I’ve always loved the original Indiana Jones trilogy — outside of Bond, I used to consider them my favorite movies. About a month ago, after I was done my most recent weekly Bond re-watch (this time I only re-watched the Connery and Craig films), I decided to re-watch the Indiana Jones movies, as it had been a while since I’d last seen them. I was actually even looking forward to re-watching Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, not because I really like it — I don’t — but because I actually hadn’t re-watched it since it originally came out, and was curious about it, having pretty much forgotten the entire story. It’s such a weird thing. It does have some fun moments, some good action sequences (like the truck chase in the jungle), and it’s great seeing Marion again and her interacting with Indy, but the biggest problem is just that it’s not really fun to see an old Indy trying to do Indy stuff (and that’s why I’m excited at the prospect of a new Indy movie with a new actor). That also means it’s not the time period we want. And yeah, no one wanted to see extra-terrestrials in an Indy movie (and famously, nor did Ford and Spielberg, but they were forced into it by Lucas). So as much as I still love the original films (Raiders and Temple of Doom pretty much tied as favorite, followed by Last Crusade), it’s a bit of a shame that they ended things on Crystal Skull.
