I've had a few, and regardless, Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is rubbish -- rubbish I say!

[bs13690]

We had an office meeting at the theaters in Phillips Place and they showed Crystal Skull afterwards. I walked out after the refrigerator scene. I would rather go back to work than watch that crap.

[Falconer84]

Spoilers ahead.

I've always been a big fan of the Indiana Jones movies, and Harrison Ford in general. But this movie is not what I grew up with. Why? Well, I'll tell you. But first I'm gonna warn you that this will be long, and sorry if you liked this movie, but I'm going to defile it.

The lead-up: the cable movie channels have been playing the other Indy movies for the past several weeks, and Sci-Fi even had a show about the real-life crystal skulls, which plugged the movie repeatedly. The show, like many paranormal shows, sends people out looking for things that probably don't exist, features an obsessive occult weirdo masquerading as a scientist, makes you think they're going to find something, and then, predictably, finds absolutely nothing except a hole in their budget. Everyone made it seem like this movie would add ten years to your life, when really you just lose two hours.

Special effects consistency: special effects are great. Admit it, even if you're some kind of die-hard pre-prequel Star Wars fan, the effects in the recent movies were mindblowingly cool. The Crystal Skull effects are not an upgrade. Aside from those stupid CGI gophers, you go practically the whole movie with a few tactful effects (the gunpowder being attracted to the crate in the beginning, that was neat), and then at the end they demolish a huge, magnificent temple and the surrounding area to make way for the most random spaceship in the history of cinema. The epic moment in Temple of Doom, in my opinion, is when all the children are freed and they all run home. It's awesome, and it required nothing except a functioning camera and a bunch of little kids. We've come from that simple yet powerful conclusion to flying saucers creating some kind of debris vortex around the site of a pulverized ancient temple and then flying away without telling us ANYTHING about why it was there in the first place. Thanks guys, see you later! The scale of it is just completely out of context.

And then the ocean fills in the hole. Wait, they were near the ocean? I must have missed something, on the map it was pretty far inland. Did the river carry them that far? Anyways, there are a lot of things in this movie that just don't make any sense. Like the alien presence in the first place. Okay, they came and taught an ancient Peruvian culture how to grow food. Why? People elsewhere in the world had no problem figuring it out. Were ancient Peruvians so stupid that aliens felt sorry for them and explained that the seed goes in the dirt?

Some parts were utterly ridiculous. When they go into the temple, the camera zooms in on a mask on the wall, shaped like a skull, that Indy & Co. obliviously ran past. You know what happens next, and it...it pains me to say it. I'll try. Okay, I can do this. What happens is, you see a pair of eyes in the eye-holes of the mask. And they...they look...oh God, I can't do this. Breathe. They look in the direction that Indy was running. This is so you know that someone is watching them and something bad is about to happen. My eyes moved too. They were rolling.

That's not even the worst part. All of a sudden, a bunch of holy-s__t-scary loin-clothed freshly-painted rope-throwing homicidal natives bust out of the walls and haul a__ to kill the whiteys. Were they just hanging out in there? That sounds like a great life. Just sit inside an ancient temple wall and hide all day, on the off-chance that someone might drop by. In the past, the booby traps were not made of human beings, they were set by ancient civilizations and left there. However, the ridiculousness of this little tribe's existence is a definite improvement over the shiny spaceship that is about to appear, if you stop spewing into your popcorn bucket long enough to see it.

But we're not done with our native friends. They throw little ropes which wrap around the limbs for to take down their victims. Such is the fate of Indy, party of five, though somehow their insane archaeologist companion, Oxley, manages to turn up the mental burner to simmer and produce the crystal skull from the bag and scare away the natives, as if they knew what it was. Then they reach the temple and you see the temple guardians or whatever, though not long enough to determine whether they are cheering or raising their arms in anger because dinner just escaped.

The plot device: obviously, a crystal skull. But this is not your typical crystal skull, no, it is a crystal skull shaped like an alien head. The skull itself turns out to be part of a skeleton, because the aliens have skeletons made of crystal. Or something. But they're not really skeletons, because at the end, through some quantum insanity which we are supposed to accept as plausible, the skeletons all combine and produce a real-life, flesh and blood alien who tells us absolutely nothing. This is supposed to be some kind of grand revelation. It's not. All the other movies had things which are present in contemporary mythology, like the Holy Grail, the Ark of the Covenant, and even ancient Hindu deities. Spirits flying around the Ark, modern Earthpeople can accept that. Alien skeletons fusing together, uh...no can do. Sorry.

This skull also has other powers, like the ability to scare ants. Yes, they are being chased by some pretty big man-eating ants, and crazy ol' Oxley pulls the skull out of the bag, which leaves them an island of safe ground. But the ants were not scared before it was out of the bag. Now, I'm pretty sure that ants communicate with chemical signals, and they'd know about the skull before they saw it. Is this now Indiana Jones and the Temple of the Teletubbies? Is it a "magic bag"? Probably not. If the skull is powerful enough to drive you bat**** insane, I'm pretty sure it can scare ants through a canvas bag. Makes no sense.

There were some throwbacks to the other movies, like the close-up of the Russian guy's face as ants pour into his throat and he somehow manages to scream, and the final fate of the main villain. Marion was brought back. Indy was afraid of a snake. Anything else?

Predictability: this one's got it! Since Marion was brought back, you know they're going to get back together. And you know the Steve McQueen rip-off is going to be Indiana's son. And you know that when Indy and Marion are trapped in a sand pit and they send Oxley off for help, he's going to bring back the Russians. It's just so obvious. You can even sense the ridiculous conclusion based on the inanity of your previous predictions, which by that point have all sadly come true. And you know that Indy's old friend is still going to turn out to be an *******, though it's just weird at the end when he's trying to grab all the treasure and they leave him there. You basically know exactly what's going to happen in this movie as soon as all the characters have been introduced.

Oh, one other thing: the crystal skull looks like cheap plastic with tissue paper stuffed inside. And another obvious note: when the head villain is being disintegrated, she is speaking English rather than her native language. I guess she was so excited, she wanted the p___ed-off alien to know of her linguistic accomplishments. Oh and, one more thing: Indy hides in a refrigerator to protect himself from a nuclear explosion, and he succeeds, whereas everything else in the mock-up town is decimated, including, presumably, other refrigerators. He doesn't even get cancer. And one final little detail: when the whole vicinity is about to get ****kicked by fusing alien skeletons and underground spaceships, Marion yells something about the eyes of the skulls. Now, I thought this was going to be a reference to the ultra-classic line, "Don't look at the light, Marion!" but it fails to materialize.

Throughout all that, they're being chased by a Soviet dominatrix who is part Miss Cleo and part Stalin's girlfriend.

Perhaps what made the other Indiana Jones movies great was the era: the graininess of older film, the grit of the medium paired with the grit of the character. Kingdom of the Crystal Skull has no grit. It's all glossed-over in the worst way. There was something about the grain of '80s film contrasting with the shiny blood pouring down melting Nazi faces that made it a compelling spectacle. There was classic dialog that I will remember for the rest of my life and silently giggle at whenever I see a snake. I don't remember any lines from this movie, because they weren't worth remembering. I suppose it's the ultimate fate of franchises in the era of Disney filth and CGI red herrings, but even James Bond was updated more gracefully than this...and you don't want to know what I thought of Casino Royale.

Sad, really.

[jenn76]

I just watched it last night. It can't compare to the others. I'm not really into allien stuff, but regardless of that, the movie lacked good dialogue, and didn't really have a good romance to it. I still love Harrison Ford, but they could have written a better story, hell, I could've written a better story!

[Saybl]

It really wasn't that bad. Everyone who is talking about how bad it is , is just saying how bad it is. Why is it bad?

Indiana Jones has always been sci-fi, so I don't understand why people insist on saying the aliens were a bad twist. If you can tell me why it was so bad then o.k. but I kind of enjoyed it.

[KsStorm]

Oh,you all should have seen it at the drive-in w/ a cooler full of beer!!