While the original three Indiana Jones films are hardly a bastion of realism, they might as well be a documentary compared to the late fourth entry, which features some of the most ridiculous set pieces imaginable. I feel like the nuke-proof fridge gets a lot of flak, but the worst moment for me was undoubtedly Shia LaBeouf's Tarzan imitation, somehow catching up to speeding jeeps by swinging from vine to vine. It's the kind of sequence that makes you scratch your head and wonder what these Hollywood folks are thinking. Another puzzler is the surprisingly selective magnetism of these alien artifacts. I suspect these otherworldly properties are in fact powered by screenwriting contrivances. These kind of critiques can feel a bit nit-picky, but the sheer volume of these issues makes them hard to ignore. I'd also point out that if the movie logic hand waving was in service of an otherwise great film, I think everyone would have less of a problem suspending their disbelief. Unfortunately, that is not the case here. Despite my issues with the original three films, at the very least they contain numerous iconic moments. This film on the other hand is largely forgettable, and the parts you might remember will not be for a positive reason. I'm not going to update my legacy score of 6/10, but I would knock this down to a 5, possibly even a 4 based on this re-watch.

With all that said, shoutout to the only line that got a laugh out of me: when Shia LaBeouf gets spooked by a spider web and reassures himself by saying "It's just a thing". For some reason that really got me.

Two decades after _The Last Crusade_, all the pieces finally fit back together for this long-awaited reunion between George Lucas, Harrison Ford and Steven Spielberg. Tough to recapture the same old magic after so much time apart, but they actually manage to get it done... for a while. I can remember loathing this in the theater, avoided it for years on that merit, but my kids wanted to give it a try and I figured enough time had passed to give it another chance.

The first hour is, shockingly, rather painless. A carefree romp that, admittedly, isn't on par with its distant relatives, but at least it's in the ballpark. We've got era-appropriate villains (the traditional Nazis smartly replaced by Russkis to fit the cold war), deep dives through crypts and libraries, warehouses stuffed with artifacts, whip-slinging physical action... even crotchety old man Ford seems to be having a great time. Hell, I didn't even mind a peak-overexposure Shia Labeouf, vacantly kicking around the screen as a greaser tagalong. Yes, the [spoiler]infamous nuke-fridge[/spoiler] scene occurs during this part of the film, and it's still an eyeball-roller, but that's basically just a throwaway bit and the plot quickly moves to conceptually greener pastures. I found myself thinking, hey, maybe I was too harsh with that first watch.

Then we reach the jungle and the wheels come off. Practical effects give way to glaring CG. Themes shift from the mythical to the absurd. Credibility goes sailing out the window. I know what Lucas and Spielberg were thinking. This is a series that's been built around stretches of the truth, poking and prodding reality until it doesn't seem so outlandish to be literally chasing the holy grail. They wanted to stick to that concept, push the envelope just a bit farther, play with the cheekier sci-fi concepts popularized during the late '50s. But man, oh man, did they misjudge. Somewhere between the [spoiler]vine-swinging tarzan monkeys[/spoiler], the [spoiler]trans-dimensional space aliens[/spoiler], the [spoiler]man-eating insects[/spoiler], the [spoiler]moving-vehicle swordfight[/spoiler] and, yeah, that silly bit with [spoiler]the refrigerator[/spoiler], we shed our tenuous connection to the real world and lean into the ludicrous one. They've pressed their luck way too far, taken their audience out of the moment, and suddenly we've noticed the holes. _Crystal Skull_ might not be quite as thorough a stinker as I'd remembered, but it's still bad.

After seeing this movie twice and trying to convince myself it was better than it was, I've reached the point where I can appreciate the good and despise the bad. There are some things to like. The opening scenes with the reintroduction of Indiana Jones at the warehouse and it's subsequent chase, harkens back to the first three movies. We even get a glimpse of the Arc.

The incredible sequence with the testing of the atomic bomb and Indy's encounter with the "nuclear family" though outrageous is impressive, especially the view of the mushroom cloud. Indy and Mutt's escape on motorcycle from some Russian baddies through the halls of a university is another exciting chase sequence. The problem is that all of this occurs in the first quarter or so of the movie. The last 3/4 are practically putrid, most of the groans being generated by Shia LaBeouf. It's not that he's bad as Mutt, he's just put in such unbelievable situations that it's hard not to laugh for the wrong reasons. The sword fight while straddling two fast-moving vehicles, the way he catches up to the rest of the Indy gang by swinging Tarzan-style assisted by monkeys to thwart the bad guys. Ouch, its really bad. Oh yes, and there's also plunging down three waterfalls in a jeep, escaping man-eating giant red ants and so on.

I love action flicks, but it was beyond too much to take. I didn't have much of a problem with the discovery of ancient alien visitors. Sure it's over-the-top, but after everything else I'd just seen, at least the scale of it was awe-inspiring instead of totally ridiculous. I'm going to say this movie was average, benefiting only from the presence of Harrison Ford and the strength of the first quarter of the movie.

Good watch, could watch again, and can recommend.

I'm always confused on when this movie is supposed to happen, and too many people get caught up in the involvement of Shia Lebouf to think too hard about it.

This movie catches a lot of flak for Shia and half a dozen other things, but compared to the original 3 movies, the concepts of a crystal skull aren't any more weird. While people forget that aspects of the first 3 artifacts are real, the crystal skulls are a real thing that is actively being investigated. Because it's caught up in all the "alien conspiracy" communities I think the movie absorbed some of the ridicule of those people.

The story itself is well structured, Cate Blanchett and Karen Allen are welcome are awesome additions to the story, and despite the "sci-fi" element from an alien skull, the movie keeps to a archaeological theme by investigating an ancient temple site.

While I'm not going to re-watch this, please ignore the negative hype and give this a try if you like a good action adventure story.

There are a lot of reasons to consider this worse than the other three Indiana Jones films, but the most disappointing aspect is that everything is surface-level. The Macguffin, the plot, and the locations tell us nothing about Indiana Jones as a character, or make us interested in the other characters. Even in _Temple of Doom_, we can extrapolate some semblance of character motivation or value from something (anything). There's nothing here but a flimsy plot based on a non-existent myth. One-note characters jumping from setpiece to uninteresting setpiece.

Speaking of the other characters, they try really hard to integrate John Hurt's character, Oxley, into the journey of finding the resting place of the crystal skull, but Oxley just isn't interesting. No matter how much you tell us about who his character is, it's difficult to connect with them if we aren't shown anything that confirms it. Plus, they expect us to believe that Oxley had already done the entire journey years ago, even though they use the crystal skull to get out of so many crazy situations. I can suspend my disbelief for a lot of things, but I just can't with that.

And I know that all media about the Cold War makes the US government out to be hyper-paranoid about Communist spies, but the fact that there are repercussions for Indy being unknowingly associated with a Commie spy is frustrating. Not sure how the US government actually acted in that time period, but would they blatantly accuse a war veteran of being a spy the entire time? Seems completely unreasonable to me. Plus, they seemed to forget that his friend had double-crossed them before, and they just let him tag along as they outran the Russians. There's no reason they should have let him do that!

The longer the movie goes on, the harder it gets to watch. The action scenes are incomprehensible once they get to Peru, and yeah, the more you think about it, the dumber the concept of "aliens in an archeological adventure movie" becomes. This feels like it could make for an interesting Indiana Jones novel, much like how Star Wars told many wild stories in the Legends canon. But between this movie and the pieces we can gather from the filming of Indiana Jones 5, I'm not holding out any hope that this series can even get close to the lowest lows of the previous three. Not by a long shot.

And if you ask me, that whole scene where Indy survives a nuclear explosion in a lead-lined refrigerator is flipping awesome, and you can't change my mind!