I went to see the new Indiana Jones movie yesterday, and I loved it. I know that the majority of Internet reviews have ranged between "mixed" and "bad," but I think the expectations and hype set the bar WAY too high. If people are going to compare "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull" to the other summer blockbusters like "Iron Man" or "The Dark Knight," they're going about it the wrong way. If anything, the new Indy movie should only be compared to the other Indy movies. Spielberg has had control of the franchise since he and George Lucas developed it, and if it's got their seal of approval, I'm fine with it.
Steven Spielberg and the World, both actual size.
Indy IV was bound to be different, anyway. Everyone is older, for one; and while some might claim this takes away from the action, I respectfully disagree--I think that seeing these actors do a lot of this at their ages only adds to the excitement and confirms the claims that Indy's still got it. I'm glad there were nods to Sean Connery and Denholm Elliott, and I'm similarly glad that Jon Rhys-Davies wasn't included (in "Raiders" Sala was a serious part of the team; in "Last Crusade," however, he was a corny buffoon, and if you add that to his sellout performance at the Indy ride at Disneyland, so much the better that he's out).
"No, Steven, I won't come back--just use a photo of me in this stupid hat." Yes, I thought the pace of the film was great. I think the action sequences were true to the entire franchise (the atomic blast sequence was exactly that-- a blast). Yes, I had a small problem with the "X-Files" nature of the storyline, but I got over it pretty quickly. I wasn't a big fan of Ray Winstone's character, but that's more because I thought we were pretty character-rich as it was . . . bringing in half a bad guy just took time away from the exposition, which I thought the film could have used a bit more of to bring us along on the journey (rather than bring us up to speed as we went along). I was VERY excited to see the return of Karen Allen, as she brought so much to the first film (although she wasn't as full of piss-and-vinegar as she was in "Raiders," but again, age wasn't a masked factor here). Marion Ravenwood's the best of the Indy women, in my opinion. There's no need to bring other characters back if you've got her. 
"One movie, Steven? I only get to be in one movie?"
Since we associate Indiana Jones, his wardrobe, his antics, and his approach to life with the late 1930s (in accordance with the serial cliffhangers out of which his character was born), it does take a few minutes to move into the 1950s--the late 1950s, at that. To see Indy run around in a circa-1957 household is a little weird. After his radiation wash-down, however, he seems a little bit more of a later-model Indy, speaking to army officials and being referred to as a colonel (which gives us yet another glimpse of what's been going on since "Last Crusade").
For the record: Shia LeBoeuf did an outstanding job, right up to the end of the film. I know that early reports were panning him up, down, and sideways, but the conversations Mutt Williams had with Indy over the course of the film (pre-"He's your son") really helped to explain the character better. Here's where I'm torn: if there had been more to the Mutt-learned-under-Professor-Ox-just-like-Indy-learned-under-Abner-Ravenwood backstory, it would have helped--but this couldn't be a three-hour movie, and what we got did the job of explaining things just fine.
"I don't know, George . . . thirty years from now, you think anyone will care?"
Did it set things up for another movie, or a spinoff with Mutt in the lead? I don't know . . . and I don't care. I'm not looking for a future, necessarily. I think that it wouldn't be the worst idea to end the whole Indy thing here and move on to other things. Sucking a franchise dry never ends well. It was, however, very nice to see Indy in action one more time.
I'm still not crazy about the title, though.
