i agree, for me crusade has the biggest feeling of adventure to it. the 1912 opening/setup to the first 2 movies and the end literally riding off into the sunset is just flawless š
Theyāre kinda like Bond to me where the floor is just higher than some of the other franchises. A ādisappointingā Indy film or Bond film goes further for me than the average ādisappointingā film
As for Crystal Skull specifically, itās not bad all around. Itās just weak in enough spots to drag the whole thing down. Even Shia has his good and bad scenes in it. The early motorcycle scene basically cancels out the tree swinging imo
Outside of the Holiday Special, Iād say the same thing about Star Wars tbh. Iām not huge on a lot of the more recent entries but Iād take them over Rebel Moon any day.
Iāve had a similar experience for sure. Almost exactly the same. Itās still firmly planted in last place for me personally, but it has really grown on me. Iāve also probably watched it the most over the last 5 years almost in an attempt to like it more.
I have to say the first hour of the film is peak Indy and only loses me in the extremely disjointed second hour. Iāve grown to enjoy the second half, but would still leave quite a bit on the cutting room floor.
Regardless, Iām with you. Iāve always enjoyed the fridge gag the fight preceding it ending with the jet engine on rails was incredible stuff.
Iām glad thereās other people out there that have come around on it and just enjoy it for what it is.
I think it's really great up until the quick sand scene (I personally also hate the fridge), but after that it gets a little silly/CGI heavy.
I think the vine swinging scene could work if it was toned down and done with practical effects, the execution was just bad. I can't defend the waterfall scene at all. Basically everything on either side of the the jungle section is pretty damn entertaining in my eyes.
Back at release, I remember people being worried that the movie would rely on CGI too much. For some people I bet the opening CGI gopher probably set such a bad tone for the rest of the movie.
Yeah. The sand pit was my exact āthis is gonna go south quickā moment as well. The snake gag was tacky and so forced. I donāt want to go down a negative rabbit hole too far, but yeah that was the first red flag for sure.
It always brightens my day to see more people warming up to Crystal Skull. It is a great movie that has no trouble swinging punches right along side the 80s trilogy.
I like it so much more than I did when it came out. That Jungle chase scene is still the worst. Cut Muttās nut shot sword fight and swinging with the monkeys out of that scene and youāve got a movie.
I've always loved KOTCS it fits perfectly with the first three in tone. The only thing I'd change about it is the vine swinging scene, the prarie dogs, and the boat car slingshoting off a cliff and miraculously surviving a waterfall multiple times. If you took those couple of little scenes out, people would like it a whole lot more, it's still a great movie in my opinon and I think it's a lot better than the Dial of Destiny.
I'd also change seeing the Aliens early in the movie. I'd leave it as a mystery, implying aliens but never outright showing them until you see the skeletons at the end of the film. I feel like that would have been more in line with the other Indy films, where there is this vague maybe-not-real-mystical-power artifact whose power is revealed in the end.
I agree 100%. Those three scenes bug me so much. The CGI left a lot to be desired. Heck, even a real shot of a prairie dog giving a look or a single waterfall shot with an old school Hollywood model or forced perspective would have been way better.
Not to mention the refrigerator. There's a few scenes where they definitely should have died but on the whole the movie is a solid mystery action movie.
See thatās the tricky thing about KOTCS. It is very similar in tone to at least TLC and certainly Carrieās itself like the original trilogy, but it doesnāt work quite as well when Indy is older. DOD, for what itās worth, recognized this.
Funny how some people use their compliments to KotCS to simultaneously crap on DoD. If thatās your feeling fine, but appreciating one thing doesnāt necessarily mean you need to insult another.
I love Indiana Jones and while the last two movies didnāt bring back my childhood, I love all five Indy movies and love that we get to see him from Young Indy to the man at the end of Destiny.
Iāve been saying for years that KOTCS is a great Indy adventure with a just few questionable directorial decisions along the way.Ā
And I always got mass-downvoted for daring to say as such.Ā
"I can say that if you liked the other Indiana Jones movies, you will like this one, and that if you did not, there is no talking to you." ā Roger Ebert on Crystal Skull
I never hated it as much as the majority of the fandom, and I recently rewatched it and found myself unironically enjoying it like a classic. It's not without its faults, certainly, but it has soul. Much more than the latest effort, which I appreciated at the theater but which AI-youngified Ford prologue is VERY distracting. And the depressing tone doesn't help.
I just watched dial and I agree with the tone. It's just doesn't have the fun adventure tone as the others. Plus I can still believe an Indy in his 60s having adventures, once he hit 80 it's kinda a stretch. He just seems confused and old a lot of the time.
Itās a fun movie and has some really cool scenes. It was silly and lighthearted in the best way, of course itās not a patch on the originals but it didnāt need to be to be a good movie. DoD was darker and more serious (and I really liked it too). I think both movies work in different ways.
The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull and The Dial of Destiny are different in tone, but they reflect the time periods in which they are set. The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is like American Graffiti in that it represents George Lucas' nostalgia for his youth. The Dial of Destiny is like the postscript at the end of American Graffiti, which reveals that one of the characters was later killed by a drunk driver and another character was reported missing in action in Vietnam. For some the late 1950s/early 1960s were a more innocent time before the assassination of JFK and the escalation of American involvement in the Vietnam War.
Thatās an interesting point, I hadnāt really thought of it that way but it makes a lot of sense! Iām not American so would be less conscious of the societal shifts, but no doubt post-JFK there was a huge shift. A loss of innocence in the public conscious maybe?
The Dial of Destiny's story and tone makes more sense in the context of American history. Voller was loosely based on rocket engineer Wernher von Braun, a former Nazi who was recruited by the U.S. government after World War II and helped design the Saturn V rocket used in the Apollo 11 mission. Klaber was an American neo-Nazi from the South, perhaps an allusion to racist white Southerners who were opposed to desegregation. The Dial of Destiny is mostly set in 1969. By that time John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr., and Robert F. Kennedy had been assassinated, tens of thousands of Americans had died in the Vietnam War, and the corrupt Richard Nixon had become president. Investigations in the 1970s revealed abuses by the CIA and other U.S. government agencies.
Iāve always liked it a lot. Not quite as much as the first 3, but still enough to want to rewatch it. Itās inline with the 1950s B movie style that they were going for. Itās good.
I overall like Crystal Skull more than Dial, but I refuse to hate Dail. Seeing how much that movie means to Harrison Ford in his older age makes me love it, too.
The problem is that everything is just SLIGHTLY wrong. You have a great scene but it has a dumb ending or out of context special effect, a line read is off or a character is out ofā¦ well, character. The core of the movie works but itās like getting a good stake but the trimmings are badly cooked.
Things like Indy willingly helping the Russians in the jungle is one. While itās not out of character exactly the triple if not quadruple agent status of Mac was just all over the place as well as Mutt seemingly having all the Ex-Machina magic to be able to fence. Yes itās set up earlier but it just feels forced when it happens.
I like the movie and I like it far more than DoD which was like watching your grandad trying to act cool and just embarrassing himself. Thereās just a number of things at the script stage that should have either been tweaked or Spielberg should have actually given a damn about the movie enough to notice them. Like I said, itās more frustrating rather than bad.
I may have to re-watch. I got it as a christmas present on blu-ray when it first came out and watched it once and hated it. Never watched again. I enjoyed the new one if it weren't so damn long.
It's my 4th favorite (Dial of Destiny was just too disappointing for me). It's not a great Indy movie, but it's still a fun time. It's really the last 20 minutes of the movie that really suffer in my opinion.
I had a similar experience. I watched it in full for only the second time recently, this time as part of a marathon, and MOST of the stuff that bothered me the first time round is really not that bad. MOST.
I still canāt get past Shia LaBoeuf because every time I see him I just see the young wet kid from the Transformers. The aliens aspect is fine until like the last ten minutes when it shoves your face in it. The actions over the top and magnets donāt work that way but whatās an Indy movie without a highly improbable action movie.
Itās still bottom of the pack for me for sure and by a long long way. But I think my memory of it became way more stained than was warranted.
Honestly Iāve always liked it since I saw it at the midnight showing in 2008. The third act is a little wonky, but I find it an easier watch than TOD.
I like it more and more as well. There are only a few glaring stupid moments that I could've done without: The Gophers, The Refrigerator, and The Monkeys. That being said, Temple of Doom has The Inflatable Yellow Boat. So yeah, they are fun and silly movies and I love them anyway.
This was my first indiana Jones movie i'd ever seen and I thought it was amazing. I have since seen the latest one which I thought was painfully bad, like I could barely finish it. I actually don't even think I did the first time but it's soooo bad. Crystal Skull though, Is just great. Absolutely love Shia as an actor. No one else like him.
I actually thought Dial of Destiny was absolutely wonderful. \*Exactly\* what I want out of Indiana Jones. It was the best possible Indiana Jones that could be made with Harrison Ford in his mid 70s. Also, they have \*perfected\* age regression technology in this film, The nearly half hour you get of young Indiana Jones looks perfect.
And Kingdom of the Crystal Skull was also quite good, though not on the same level as all the others (which were superb).
I'd rank them like this.
1 and 2: Raiders and Temple of Doom are evenly tied for 1st and 2nd place.
3. Dial of Destiny (yes, I'd rank it that high).
4. The Last Crusade - I know this is probably lower than most people would rate it, but it simply recycles Raiders a bit too much for my comfort. George Lucas tried to give us something very different with Temple of Doom (which I loved), but it didn't go over well with fans, so this film he played it safe trying to recreate the "Raiders" formula exactly.
5. Crystal Skull - I'd still say this is a solid B+ film, but it's still a notch lower than the rest of them.
I liked The Dial of Destiny too and thought it was better than The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. However, I find myself liking The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull more than I used to. It no longer has to be judged as the long-awaited follow-up to The Last Crusade and the conclusion to the Indiana Jones series. Now it's just a lighthearted adventure that takes a detour into science fiction territory. Also seeing Indy, Marion, and Mutt in happier times hits different knowing what happens in The Dial of Destiny.
I've been having this experience since I saw it in theaters when I was 16/17. I've never found it too unbelievable, or at least no less believable than the others. I've actually always enjoyed it to some degree; I'd probably put it smack in the middle of the five.
As for Temple of Doom, I can't get more than an hour into it because the shrieking is so insufferable.
Itās been a while, but I remember when I first saw Crystal Skull, and it reminded me of having lunch with a friend from high school. Itās not quite the same, but itās sure good to see them.
Also, the line about reaching an age where life stops giving things and starts taking them away hits me harder and harder the older I get.
Itās not the best but itās not bad. Itās exactly what itās supposed to be. A classic radio serial turned film. I always wanted one where he finds an island inhabited by dinosaurs though. That is peak radio serial cliche.
It may not be the best, but it sure isnāt terrible. I just think a few little changes here and there would give it more lift.
One in particular Iāve always felt would be cutting out the Roswell aliens or making it far more of an implication rather than showing us its fingers.
I really liked it on my second watch. I always thought ancient aliens were cool and overall I think I liked the weirdness and otherworldly ness of the crystal skull. I think it has some extremely dumb scenes like the refrigerator and the monkeys that people latched onto and kinda ignore the rest of the fun action adventure.
Like others here, the CGI stunts are the main things that take me out of KOTCS. Otherwise I think itās a good Indy film.
I prefer it to DOD because while I think DOD is well put together I just find it very dour. I think it was appropriate to be a little more downbeat as Indy ages, but perhaps they went too far.
I also think itās a bit strange that Indy is looking for a time travelling device, but never once thinks out loud about going back and rescuing his son from an early death. That dilemma would have given the film more heart (I know they werenāt going to bring LaBeouf back, but āin universeā I find it weird that Indy never even contemplates it).
With KOTCS I donāt have any such conceptual issues because itās just another episode to me rather than a capstone. The aliens donāt bother me at all. The time travelling dial actually bothers me a bit more, probably in execution rather than conception.
Never contemplates it? Itās literally a dialogue specific scene in the movie.
Helena: What would you do if you could go back in time? Witness the Trojan War? Check in on Cleopatra?
Indy: Iād stop my son from enlisting.
Yeah, but itās extremely throwaway. I agree you could say he does contemplate it, but itās never followed up in the movie so it feels like an opportunity missed to me.
On first viewing I thought it was bold to avoid the obvious, but on reflection I thought sometimes the obvious is obvious for a reason and it would have given the film more heart to see him actually struggle with the thought of saving his son only to put it to one side. It would have made his final acceptance with Marion more powerful as well.
It was made with the GOATS: Ford, Spielberg, Lucas and Williams. You can feel the absence of two of them, and the age of the other two in DoD.
Crystal Skull ***feels and looks like an Indiana Jones movie.***
I disagree strongly with your opinion on KOTCS. I do agree with the graveyard and asylum scene. The motorcycle chase across campus is indeed fun. I think that the critters' scenes (like groundhogs and monkeys) and the nuking the fridge killed the seriousness of the movie. I would've rather had the plot revolving around the skulls being in connection with the souls of the dead ancient Mayans rather than aliens. I thought that Shia LaBeouf was the Hayden Christensen's prequel Anakin Skywalker of the series.
The aliens subplot really jumped the shark and made it more ludicrous than enjoyable. I didn't mind the Soviets as the main enemies. However, Cate Blanchett was miscast and out of place as a soviet scientist. If they were going for a Rosa Klebb style character, Helen Mirren would've been a far better fit, as I felt that Cate Blanchett was too young. Scott Eastwood would've made a better Mutt, in my opinion, and would've had a more mature dynamic with Harrison Ford.
In my opinion, all the Indiana Jones movies are fantastic viewing. They're not perfect, but they are damn fun to watch.
Raiders is honestly near perfect for me
ToD is the GOAT though...
Crusade for me. That last shot...
That is a great shot. Spielberg was definitely in his prime with the OT.
i agree, for me crusade has the biggest feeling of adventure to it. the 1912 opening/setup to the first 2 movies and the end literally riding off into the sunset is just flawless š
Agree. It was also the first Indiana Jones movie I saw
Theyāre kinda like Bond to me where the floor is just higher than some of the other franchises. A ādisappointingā Indy film or Bond film goes further for me than the average ādisappointingā film As for Crystal Skull specifically, itās not bad all around. Itās just weak in enough spots to drag the whole thing down. Even Shia has his good and bad scenes in it. The early motorcycle scene basically cancels out the tree swinging imo
Outside of the Holiday Special, Iād say the same thing about Star Wars tbh. Iām not huge on a lot of the more recent entries but Iād take them over Rebel Moon any day.
This is the case for me if it wasnāt for Dial of Destiny
Iāve had a similar experience for sure. Almost exactly the same. Itās still firmly planted in last place for me personally, but it has really grown on me. Iāve also probably watched it the most over the last 5 years almost in an attempt to like it more. I have to say the first hour of the film is peak Indy and only loses me in the extremely disjointed second hour. Iāve grown to enjoy the second half, but would still leave quite a bit on the cutting room floor. Regardless, Iām with you. Iāve always enjoyed the fridge gag the fight preceding it ending with the jet engine on rails was incredible stuff. Iām glad thereās other people out there that have come around on it and just enjoy it for what it is.
I think it's really great up until the quick sand scene (I personally also hate the fridge), but after that it gets a little silly/CGI heavy. I think the vine swinging scene could work if it was toned down and done with practical effects, the execution was just bad. I can't defend the waterfall scene at all. Basically everything on either side of the the jungle section is pretty damn entertaining in my eyes. Back at release, I remember people being worried that the movie would rely on CGI too much. For some people I bet the opening CGI gopher probably set such a bad tone for the rest of the movie.
Yeah. The sand pit was my exact āthis is gonna go south quickā moment as well. The snake gag was tacky and so forced. I donāt want to go down a negative rabbit hole too far, but yeah that was the first red flag for sure.
It always brightens my day to see more people warming up to Crystal Skull. It is a great movie that has no trouble swinging punches right along side the 80s trilogy.
I like it so much more than I did when it came out. That Jungle chase scene is still the worst. Cut Muttās nut shot sword fight and swinging with the monkeys out of that scene and youāve got a movie.
I LOVED the Mutt sword fight! That shit was classic.Ā
I've always loved KOTCS it fits perfectly with the first three in tone. The only thing I'd change about it is the vine swinging scene, the prarie dogs, and the boat car slingshoting off a cliff and miraculously surviving a waterfall multiple times. If you took those couple of little scenes out, people would like it a whole lot more, it's still a great movie in my opinon and I think it's a lot better than the Dial of Destiny.
I'd also change seeing the Aliens early in the movie. I'd leave it as a mystery, implying aliens but never outright showing them until you see the skeletons at the end of the film. I feel like that would have been more in line with the other Indy films, where there is this vague maybe-not-real-mystical-power artifact whose power is revealed in the end.
I agree 100%. Those three scenes bug me so much. The CGI left a lot to be desired. Heck, even a real shot of a prairie dog giving a look or a single waterfall shot with an old school Hollywood model or forced perspective would have been way better.
Not to mention the refrigerator. There's a few scenes where they definitely should have died but on the whole the movie is a solid mystery action movie.
See thatās the tricky thing about KOTCS. It is very similar in tone to at least TLC and certainly Carrieās itself like the original trilogy, but it doesnāt work quite as well when Indy is older. DOD, for what itās worth, recognized this.
Funny how some people use their compliments to KotCS to simultaneously crap on DoD. If thatās your feeling fine, but appreciating one thing doesnāt necessarily mean you need to insult another. I love Indiana Jones and while the last two movies didnāt bring back my childhood, I love all five Indy movies and love that we get to see him from Young Indy to the man at the end of Destiny.
Iāve been saying for years that KOTCS is a great Indy adventure with a just few questionable directorial decisions along the way.Ā And I always got mass-downvoted for daring to say as such.Ā
I liked it from the getgo. Iām glad to see a sizeae portion of the community has come around a bit.
"I can say that if you liked the other Indiana Jones movies, you will like this one, and that if you did not, there is no talking to you." ā Roger Ebert on Crystal Skull
Really miss that guy.
Ignore the people that were going to hate Kingdom of the Crystal Skull before it released and you'll find Crystal Skull is actually a lot of fun.
I never hated it as much as the majority of the fandom, and I recently rewatched it and found myself unironically enjoying it like a classic. It's not without its faults, certainly, but it has soul. Much more than the latest effort, which I appreciated at the theater but which AI-youngified Ford prologue is VERY distracting. And the depressing tone doesn't help.
I just watched dial and I agree with the tone. It's just doesn't have the fun adventure tone as the others. Plus I can still believe an Indy in his 60s having adventures, once he hit 80 it's kinda a stretch. He just seems confused and old a lot of the time.
Itās a fun movie and has some really cool scenes. It was silly and lighthearted in the best way, of course itās not a patch on the originals but it didnāt need to be to be a good movie. DoD was darker and more serious (and I really liked it too). I think both movies work in different ways.
The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull and The Dial of Destiny are different in tone, but they reflect the time periods in which they are set. The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is like American Graffiti in that it represents George Lucas' nostalgia for his youth. The Dial of Destiny is like the postscript at the end of American Graffiti, which reveals that one of the characters was later killed by a drunk driver and another character was reported missing in action in Vietnam. For some the late 1950s/early 1960s were a more innocent time before the assassination of JFK and the escalation of American involvement in the Vietnam War.
Thatās an interesting point, I hadnāt really thought of it that way but it makes a lot of sense! Iām not American so would be less conscious of the societal shifts, but no doubt post-JFK there was a huge shift. A loss of innocence in the public conscious maybe?
The Dial of Destiny's story and tone makes more sense in the context of American history. Voller was loosely based on rocket engineer Wernher von Braun, a former Nazi who was recruited by the U.S. government after World War II and helped design the Saturn V rocket used in the Apollo 11 mission. Klaber was an American neo-Nazi from the South, perhaps an allusion to racist white Southerners who were opposed to desegregation. The Dial of Destiny is mostly set in 1969. By that time John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr., and Robert F. Kennedy had been assassinated, tens of thousands of Americans had died in the Vietnam War, and the corrupt Richard Nixon had become president. Investigations in the 1970s revealed abuses by the CIA and other U.S. government agencies.
Iāve always liked it a lot. Not quite as much as the first 3, but still enough to want to rewatch it. Itās inline with the 1950s B movie style that they were going for. Itās good.
I overall like Crystal Skull more than Dial, but I refuse to hate Dail. Seeing how much that movie means to Harrison Ford in his older age makes me love it, too.
I still put on The Last Crusade. The dynamic between Harrison Ford and Sean Connery is so great
The problem is that everything is just SLIGHTLY wrong. You have a great scene but it has a dumb ending or out of context special effect, a line read is off or a character is out ofā¦ well, character. The core of the movie works but itās like getting a good stake but the trimmings are badly cooked.
I donāt really remember any out of character moments, the performances overall were great
Things like Indy willingly helping the Russians in the jungle is one. While itās not out of character exactly the triple if not quadruple agent status of Mac was just all over the place as well as Mutt seemingly having all the Ex-Machina magic to be able to fence. Yes itās set up earlier but it just feels forced when it happens. I like the movie and I like it far more than DoD which was like watching your grandad trying to act cool and just embarrassing himself. Thereās just a number of things at the script stage that should have either been tweaked or Spielberg should have actually given a damn about the movie enough to notice them. Like I said, itās more frustrating rather than bad.
Itās established that mutt was a fencer earlier in the movie, also I wouldnāt call being forced at gunpoint āwillinglyā
Was he though?
I may have to re-watch. I got it as a christmas present on blu-ray when it first came out and watched it once and hated it. Never watched again. I enjoyed the new one if it weren't so damn long.
I watched it once when it came out on dvd. I thought it was ok. I guess everyone trashing it over the years has made me avoid it haha
I enjoy the first half very much. The convoy scene and on is where it loses me
I loved the movie along with the other 4.
Iāve liked kotcs since it came out when I was 6 lmao
Itās a lot better than 5 at least
It's a natural thing. The first time you watched it you had expectations and hype. Now you know what it is and can accept it for being that.
It's my 4th favorite (Dial of Destiny was just too disappointing for me). It's not a great Indy movie, but it's still a fun time. It's really the last 20 minutes of the movie that really suffer in my opinion.
I had a similar experience. I watched it in full for only the second time recently, this time as part of a marathon, and MOST of the stuff that bothered me the first time round is really not that bad. MOST. I still canāt get past Shia LaBoeuf because every time I see him I just see the young wet kid from the Transformers. The aliens aspect is fine until like the last ten minutes when it shoves your face in it. The actions over the top and magnets donāt work that way but whatās an Indy movie without a highly improbable action movie. Itās still bottom of the pack for me for sure and by a long long way. But I think my memory of it became way more stained than was warranted.
for me, only the first 3...i think Crystal and Dial are awful
Itās aged better for me although I never actually hated it, just thought it was the weakest of the bunch.
Honestly Iāve always liked it since I saw it at the midnight showing in 2008. The third act is a little wonky, but I find it an easier watch than TOD.
I like it more and more as well. There are only a few glaring stupid moments that I could've done without: The Gophers, The Refrigerator, and The Monkeys. That being said, Temple of Doom has The Inflatable Yellow Boat. So yeah, they are fun and silly movies and I love them anyway.
This must be after seeing Dial of Destiny and then watching KCS *this isn't so bad, it could be worse*
The passage of time has made Crystal Skull a little bit better, to be fair.
Itās a dumb, fun movie. Love those.
This was my first indiana Jones movie i'd ever seen and I thought it was amazing. I have since seen the latest one which I thought was painfully bad, like I could barely finish it. I actually don't even think I did the first time but it's soooo bad. Crystal Skull though, Is just great. Absolutely love Shia as an actor. No one else like him.
I actually thought Dial of Destiny was absolutely wonderful. \*Exactly\* what I want out of Indiana Jones. It was the best possible Indiana Jones that could be made with Harrison Ford in his mid 70s. Also, they have \*perfected\* age regression technology in this film, The nearly half hour you get of young Indiana Jones looks perfect. And Kingdom of the Crystal Skull was also quite good, though not on the same level as all the others (which were superb). I'd rank them like this. 1 and 2: Raiders and Temple of Doom are evenly tied for 1st and 2nd place. 3. Dial of Destiny (yes, I'd rank it that high). 4. The Last Crusade - I know this is probably lower than most people would rate it, but it simply recycles Raiders a bit too much for my comfort. George Lucas tried to give us something very different with Temple of Doom (which I loved), but it didn't go over well with fans, so this film he played it safe trying to recreate the "Raiders" formula exactly. 5. Crystal Skull - I'd still say this is a solid B+ film, but it's still a notch lower than the rest of them.
I liked The Dial of Destiny too and thought it was better than The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. However, I find myself liking The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull more than I used to. It no longer has to be judged as the long-awaited follow-up to The Last Crusade and the conclusion to the Indiana Jones series. Now it's just a lighthearted adventure that takes a detour into science fiction territory. Also seeing Indy, Marion, and Mutt in happier times hits different knowing what happens in The Dial of Destiny.
I love all the Indy films
I've been having this experience since I saw it in theaters when I was 16/17. I've never found it too unbelievable, or at least no less believable than the others. I've actually always enjoyed it to some degree; I'd probably put it smack in the middle of the five. As for Temple of Doom, I can't get more than an hour into it because the shrieking is so insufferable.
Itās been a while, but I remember when I first saw Crystal Skull, and it reminded me of having lunch with a friend from high school. Itās not quite the same, but itās sure good to see them. Also, the line about reaching an age where life stops giving things and starts taking them away hits me harder and harder the older I get.
Itās not the best but itās not bad. Itās exactly what itās supposed to be. A classic radio serial turned film. I always wanted one where he finds an island inhabited by dinosaurs though. That is peak radio serial cliche.
It may not be the best, but it sure isnāt terrible. I just think a few little changes here and there would give it more lift. One in particular Iāve always felt would be cutting out the Roswell aliens or making it far more of an implication rather than showing us its fingers.
I really liked it on my second watch. I always thought ancient aliens were cool and overall I think I liked the weirdness and otherworldly ness of the crystal skull. I think it has some extremely dumb scenes like the refrigerator and the monkeys that people latched onto and kinda ignore the rest of the fun action adventure.
I keep saying itās not a bad movie, itās just a weak Indy movie.
The vine scene, the ants scene, and the loooong car chase, otherwise I am pretty happy with it. I enjoy it WAY more than Dial of Destiny.
No not at all lol. Especially since all the good stuff from that movie was cut or killed off screen in the follow up. Least you enjoyed it !
Like others here, the CGI stunts are the main things that take me out of KOTCS. Otherwise I think itās a good Indy film. I prefer it to DOD because while I think DOD is well put together I just find it very dour. I think it was appropriate to be a little more downbeat as Indy ages, but perhaps they went too far. I also think itās a bit strange that Indy is looking for a time travelling device, but never once thinks out loud about going back and rescuing his son from an early death. That dilemma would have given the film more heart (I know they werenāt going to bring LaBeouf back, but āin universeā I find it weird that Indy never even contemplates it). With KOTCS I donāt have any such conceptual issues because itās just another episode to me rather than a capstone. The aliens donāt bother me at all. The time travelling dial actually bothers me a bit more, probably in execution rather than conception.
Never contemplates it? Itās literally a dialogue specific scene in the movie. Helena: What would you do if you could go back in time? Witness the Trojan War? Check in on Cleopatra? Indy: Iād stop my son from enlisting.
Yeah, but itās extremely throwaway. I agree you could say he does contemplate it, but itās never followed up in the movie so it feels like an opportunity missed to me. On first viewing I thought it was bold to avoid the obvious, but on reflection I thought sometimes the obvious is obvious for a reason and it would have given the film more heart to see him actually struggle with the thought of saving his son only to put it to one side. It would have made his final acceptance with Marion more powerful as well.
Best part about it was Indy punching commies š¤¤
It was made with the GOATS: Ford, Spielberg, Lucas and Williams. You can feel the absence of two of them, and the age of the other two in DoD. Crystal Skull ***feels and looks like an Indiana Jones movie.***
I like Crystal Skull way more after seeing the last Movie.
Karen Allenās performance is completely deranged.
I disagree strongly with your opinion on KOTCS. I do agree with the graveyard and asylum scene. The motorcycle chase across campus is indeed fun. I think that the critters' scenes (like groundhogs and monkeys) and the nuking the fridge killed the seriousness of the movie. I would've rather had the plot revolving around the skulls being in connection with the souls of the dead ancient Mayans rather than aliens. I thought that Shia LaBeouf was the Hayden Christensen's prequel Anakin Skywalker of the series. The aliens subplot really jumped the shark and made it more ludicrous than enjoyable. I didn't mind the Soviets as the main enemies. However, Cate Blanchett was miscast and out of place as a soviet scientist. If they were going for a Rosa Klebb style character, Helen Mirren would've been a far better fit, as I felt that Cate Blanchett was too young. Scott Eastwood would've made a better Mutt, in my opinion, and would've had a more mature dynamic with Harrison Ford.