Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008)

[the_faery_queen]

saw it last night
hated the beginning. it felt awkward and the whole gopher thing was nuts. it was as though they were trying to be funny and weren't
HATED the end. bloody aliens! it just didn't work for me at all, to cram sci fi ness into a real world type adventure. bah
but the middle was ace
can't stand indy's son, or the cliche of indy HAVINg a son that he didn't know about
but the fight scenes were ace and it was fun
so good middle, bad start and end

and i didn't like the too many links to the former films. even down to having the same fate fall on mac as did the german girl, i8n 3. trying to get riches, and dies while indy tries to save them.

*shrug*

and i loved temple of doom that was my fav, with the third. perhaps cos it's the one i saw first.

[The Procrastinator]

Temple of Doom is forever tainted for me by the Screaming Woman. My eardrums are yet to recover. If there had been a Screaming Woman in any of the others they would have been tainted too. That's as deep as my reasons for preferring Indy movies goes - that, and the presence of Sean Connery. I become a puddle on the floor with both Indy and Sean in the room.

My policies when watching Indy movies:
Nothing is impossible - the laws of physics are temporarily suspended.
Horrible insects and or snakes will be everywhere.
So will cobwebs.
And cliches. Cliche a minute is the general going rate.
So switch off your brain and prepare to have fun...

This has applied to all the Indy movies - and this one did not disappoint me. (At this stage I am even able to ignore those hokey aliens and the dumb ending, because there was a lot of fun in the rest of it!)

[pyan]

Finally got to see it, and can now read this thread...only to find that most of it's been said already.

Dislikes:

• The refrigerator...just dumb. Even if he survived the initial blast, he'd have been pulped by the landing, as Hoopy said...
  
• The ending...felt like it was tacked on as an afterthought. And do you really escape the suspicions of the FBI that easily? What exactly did Indy achieve to be re-instated (and promoted!) at the university?

Likes:

• All the rest.

Favourite bits:

• The glimpse of the Ark inside a smashed box at the hanger
  
• "I've got a bad feeling about this"
  
• The DUKW/jeep chase sequence.

A good try, though. I've a feeling it would have got at least a 9/10 if there hadn't been the other Indy films to compare it with.

7/10

[Slain]

I agree with another, the wedding scene should have been left out.

[roddglenn]

I thought overall it was a good film and Ford was excellent as ever. I did think some of the action sequences were way over the top (the monkey one being the main one). I loved the references to the earlier films and other sly winks. Shia was very good, but I thought Winstone was under-used and his double betrayal too cliched. I particularly liked the scene where Indy looks at the photos of his father and Marcus. I didn't mind the aliens. Afterall Indy films have never been 'Real World' adventures (the lost ark, possessions, the Holy Grail and imortality). Reality is suspended in every single Indy film, so why would this one be different? They had done religion to death, so the alien angle was another logical choice. As for the wedding, yeah a bit awkward, but I don't think it spoiled anything. Liked Indy taking his hat before Shia could. Indy's getting old and had been reaquainted with his first love, so why not let them get married?

[Highlander II]

Originally Posted by Dave

...What this film clearly depicted was that the Gods of the Nazca civilization and those of the Ancient Egyptians were alien inter-dimensional travellers.

Which is a thieve from Stargate. Straight up. That's what the original movie said.

Heck, the 'crystal skull' is a swipe from an SG-1 ep. (or, are we calling these 'homages' now?)


Speaking of - the scene of the evil 'i eat you now' ants - that's reminiscent of "Trumbo's World" from MacGyver. They just needed a suit made from a melted garden hose and a flame-thrower.


As mentioned by others, I did like that knowledge is the power the aliens had for the people they visited and that they understood that too much knowledge was just as dangerous as too much of anything else. (Though, this is another blatant swipe from SG-1 and the Asgard.)

I liked the movie all right. It was an 'Indiana Jones' film. It felt like the others and it didn't look like they were trying to 'reinvent' the wheel and make it 'the best ever' Indy film. I liked it for what it was - Indiana Jones.

[ushumgal]

I was actually pleasantly surprised by it, but then, I expected it to be utter crap, so I didn't have much in the way of expectations to exceed. I guess the best way to describe it is "competent"...though maybe "formulaic" would be a better term.

Like so many, I was dissappointed by the whole aliens thing - I think I really changed the feel from the other movies. The McGuffin is supposed to be something ancient and supernatural, and aliens just don't have that connotation. I would also have liked to see it set back in the Near East - that was his focus after all, and it's not like there's a lack of history there. They could conceivably done something with the pharaoh Akhenaten, as there are so many (alas, misguided) theories about his "monotheism" and early Judaism...that would have been getting right back to the roots of Indiana Jones.

*sigh* Well, it could have been worse - at least there was no Jar Jar Binks!!!

[Dave]

Originally Posted by ushumgal

Well, it could have been worse - at least there was no Jar Jar Binks!!!

Well, there was Shia LaBeouf, but I was pleasantly surprised that I actually liked his character. I hadn't thought that bringing in a young protégé was a good idea, and after seeing him in Transformers my expectations were quite low.

[Highlander II]

Originally Posted by ushumgal

Like so many, I was dissappointed by the whole aliens thing - I think I really changed the feel from the other movies. The McGuffin is supposed to be something ancient and supernatural, and aliens just don't have that connotation.

Why would aliens have to be 'modern'? And what's not supernatural about aliens?

I'm not being a smartass, but trying to understand your argument. There are several SF oriented programs tossing out the idea that aliens have been visiting Earth for a VERY long time.

Granted, Indy here seems to have run out and stolen the Stargate storyline and part of a MacGyver storyline, but it's not as 'out there' an idea as some things.

What's more 'ancient' than knowledge? One of the MacGyver movies had 'books' or 'knowledge as the lost treasure of Atlantis.

I really like the idea that the scummy 'bad guys' are after *power* and don't realize that *power* doesn't always equal 'magic' or 'control'.

[Bentony]

I am absolutley the bigest Indiana Jones fangirl. I think he is just fabulous. That said, the new movie was very clever - but the alien thing is a bit hackneyed. No wonder it took so many years to make. They could still have gone with the south american thing - a good idea to get away from europe - but a different angle would have been better.