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!
Review by JonTheMantisBlockedParent2021-08-20T21:05:06Z
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!