Indiana Jones! This name has almost reached superhero status, and the character is far cooler than just a typical man. Released on May 22nd, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull looked promising. Dr. Jones, a treasure-seeking adventurer once again takes his hat and whip out for a new dilemma involving the typical in Indiana Jones movies. We find that much like in the past movies, there is of course an ancient item that will bring collapse of the universe if it’s not returned, there is a love interest, and of course there are bad people that don’t seem to want to die.

I’ll keep this movie review short because I don’t want to spoil anything; it is a movie somewhat worth seeing. However, it is weird, and it really seemed patched together. During the beginning I felt as if I wasn’t really paying attention because the movie seemed to have no direction. I was paying attention, mind you. They picked an object, the Crystal Skull (ultimately weird), and threw some action scenes together with an antagonist to create this very different movie. I’m just as much of an Indiana Jones movie fan as the next person, and I felt like they simply picked an object that was way too farfetched for this, even after a 20 year absence since the last Jones movie.

I feel like Crystal Skull also just lacked character development. We are introduced to a bunch of characters, such as KGB operatives, some random kid, a random man and woman, and others, and there is never really a chance where the movie takes time to develop any feelings for the characters. The only thing the characters do is convey something like, “We have this item, and we need to keep it away from the bad folks.” The entire movie consisted of action scenes with Harrison Ford, and his old-fart attitude, jerking his whip at shit for a while and kicking some bad guys out a moving car a couple of times. Thats about it. Oh, there are also large killer ants which make the action even more sweet ridiculous somehow. We could have done without the ants…

This installment of the Indiana Jones series stays true to the originals, to say the least. All of the movies in the series seemed to have some insane, ancient relic that random people were after and Jones was responsible for its safe keeping. Harrison Ford, as an actor, still has that great sarcastic tone and presence in his lines, which was great in the past too. But this just doesn’t cut it enough for me to make this movie good to me.

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is a great action movie. If you have $20 to spend on movie tickets for a date and yourself, then spend away. There are several parts where I had literally said “Holy Shit!” or “Cool!” But, other than the action scenes the movie was really dry. For the majority I feel it would be better to wait until this movie comes out on DVD; it would make a good rental or addition to your collection. It is a movie worthy of owning I would believe, especially if you have the previous trilogy. Given the prices at the theaters, however, I would say save your money and gas for now – you can wait to see this.

If you are on the edge between whether or not to see this movie, here’s the trailer:

Also be sure to check out the official Indiana Jones web site at http://www.indianajones.com.

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This entry was posted on Friday, May 30th, 2008 at 8:30 pm and is filed under Features. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.