to introduce a sequel to "ET" in his beloved franchises, the two found a fair balance inspired by the theories about pre-alien civilizations. Do I buy it? Well, in a universe where evil Nazis can melt and where the power of God is materialized, why shouldn't I admit that the Big Boss has his ways, and that maybe Aliens knew him before mankind or that they had achieved the ultimate knowledge, why shouldn't we accept that technology existed before. This is from the guy who made us believe that light-sabers existed a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away… why shouldn't "Indiana Jones" takes place in the same universe? And I accept it even more since it doesn't take most of the film, the rest is the classic adventure in the traditional format, with its share of goofy chase scenes and a buddy-duo with Mutt, a little runt disguised as Brando's Wild One, played by Shia Leboeuf and who's revealed to be Indy's son with Marion, in the most awkward moment. The interactions between the old man and his rebellious son, work for the most part, because you can tell there's some good chemistry between the actors who have obviously fun playing their parts, same for Karen Allen who makes a nice come-back as Mation. The rest of the cast involve scary Russians, with a scene-stealing performance by Cate Blanchett, to see an Oscar-nominated actress loosening up a little and going for a James Bond villain impersonation with the haircut of Mia Wallace is refreshing to say the least.And while everyone is busy spewing venom against the fridge scene, I will praise the best scene of all, the one with the red ants, a scene full of contrivances and over-the-top demises that I can't think of any reason to hate it, I kept one waiting for some gruesome death and I got it, my only regret is that after showing the body thrown into the ant hill, we didn't even have a glimpse on the aftermath, that was a missed opportunity for Spielberg, sure the close-up on the skulls are scary but the unknown never scares as much as the gruesome. Overall, this is a thrilling experience enhanced by the performance of John Hurt.Now, let me temper my enthusiasm, I'm not saying the film is perfect even on Indiana Jones' standards, surely there are a few little flaws, the CGI effects don't look always convincing and the film won't reach the same status as the previous ones, maybe in a few decades. Yet, it's still fun to see good old Ford on the road again, a bit rusty on the whip but still brave, adventurous and scared of snakes, but never leaving his hat. The film is about getting old and keeping the spirit, Spielberg and Lucas didn't lose theirs, at least, that's how I felt.

After a two-year-break from directing following up his arguably best movie "Munich" (2005) in terms of daring the utmost controversial theme surrounding an Hebrew death squad on an international assassination streak as retaliation of a race-inflicted massacre at 1972 Olympic Games, Steven Spielberg returns to his roots with an overlong-awaited fourth adventure of the character of Indiana Jones, created by George Lucas and Philip Kaufman at the end of 1970s, in the Hollywood event movie "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of Crystal Skull".Utilizing no references from graphic novels or contents of international comics, the movie had become a gentle contender in May 2008 for the emerging Marvel empire with first installment of "Iron Man" directed by Jon Favreau to second-career coming of actor Robert Downey Jr. after a 10 year struggle of addiction and low-profile role playing. Director Steven Spielberg, backed up by his 25-year-plus collaboration producing partners Kathleen Kennedy and Frank Marshall to fight off the competitive battle for the U.S. domestic audience, which worked out due to a three-week separation window from the Marvel Phase 1 movie.Nevertheless, the collaborators encircling Steven Spielberg as trademark of a director had to witness that the landscape of high-end budgeted Hollywood movies were about to change forever after. Actor Harrison Ford still holding the torch since the summer of 1981 of having created an on-screen iconic character, which has been connected to his acting career ever since not harming his occasionally diverse performances as the character of Rozat "Rusty" Sabich in Alan J. Pakula directed "Presumed Innocent" (1990).The fourth time around in 27 years through cinematic landscape as Indiana Jones, Harrison Ford receives two challenging actors to his journey to South America to retrieve the title given artifact and encounters extra-terrestrial powers in Amazon rain-forest of Peru, on the one side Cate Blanchett, as power-addicted Russian military executive Irina Spalko, able to strap Indy to a chair under hypnosis dropping the infamous punchline on Indy's question, "Do you always get what you want?", she replies without even honor him with a look, "I usually do!"; on the other side fresh-out of Michael Bay's establishing "Transformers" boot-camp, actor Shia LaBeouf, seemingly had to have a ball under Steven Spielberg's care-taking directorial approach, which led him to an homage on Marlon Brando's leading character in "The Wild One" (1953) without taking himself to seriously to fall into a trap of the need to exceed an the unrepeatable character of Johnny Strabler.With his cast in safe-keeping play-mood, Director Steven Spielberg ignites a festival of a wholesome orchestra of every cinematic ingredient given from Cinematography by Janusz Kaminski utilizing Arriflex 235/435 with Panavision Primos to computer-generated imagery by George Lucas' special effects company, established in May 1975 just before pre-production to the very first "Star Wars" movie, Industrial Light & Magic (ILM), the director gathers in his 35-year-plus career as an Director for Life all his knowledge on movie-making into "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull" that it still keeping up after 9 years on an occasional revisit as joyful, comic-madness challenging entertainment movie; which leaves me only left to wish for the already announced fifth installment finally to be the 1990s LucasArts adventure game adaptation of "The Fate of Atlantis" in a film noir environmental setting with less 185 Million U.S. Dollar justifying action sequences and more Hitchcockian suspense. © 2017 Felix Alexander Dausend (Cinemajesty Entertainments LLC)