Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull Reviewed

It sucked.

It sucked so much.

It ruined my childhood.

Thanks George Lucas and Steven Spielberg for delivering one large turd of a movie and throw the Indiana Jones tag on it.

I'll try not to reveal too much about the flick but I would recommend to everyone out there to avoid the movie like the plague if they want to keep their memories of Indy in check.

First off, I'd like to say that when I'm in my 60s, I was to look as good as Harrison Ford. The man doesn't look his age in the movie but that could be because of makeup and CGI. God knows, Lucas went crazy in every other part of the movie so what was stopping him from de-aging Ford.

It's not the age of Ford that's distracting, but the movie does jump back from either making him some sort of mythical superhero figure (the dude survives a nuclear blast BY GETTING IN A FRIDGE) or a doddering fool. One of the great things about the original trilogy was that he was kind of your everyday kind of guy. He made mistakes, but he wasn't a circus act. That can't be said for this movie where at some points he seems like the mother of the group of adventures and tells them not to do things because it's too dangerous.

That's not Indy.

And the script. Oh the scripts. I just don't get it, they had 20 years to come up with a new script for this movie and we're left with some horrible trash that the X-Files would have rejected. The movie basically revolves around the crystal skulls that are the remains of aliens. Not space aliens, inter-dimensional aliens.

The dialogue is terribly un-natural, feels stilted, forced and full of mumbo-jumbo monologues that just serve to push the story to the next scene. This is a suprise since the scriptwriter was the same guy that gave us Raiders of the Lost Ark.

"Ah you see here the translation is 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6! Press that lever right there and we can move to the next room."

I didn't think Shia LaBeouf (Who has had the success of being in every big movie for the past two and a half years) was bad in the movie as sidekick Mutt Williams. He's definitely a talented actor when it comes to his comedic ability.

So why the hell did Steven and George decided to make him a James Dean/Marlon Brando knockoff. Seriously? Shia LaBeouf? Make him a quirky, witty sidekick and not somebody that belongs in The Outsiders.

I just can't believe his character, just like I can't believe Cate Blanchett is a menacing communist villain. She is by far the worst Indy villain in all the movies and really just ends up bumbling around for the entire movie.

The action sequences are so full of CGI and suspend belief so much that they lose a lot of their power. My favorite action scene was a jungle chase involving a Soviet convoy that was very akin to the truck chase scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark. Indy even busted out an RPG and I thought the movie was going to turn around and be somewhat entertaining.

Until Blanchett and LaBeouf had a sword fight between two speeding vehicles.

And then LaBeouf starting swing on jungle vines like Tarzan, complete with CGI monkeys swinging with him.

While the other Indy movies weren't models of realism, at not point were you like "that could never happen" or "that's ridiculous, I can't watch this."

Not so much in this movie, I think I heard 300 people roll their eyes when our stalwart heroes went over a waterfall and survived not once, but three times!

The excited premiere crowd was brimming with excitement before the movie started, but once the ending credits started rolling, most people just stood their in stunned silence.

What a load of crap.

Epic Photo of Greatness

I like lightsabers. They're super cool. Almost as cool as this advertisement.

A good emergency blaster or Wookie crossbow would be cool as well.

George Lucas is Drunk...

How the hell does this guy take our money?

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: You explained a little bit in your ShoWest presentation about why you decided to come back and make this film. Do you feel like there's even more to tell in the Star Wars universe?

GEORGE LUCAS: Yeah, you know, I sat down and said, ''Okay, the Luke Skywalker story'' — or the Anakin Skywalker story, actually — ''is done.'' But whenever you create a universe, there's just vast areas you've never touched, and part of that was this. Which is to say, ''Well, gee, I did the movies about everything but the Clone Wars, so wouldn't it be fun to do a TV series that is nothing but the Clone Wars, and we could just have all the adventures?'' And that, with: ''Gee, it would be fun to go back to animation.'' And: ''Gee, it would be fun to do a sort of 3-D animé film, which people haven't done — it would be an interesting experiment, and we should have a good time.''

Is Star Wars: The Clone Wars going to be shown in 3-D?No, no, it's not 3-D, it's basically CG — I've gotta stop using ''3-D''...

Right, they're not interchangeable.It used to be that 3-D was considered CG, and then 3-D actually came to be, so now we have to change [what we say]. [Laughs]

I'm glad that the most influential movie series of all times came about with George Lucas in the bathroom going "Gee, how cool would it be if I put Jar Jar Binks in my movie, gave him a Jamaican accent and then... whoah... had way too much Taco Bell today."

And all your new movies are made entirely out of CG, how can you mix it up with 3D.

You've talked a lot about 3-D, so why didn't you do this project in 3-D?

Well, you know, it's expensive. And we felt that everybody kind of looks at the downside: It would cost twice as much to do it in 3-D as it did to do the movie in the first place. So you say, ''Well, gosh, do you think we're going to get that much more out of it? And is it going to be worth it? And we can always do it later if we really want to.'' So that was really the logic behind it. You know, [the Clone Wars movie] was almost an afterthought — we were doing the TV series and looked at some of the episodes on the big screen and said, ''This is so beautiful, why don't we just go and use the crew and make a feature?'' So we did.

That's B.S. for 3-D glasses are the stupidest things you can force on people since the Segway.

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: How does it dovetail with the live-action TV series that you've announced?

GEORGE LUCAS: I'm just starting to work on the scripts now for the live-action TV series. We finished the first year of Clone Wars, [and] we're in the middle of working on the second year. I'm finishing the scripts for the third year. And now I'm working on the scripts for the first year of the live-action show. [Smiles] So it's a lot of scripts.

Where is the live-action one going to fit into the overall Star Wars narrative?

It's completely separate. This one has all of the characters that everybody knows — everybody from Yoda to Anakin to Mace Windu to Obi-Wan — everybody's there. The live-action has nobody there, because it's after Episode III, so everybody's dead, basically, or hiding somewhere. You hear about the Emperor, just like you do in Episode IV, but it's mostly about a whole different world. I mean, there are a million stories in the big city — you've only seen one of them. [Laughs]

Is anyone getting the "this TV series is going to be really crappy" vibe?

Planet Hoth 90210

Are you going to do another Indiana Jones movie after this one?

That I don't know. We do these one at a time and we do them purely for the fun of it, which means that if we've got too many other things going on — Steve [Spielberg]'s got a couple more movies, he's got Chicago Seven, he's got all this stuff backed up for years — who knows? At least I'm at a point now where I can just enjoy myself and be creative and not have to worry about people getting crazy or trying to make decisions around me or anything. And I'm to a point now where if it isn't successful, it's not the end of the world. It's always a disappointment when it doesn't turn out, but sometimes you know it's not going to turn out. I've [also]] seen other people's movies that I had really high hopes for — I said, ''Oh, this is going to be great'' — and I'd see it and it is great, but it falls flat and nobody goes to see it. You know, I loved Across the Universe, it's a brilliant film. I wish I had made it — I don't think I'm talented enough to do that. But at the same time, it just [motions like it blew away] pffffff. It's too bad. That's the saddest part right there: Something that you think is really good and should work and people should enjoy it, and they don't.

But you're confident that Indiana Jones will work?

Yeah, well, this one, we know that for the fans it won't be the movie that they have been making in their minds for the last 19 years, so they all get bent out of shape. A lot of the critics forget that they didn't like the first three, and so they get off on this one, too — or it's not the Second Coming. And, yeah, we didn't make it bigger and better, we made it exactly the same. So if you loved the other ones, you'll love this one. But if you expect to have F-14s flying under freeways — that isn't there. It's just another period adventure movie with this wacky archaeologist. It's funny. I think it's funnier than the other ones, and it's exciting. So it's got all the stuff that all the other ones have. And Harrison's great in it.

I'm glad they didn't try and reinvent the wheel. I have a feeling that every Indiana Jones Movie ends up like this.

George: Okay, I know how we can end the final Nazi Battle... flying goats. Am I right? Brilliant eh Steve-o?

Steve: God, you're a moron.

George: I need a hug.

Lets just cross our fingers this fourth Indiana Jones movie doesn't try to emulate National Treasure.