#453: Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008)

Director: Steven Spielberg

Cast: Harrison Ford, Shia LaBeouf, Cate Blanchett, Karen Allen & Ray Winstone

Indiana Jones returns, twenty years after his previous adventures. He's been kidnapped by the KGB, who are in seeking the remains of an extraterrestrial at a government base in Nevada. After his escape from Area 51, Jones meets a greaser named Mutt, who lets Jones know that his old colleague Oxley has been kidnapped in Peru after he found a crystal skull. Myth tells us that whoever returns this skull to the hidden city of Akator will be presented with its powers.

The best way I can describe this film is with an analogy. Let's say that Raiders of the Lost Ark and The Last Crusade are beautiful gardens. Going into this film, you are presented with an empty lawn. The filmmakers through seeds all willy-nilly onto this lawn, in hopes of forming another beautiful garden. However, it turns out that that's not the way of a great horticulturist. They ended up with a mess.

The plot was just too crazy. Indiana Jones belongs as a film of the 80s, where action-adventure was in its glory days (Back to the Future, anyone?). The over-the-top action has been overdone, which is why today we've begun to back off and make our heroes more realistic (see my previous post).

As for its special effects, the majority of it was so overdone that it looked like a video game. The only part that I was very impressed by was the very end, in which I thought the special effects were really top-notch.

Yeah, that's just about all I've got to say about that.

Fun Trivia (Stolen from IMDB):

• In 2002, high profile screenwriter Frank Darabont, who'd penned several episodes of The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles, was brought on board the project during what was probably the most publicized of the many failed attempts to find a screenplay for a fourth Indiana Jones film. Darabont collaborated closely with Steven Spielberg for over a year, resulting in a script entitled "Indiana Jones and the City of Gods." While Spielberg reportedly loved the script (according to Darabont he called it the greatest script he'd read since Raiders of the Lost Ark), George Lucas rejected the draft for reasons that were never disclosed, and the film was sent back to the drawing board once more.
• The only Indiana Jones film to not receive any Oscar nominations. The first three movies in the series had won at least one Oscar each.