Really disappointed with Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Don't know where to start really, but..
- the lame scene with them throwing him the snake to get him out of the quicksand. How does Mutt, who's a 50s greaser who's never been out of the USA, know that this is a harmless rat snake? and, um, would you really throw an immense snake at someone to get them out of quicksand? when you could use a branch or something? Honestly, I thought even the actors looked embarrassed by this one.
- just blatantly re-using the Nazis and giving them very slightly different accents which makes them, woo, COMMUNIST!!!
- playing up Indi's war record right at the start. Yuk, yuk, yuk. Indi is anti-establishment, not a propaganda monkey.
- re-playing the 'torture in a tent' scene from Raiders, with yawn-predictable S & M commie woman instead of genuinely comic/ threatening Herr Flick Nazi. I can see the whole thing is obviously meant to be a sort of 'hommage' to Raiders, but even if you're making an hommage, you do have to do something different, to let the film stand on its own, as well.
- the ammount of characters just left dangling with no explanation! Like, the blow-pipe Indians in the graveyard. Who were they, exactly? What were they doing there?
- That 'crystal' skull was so obviously plastic. Poss. recycled cling-film. Poss. with one of those static electricity balls you can buy from the Gadget Shop inside, you know, the ones that crackle with blue and pink light when you put your hands on them. Guys, you have a budget for a reason.
- 'The wrappings have preserved him' scene with the 500 year old conquistador. Yeah, right! You have to embalm someone to preserve them, or else stick them in ice or sand or some other extreme situation. Just wrapping them in straw and sacking is not going to do it, sorry mate. Also, why would the 500-years-ago Indians pursue the conquistadors who had run off with their crystal skull, kill them all, take the skull (despite being so terrified of it that they run in the opposite direction when they even see it) and then go to the time and trouble of burying said conquistadors in 'preservative' wrappings? Why not just leave their bodies to rot?
- skating over Mutt's 'my dad abandoned me' trauma in favour of extended, ho-hum action sequences. What about that last scene? Mutt says 'Why didn't you stick around, dad?' Can a father have anything more painful said to him? But Indiana just sort of smirks and shrugs. And so does Marion. End of film.

I am the biggest Indiana Jones fan in the world, honestly, and I will happily suspend my disbelief as high as necessary for Harrison and his Hat, but this was just crap

I know that feeling. Right from the start it lacked that certain something. But still it had its moments, having said that if you look back at the originals with fresh eyes you'll realise that we've given them a little polish in our minds eye.

I blame Lucas and Spielberg, Lucas should never be let near a script and Spielberg seems to have lost it these days. I can't beleive it took 20 years to come along, especially as the whole argument was over the fact that Lucas wanted to make Indiana Jones and the Saucer Men from Mars which the others didn't like, but that's what it ended up becoming.

Winstone was entirely unnecessary and Blanchett shouldn't have been there either.

What the hell was with those ants too? Where on earth do ants like that exist? The god mumbo jumbo and aliens yeah, but ants that carry men off WTF??

The ant effects were nicked/ adapted from The Mummy, IMO. Actually there are really bloody terrifying ants in the Amazon, army ants I think they're called, which will march relentlessly forward and eat anything in their path, including big stuff like cows. Someone wrote a great short story about them - maybe Conrad or someone like that - or maybe someone quite different.

I agree, Leila, that it was missing it's old charm, and the gags and set pieces were so old hat - what about the skull they found in the Army warehouse? Why did they need two skulls? And I hated Indie's baggy old-man trousers. Has he no muscle left on those buns & thighs? And it was so obvious they'd cast the young actor from Transformers to star alongside Ford to appeal to the younger generation.
Mind you, I had a migraine half way through it and spent most of my time praying for it to end.


- NaomiM