Indiana Jones And The Kingdom of The Crystal Skull

As I have said before, Indiana Jones was a cinematic hero of mine when I was a child, and the last film, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade is easily on my fave films list. I've yet to review it but bear with me. This movie, was released in 2008, a full 19 years after the previous outing for our whip and wise cracking archaeologist.

Indy escapes from some pesky Russians at the start of the film and also narrowly escapes a nuclear blast at Area 51. We then cut to the college and Indy in his guise of a professor. He meets up with a motorbike riding young man and after yet another brush with the Reds they set off a quest to find out what has happened to a mutual friend and what a mysterious crystal skull and some aliens have to do with it all.

I had really high hopes for this film but maybe I should have learned my lesson from The Phantom Menace. This film is entertaining enough but it falls far, far short of the high standard set by all 3 previous outings, even Temple Of Doom. There are plus sides to it, like the pace of the storytelling not sagging and there are a couple of moments that make the hairs on your arms stand up but this movie is one that was released for no other reason than to cash in. I understand that a fourth film had been planned for years and should have come out not long after The Last Crusade but this effort just feels rushed.

A lot of what is in this movie was in one of the other three and that just smacks of laziness to me. Just for a short checklist to prove my point, and this is by no means an exhaustive list, here's some of the derivative tosh. The monkeys that Mutt swings along with in the trees? Those are the same species as the one from Raiders. In fact the chase sequence that bit appears in? That was in both Raiders and Last Crusade. The bit at the end where the heroes escape the temple by way of the water? Temple of Doom.

I could go on and on with that list but there's also the fact part of what made the previous movies so enthralling was the fact that the object that Indy was after was rooted in the real world. This time round he's after a crystal skull that has connections to some aliens. To me that's too much of a departure from the previous films. Also, the main twist in the film is blindingly obvious and some of the writing grates. The villains are lazy stereotypes of Russians and their leader, played by Cate Blanchett, comes straight from the Keanu Reeves school of non-acting.

This movie wont stomp all over your childhood dreams like Phantom Menace but neither will it seem like a worthy addition to the series. All in all it seems unnecessary and bodged. I hear that a fifth movie is in the pipeline. I sincerely hope they make a better job of that then they did with this.