I came into this movie theater thinking that indy 4 was going to be one of the greatest fucking movies ever, to be honest, i was disappointed. Everything was classic indy until we slowly got closer to the ending. The first thing that ticked me off was the water falls. No fucking man could live that, but it was a action movie so i let that one slip. But then it really got me mad, when the magically appeared in the skull tunnel, how the hell do you get to that, then thy just pull out a lighter and light a torch. WTF? Who honestly believed that? The ending was really lame too. Aliens? Seriously Lucas? Aliens? All right done with the plot now its time to move onto...THE ACTING. They were all pretty good, except for Harrison Ford. I felt he could of done a much better job, but still, pretty good. All and all. the movie was ok. Missing the good old indy charm at some points, but recapturing it in the good old fashioned action. Go see and post what you think.

If i may add on a side note, the music was b-e-a-u-tiful.

I agree with the Aliens comment. I did the same thing. "Seriously!?" That was far fetched even for an Indiana Jones movie.

But I really enjoyed Shia and Cate's moving sword fight. I'm a stage combat technician, so I appreciated the difficulty of the battle and the skill it took to make it work well.

Tanner fool:

If i may add on a side note, the music was b-e-a-u-tiful.

Well, what did you expect? It's John freaking Willaims. Nothing short of Lord on Earth beauty.

I thought it was good. However I came into it with images of the old indy, the rugger temple of doom era indy. also I came in expecting it to live up to the awesome that was the original trilogy.

The movie was descent if you consider it an indy movie. However if you discount the previous three movies and it's legacy, thann it is a good movie, a very goodone. Yes the acting was a bit lax, expecially on Shia's part. also indy's son? boo, and transdimensional aliens? really? although it's no worce than the most holy object ever causing death to everyone.

I say it's easily a matinee movie, not full price, and I'll be buying it because I liek indy even if it is worce thanthe first three. I say about a 7/10.

There are few movies I genuinely loathe, but I'm afraid this is one of them. Part of the charm of the Indiana Jones series was that it wasn't science fiction. It was refreshing to have a fantasy which didn't involve aliens, killer robots, or elves and fairies sparkling up the place.

Was there really so little left in religious mythology he had to switch to dime-store conspiracy theories? Plus, it just didn't feel like there was much of a plot. It felt more like someone stapling together chunks of the other plots and calling it good. "Secret tomb with some skeletons? Check. Disgusting scene involving vermin gone wild? Check. Increasingly vapid, uninteresting woman to be some sort of foil? Check. Now all we need is a piece from Lethal Weapon 4... can we get Chris Rock? We can't? Get that kid from Transformers. We're done!"

And it was stupid. I'll admit I might have been overanalyzing, but the movie lost me about the time Indy said "the contents of that case are highly magnetized" and hurled gunpowder in the air (oddly, not a substance which contains any metal) and watched it sail right along to a case which has such a strong magnetic force it didn't attract any of the thousands of metal lights overhead. The relative intelligence of the thing only went down from there.

I don't know what it is with George Lucas, but I think he just unswervingly proved he can't get past three movies without completely screwing things up.

As for the music... I write for a living, so I have a very poor opinion of plagiarists.

I am apperantly the only one with this opinion, but the aliens thing made sense to me. I mean, think about it. They have to have Indy be older, because Ford is older. So they move him down the timeline from WWII in the earlier movies, and the next major event that could cause an Indiana Jones adventure was the Cold War. So they took what they had and they made an Indiana Jones movie out of it. The first three were mostly about WWII myths, which usually were devoted to religion and weird stuff that the increasingly-desperate Nazis were after. Fast-forward to the Cold War, and what myths do you get? UFOs. Aliens. Pychic warfare and nukes. They took the same formula that they used to make the other movies and applied it to the late '50s. Admittedly I didn't really like the change at first, but it grew on me.

I also liked the old era cliches that they threw in there. The greasers, the collage protesters (Better Red than Dead!), the beginnings of the Red Scare...the old cliches were done perfectly and with a sense of irony, and that is something I admire.

As for the nonmagnetic materials being attracted to the crystal--they actually explained that. The skulls attract even nonmagnetic stuff, as part of their general weirdness.

Aliens, seriously? Aliens?

I can get behind the whole "there's mysticism in the world, and God does stuff" of the earlier movies, mainly because it was always underplayed. If it'd only come up once "hey, it's aliens", I could have handled it, but in true Lucas form, they beat us over the head with the same exposition of "It's aliens, get it? Aliens" about fifteen times.

The Indiana Jones movies are at their best when whatever they're searching for is a Macguffin (an object (like the Maltese Falcon) which doesn't itself affect the plot, whose only purpose is to set the characters in motion). It was the same thing in the Last Crusade. The Ark itself was largely irrelevant except as an object of desire. It lost it for me at the end when it killed everyone, but even that was pretty awesome. In the latest one, the Crystal Skull itself was a major driving force of the plot, and we got all kinds of exposition about what it was.

It's the same thing of a lot of video games for me: if you're introducing something outside the realm of normal reality, just take it on fiat. Don't explain it, or try to make it make sense, just roll with it. The parts I loved were the parts where they didn't talk about the skull itself at all, when it dealt with the characters themselves, their motivations, their interactions

Overall, a good movie, and well worth seeing. Ignore the parts about aliens, and try to remember that the object itself is largely irrelevant. No, Shia LeBouf cannot be the next Indiana Jones, but he makes a decent sidekick.

I was sitting next to an incredibly obnoxious man. He scoffed at the believability of the aliens, and had to hold back from saying "It's an Indiana Jones movie! How is this less believable than water that gives eternal life or a man surviving his heart being pulled out?"

What disappointed me was how this stopped being a real Indiana Jones movie after the Russians got to the base. Wide shots are essential to the style, and the rest of the movie was mostly medium shots. What is this, made for tv? Didn't care for it. Liked the whole jeep sequence though. Also, Shia not getting the hat. I don't know what I'd do if he put it on...

Larenxis:
I was sitting next to an incredibly obnoxious man. He scoffed at the believability of the aliens, and had to hold back from saying "It's an Indiana Jones movie! How is this less believable than water that gives eternal life or a man surviving his heart being pulled out?"

Unfortunately, that sounds like me. I do try to keep my mutterings at a level where no one can hear though...

Don't misunderstand me, I can be that obnoxious person in the theatre. Laughing throughout the dramatic ending of Spiderman 3, replying "This is Sparta!" after a pirate says "This is madness" in PotC3, answering "Noses?" when Harry says "We have something Voldemort doesn't have", but I know my place. This guy next to me complained because the movie was a tiny bit delayed and called the staff 'stupid morons' as well as talking all through the trailers (and there was one trailer I hadn't seen yet) and saying "C'mon!" and other things in several parts of the movie. He wasn't whispering to his buddy like most people either, because his opinions needed to be heard my everyone within 6 rows.

I was massively disappointed with it. It just shows that George Lucas can only make three good connectiing films.
From the moment they opened the box, I suspected an Alien plotline, and I because more and more annoyed with how ridiculous some of the stuff was. It all went downhill from when he survived a completely irrelevant nuclear blast by hiding in a freakin' FRIDGE. Not to mention the fact that he was hurled several hundred meters and only had a sullen expression to show for it. The number of times I said "oh for f***'s sake!!" out of exasperation was beyond counting. Some of the CGI was incredibly shoddy, which is surprising considering this is coming from Lucas and Speilberg, and there was a couple of shots in the warehouse that looked like they were from a bad american soap opera, and Cate Blanchett's voice coach should be shot, hers was the worst russian accent I've ever heard.
The only good thing about it for me was Shia Labeouf. Most will say otherwise, but I think he's quite a good actor in most cases (let's not mention Transformers...).

I'll be watching it tonight if everything goes as planned. Then I'll vote. I already give it maximum score for music. (See my previous post)

I saw half of it. Yes, HALF.

See, they got into the jungle when the cars are going before the moving sword fight, audience on edge, aaand...

THE FUCKING SOUND DIED.

I'll vote Moday after using my free movie ticket.

I was disappointed. I liked the first half hour, but the movie tended to taper off once the area 51/nuke town stuff was over.

The anti-communist stuff felt tacked on, not because it wasn't true to the period, but it seemed unreasonably focused upon considering they never really did anything with it. Jones gets his office ransacked by the FBI and his job threatened, but then that whole thing just disappears entirely without any real payoff. If the FBI had been chasing him along with the soviets, then that set up would be have been worth it. If it was for social commentary, it fell flat. Hell, the blacklisting in the "The Majestic" felt more relevant.

Two things really bugged me though.

1. The movie felt like it was a compilation of several different indy scripts that had been written, discarded and cannibalized without thought of any kind of connectedness. It started to remind me of the original Casino Royale. Like I was watching bits and pieces of 5 better Indy films/video games(partially because it had not a little bit in common with "Indy and the Infernal Machine").

2. The truck chase in the amazon. It felt like an attempt to recreate the truck chase in raiders, and fails miserably. It's not only tedious, but also stupid. They're racing trucks through the fricken amazon, over perfectly flat ground and almost no chance of running into anything. No fallen logs(despite all those trees the big bulldozer cutter was supposed to be felling), no stumps, not hills, holes or creeks. None of the terrian you'd actually expect to encounter in a tropical rainforest, or any sort of virgin forest. Fuck, the speeder bikes on endor were running into more obstacles then those damn trucks. Oh, and the monkey army(with the 50's haircut no less), had my eyes practically rolling out of my skull.

Sadly, the more I reflect on it, the more I'm leaning towards the POV that the real Indy 4 was Fate of Atlantis and this was some badly written fan fiction.

I liked this film. As noted above it's a period piece, and I think it captured that well. Nazis were in fact after holy artifacts, and the first and third( I don't remember ToD so well, forgive me) dealt heavily on the subjects. The time period between the third and fouth movies just fits, and Stalin&Co did have an interest in paranormal stuff with military applications. Area 51, UFOs, all of that jazz basically got big during that time period.

I think the main reason they had to spend so much time on the skull whereas the Grail and Ark were by and large ignored is because those are far closer to common knowledge. They want to lend it some realism, and so they have to justify it. I has to make sense.

I think it's a good movie. Indiana Jones managed to do what he did best, and Shia wasn't too bad. Maybe I watch movies different than you all. I'm not going home to write a critical thesis about why this movie failed me and should be discarded, I'm going to watch a movie and enjoy myself. This amused me. It passes.

Dalisclock:

It started to remind me of the original Casino Royale.

Ah! Never mention that again! I never thought I could hate something related to James Bond so ferociously.

Oh, and x434343 have you ever seen the projector fry? I was at the midnight showing of HP4 (just because I hate them doesn't mean I don't see them at 12) and Dumbledore starting melting right before the big explanation. Melting and burning.

"Hey George, we should make a movie like Stargate."
"Great idea, Steve."

Odd thing, the film has the whole 'stay in school kids because knowledge is power' thing going on, but Spalko just wanted some knowledge. And the only thing she did wrong was have a few American soldiers shot. Poor lady.

I was very disappointed, it started so well. Sure, I can dig a Roswell connection. At first I thought, Ok, maybe the US government were using some old artifact (something magnetic) in an experimental aircraft, and the Russians want it. Ok, that corpse doesn't look too human, but no one walks out of a crash looking to great.
But then as the film when on more and more references to aliens and shiz came to pass, and then the last few scenes with the skeletons coming together, some kind of gateway, Cate Blanchett catching fire (Great gift my ass) and to top it all off a FLYING F*CKING SAUCER. I think there was a collective disappointed sigh in the movie theater when that happened when that thing appeared. And after that I wouldn't have been surprised if Darth Vader had come down to challenge Indy to a duel or something.
Oh, and that whole Psychic nonsense, which everyone seems to forget about after she tries to.. grope his face, read Indy's mind, I dunno. But thats a little to close to Red Alert 2 (Yuri's revenge) for my liking. An army of psychic commandos and brainwashing. That reads kinda like the plot to RA2.
All in all I think Lucas and Spielberg have gone and taken a giant (possibly drug/alcohol fueled) shite all over the Indiana Jones franchise. Did one of them think "Wow, ET sold really well, so did star wars, maybe we should make this a Sci-fi thing!" No. Bad Lucas and Spielberg!

too many aliens/action sequences that try to be thrilling rather than funny, not nearly enough sean connery/fat egyptian guy.

I believe that the most over-rated directors and producers of the last three decades are George Lucas and Steven Spielburg. Thus, my own perception of the Indie films isn't that good at all. Usually its up to Ford's own acting to carry the story, but that's only because he was trained by Lucas' unnamed and uncredited co-producer from the Star Wars days (see: the absence of said creative influence from the latest Star Wars trilogy and compare the difference in acting). Besides, with Indy IV they obviously have gone down the 'LOL LAZORZ WORKED 20 YEERS AGO LETZ TRAI IT NAO!' route, and it drew in a load of sales, so meh.

Related note: Why is Schlinder's List still hailed as a cinematic classic? 'Oh look! Its a story about genocide! Oh look! A girl in a red coat - how poetic! Oh look! This guy is really actually quite nice! Oh look! Everyone's dying! Oh look! A red coat - how poetic!' and so on.

Ravenstien:
It all went downhill from when he survived a completely irrelevant nuclear blast by hiding in a freakin' FRIDGE. Not to mention the fact that he was hurled several hundred meters and only had a sullen expression to show for it.

I'll bet Lucas and Speilberg were thinking "But it was a 'lead-lined' fridge so that makes it plausible."
Also, you forgot how he was about a half-mile from the mushroom cloud and didn't die from radiation poisoning.

But aside from that and the whole 'alien' plot, it was a decent movie

Okay, so the Aliens thing. Indy's adventures, being based on pulp novels and fairly ridiculous stuff, are not supposed to be realistic. Like many people have said before, a guy having his heart pulled out of his chest and water of eternal life isn't exactly realistic either. I don't see any reason why Indy's not allowed to have aliens, considering the fact that there are still loads of theories still circulating that the mayans got their technology from something extra-terrestrial.

Why this is such a big issue for people is beyond me. I loved the film and would probably rate it above temple of doom, despite the cheesiness of Laboeuf's swinging through the jungle moment. Well performed by all the cast, some inventive action sequences and a huge dollop of fun. Why disappointed? It was far, far, FAR better than any of the Star Wars prequels.

Tanner fool:
The first thing that ticked me off was the water falls. No fucking man could live that,

Waterfall? The guy survived a nuke and you were ticked off by the waterfall?

That said, apart from the nuke scene which I seriously did not like (although admitedly the VFX were very neat) I found the movie enjoyable and maybe on par with Temple of Doom, but worst than the other two. The aliens, sorry, inter dimensional beings did not bother me nearly as much as I thought it would and surprisingly they kind of worked.

They also, very obviously, went for a somewhat different style and if for no other reason deserve some praise for that.

I saw it a few hours ago, and I thought that although the alien thing was a bit off the beaten track (I personally would have preferred Indy to keep to the religious stuff, even as an atheist), it was no less plausible then God in a box. By the way, I think the saucer was meant to be a cliché.

Am I the only one that thought the skulls looked like the head of the alien from 'Alien'?

Tanner fool:
The ending was really lame too. Aliens? Seriously Lucas? Aliens? All right done with the plot now its time to move onto...THE ACTING. They were all pretty good, except for Harrison Ford. I felt he could of done a much better job, but still, pretty good.

ok so i guess you never saw the other indy movies?

first one spirits that killed you if you looked at them
second one stones that killed you and had the power of gods
third one a cup if you drank from it you had eternal life but only in that spot

so how is the alien thing that far off from the other 3?

also as for the religious aspect, those aliens were thought of as gods, so it falls in line with the other ones there as well

as for it not living up to how you figured they'd make it, you did it to yourself, i learned a while ago that thinking something is going to be super awesome and hyping it in your own mind, you WILL be disappointed, this is true of anything

you also probly never listened to any of the stuff they actually SAID about movies, the same thing happened with the star wars prequels

Was anyone else bothered by the magnetic box at the beginning of the movie? Let's set aside the aliens, nuclear bombs, UFO's, waterfalls, and Shia Lebouf's Tarzan impression. When Indy threw the gun powder in the air and it made that little magic carpet looking trail to the box, that was total crap. Magnetic fields don't work like that! Plus, the box seemed to magically turn its magnetism on and off when it was convenient for the story or would cause some neat little effect.

Melaisis:
Related note: Why is Schlinder's List still hailed as a cinematic classic? 'Oh look! Its a story about genocide! Oh look! A girl in a red coat - how poetic! Oh look! This guy is really actually quite nice! Oh look! Everyone's dying! Oh look! A red coat - how poetic!' and so on.

I loved that movie. I didn't care for the red coat though, or the complete removal of Russians and gays from concentration camps. But I really like the lighting, and cinematography, and acting, and dialogue, and a lot of things.

Still, I like how the movie took a left turn at Video Game realism with that Lead-lined fridge.

I guess with any movie like this you are going to get people complaining that it's unrealistic, but I think this is a bit much. I mean, who really cares that he couldn't survive a nuclear blast like that? It's awesome, and that's what counts. And stop complaining about the magnetic weirdness, please. That's one of the things that the movie actually explained. Okay, the explanation was basically "This skull is freakin' weird," but that's more than I was expecting.

And as for the aliens--guess what? Indy is older now. About ten years older. And what was happening ten years from World War II? The Cold War, which comes with Area 51, aliens, nuclear weapons, and crazy people spouting nonsense about phycic warfare (I thought that the psycic warfare expert as the villain was a nice touch, because Soviet Russia actually did employ people like that). So to make this movie they can't use the Nazis and the religious myths, the god in a box/Grail/etc. They have to find something that fits with the late 1950s. Aliens fit the bill nicely. The rest of the elements in the movie also fit with the Cold War atmosphere. They had to put those elements in. Spielburg and Lucas had to keep reminding the audience that this is Indy in the Cold War, because otherwise people would forget and treat it as another WWII Indy movie, which would make everything all the more jarring.

As for the rest of the complaints...there's this concept out there called Willing Suspension of Disbelief. Look into it.

If you treat this movie as it was meant to be, as a Cold War period action movie, it is very well done indeed.

EDIT: I just reread what I posted and realized that it sounds really angry. I didn't mean it to be. Dunno what came over me.

I liked it, it was unrealistic but then again that has never stopped any movie producer to date, why should it stop them now?
The aliens did seem kind of cheesy but I liked just about everything else

Gonna have to agree with the whole 'different time period, different problems' thing as well as echo a few things that have been said. The movie would've fallen flat on it's face if they tried to do another movie where Indy fights Nazis during WW II. He's older, it would've looked rediculous.

So instead they went for the McCarthy era of the Red Scare. And surprisingly it worked. Once you got past the fact that it was no longer the 1930s or 40s it really clicked. Greasers, guys in letterman jackets, the FBI subplot (I thought it was developed fine, with the scene *right* before the ending explaning the end of it enough), and nuclear weapons...

There's a certain level of 'Willing Suspension of Disbelief' as Zemalac put it that you need to handle an Indy Jones movie. Let's recap-

Raiders: Biblical artifact that allows the holders to win any battle. Oh, and you die if you look inside. Justified apparently, since most people are Christian and believe in the Bible to some extent.
Temple: Stones that are magic. Oh, and people survive having their hearts ripped out. People might've had a problem with this because it dealt with dieties that were Hindu, not Christian.
Crusade: A cup that grants immortality in ONE spot. Oh, and a plane crashed because it flew into a flock of birds (not so rediculous).
Kingdom: An alien skull with really effing weird properties. Oh, and Indy survives a nuclear explosion by going inside a refridgerator. It's an action movie, DEAL WITH IT.

The little homages to the previous Indy movies made it that much better, along with having Marion back for the ride. Music was classic Indy, acting was good enough for an Indy movie (AKA not going to win an Oscar) They managed to keep the plot under tight enough wraps that I ws geniunely surprised at what was going on. I'm not going to say it's better than Raiders, but it's almost on the same level as Crusade to me and better than Temple.

i agree ij4 was really bad

Impossibilities aside, I wish that I could pay the movie theater the another $7.50 to remove the memory of this movie from my mind (though if this were possible I'm sure it would cost much more). The thing that made the other three so good and memorable was their root in historical legend. Nobody knows what happened to the Ark of the Covenant or the Holy Grail, but their existence at some point is not seriously contested. While the Temple of Doom deviated from the path of the other two, but retained value because it was dark and filled with the classic Harrison Ford charm and appeal that made him famous. Not only did the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull fail terribly in this last point, its premise was based on a stupid rumor that is non-archeological, non-human, and ultimately destroyed any connection between the audience and the subject material. It was cliche and uninspired. IT may have been a good National Treasure or something of the like, but why did we need Indiana Jones to be involved. I blame George Lucas for somewhere along the line forgetting how to be creative and artistic in favor of commercialized crap, and I praise Spielberg for making something out of nothing.