One of the best reveals in “Raiders” comes midway, when the sadistic Nazi shows his gruesomely burned hand — the result of a previous seemingly throwaway scene — to explain how the Nazis know exactly where Indy’s gone off to dig for the Ark. It’s one of the most perfect types of twists: humorous and dramatic, yet completely logical and discernible on repeat watches.
Contrast that with the Crystal Skull, where there’s a clunky scene of the villain basically saying “I am using this magical tracking device” as he holds up the tracker to make sure we understand his plan. Maybe audiences have gotten dumber, but I think Spielberg and Lucas were phoning it in for Indy 4.
Crystal Skull, for me, is really one of the most disappointing continuation of any series ever. It's even worse than the Star Wars prequels (and later on sequels), because those at least managed to set up interesting world building apart from being bad movies. It's no surprise that Lucas had a say in both of them.
Temple of Doom was nowhere near the quality of Raiders or Last Crusade, but it was still a good Indy movie. They should have never touched the franchise again after the trilogy. Harrison Ford is Indy. And Indy without his charisma & agility is just really plain…
I always liked Doom the most. But I was like 13 when I first watched them so perhaps the campiness of Doom appealed to me as it was perhaps Goonies-esque for me at the time..
I don't think audiences have gotten dumber, but what has happened for most major motion pictures like Crystal Skull is that the plots have been simplified for an international audience. When you have to translate a story into 50 different languages, you have to keep the story pretty basic and straight forward or else expend lots of effort in each translation to take into account cultural nuance, humor, innuendo, etc.
That's one reason you see so much more reliance on special effects and crazy action. Because those are pretty universally entertaining.
So in other words, globalization has ruined the film industry.
I found it interesting that the plots always seemed to match the scripts, stereotypes and cinematography styles of the eras that the plots occur in. That's what stood out more to me.
Yes, the dialogue in Crystal Skull wasn't the greatest but it didn't really take away the fun for me.
I remember when Siskel & Ebert (the original Siskel and Ebert) reviewed The Last Crusade in 1989, Siskel gave a thumbs-down because the father-son relationship wasn't believable. Ebert's response was, to paraphrase, this is an Indiana Jones movie, not a real-life drama.
Contrast that with the Crystal Skull, where there’s a clunky scene of the villain basically saying “I am using this magical tracking device” as he holds up the tracker to make sure we understand his plan. Maybe audiences have gotten dumber, but I think Spielberg and Lucas were phoning it in for Indy 4.