How This Works – Read Other Reviews
Hello Cinephiles,
Today we’re talking about the 2008 film Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.
Story
There are things about this story that work better than the others and some that just don’t work as well. The soviets as villains don’t have the same feel as the Nazis. Aliens just doesn’t work as well as supernatural artifacts. Frankly, the whole “ancient aliens” thing is an insult to human ingenuity and progress.
Score: 0
Characters
The older, more relaxed, Indiana is a joy to watch. It’s great to see Marion again and Ox is brilliant.
Mutt and the villains aren’t all that fun to watch and are treated as plot devices instead of characters.
Score: 0.5
Dialogue
They seemed to want to recapture the dialogue that worked so well between Indiana and his father, but Mutt is a little too young and innocent for it to work.
Indiana has some amazing lines and the banter between him and Marion is excellent.
Score: 0.5
Visuals and Music
Despite my memory telling me there were some terrible green screen issues with the movie, I didn’t see them this viewing. The locations are great and special effects are okay. The large action set pieces are fantastic as usual.
The music was amazing.
Score: 1
Fun
I don’t like Mutt. He feels like a bad set up to replace Indiana Jones. (Mutt Jones and the…. sounds terrible.) I also feel like the soviet scientist was underdeveloped and kinda boring. They should have brought back short-round.
And all that isn’t talking about the random use of the skull’s magnetism. It didn’t stick to the metal car, it attracted coins, and at times did nothing.
Score: 0.5
Overall
The movie suffers not from the protagonist’s age, but from the studios awkward attempts to create a spin-off character. Beside that and the bland villains, the movie has some very fun Indiana Jones style action pieces.
Final Score: 2.5 Stars out of 5
