Indiana Jones 4

It has been a long time since the last installment of the Indiana Jones movie series and not only is Indy back, he unearths an old friend, Marion Ravenwood, a blast from the past (Raiders of the Lost Ark from 1981). I know this film has been getting mixed reviews, especially with the silly sounding official title: Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.

After watching the movie, there are a few interesting things of note. I was worried thinking about seeing Harrison Ford (65 years old) as Indy again, but from the first scene, when he picks up his hat, he just exudes Indy. My only problem with Indy was best stated by Alex Albrecht on The Totally Rad Show (subscribe here) when he wished they hadn’t turned Indy into an invincible superhero and I completely agreed with that sentiment after the refrigerator scene. Another issue I had was with the heavy handed use of CGI… especially unnecessary/bad CGI.

The movie was definitely fun to watch (how can Indy NOT be fun to watch?), but the movie wasn’t exciting, there were no real edge of your seat moments. There were times when it felt more like I was watching The Da Vinci Code, Sherlock Holmes or National Treasure, than Indiana Jones which was disappointing.

Even with all that going against it, I still had a good time at the theater, but the person I saw it with fell asleep a couple of times (remember that not exciting quality I mentioned earlier?). I did love watching how Spielberg was able to create an incredibly violent movie, but because most of the gun violence takes place off camera, it seems like a much lighter movie than it really is, it always amazes me just how effective leaving things to your imagination is for a film maker, instead of showing every bit of violence and gore possible,

Thanks to Costumzee for the above pic.

Dany