The Return of Indiana Jones

Spoiler Alert: I am going to give away what happens in the movie. If you don't want to know, stop reading now!

I saw 'Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull' over the long holiday weekend (does attending blockbuster movies count as ways we celebrate Memorial Day?). I'd actually heard mostly good things about it before I went, with the negative being that the third act was a mess, so I was cautiously optimistic going.

I went into knowing very little about the movie except that Karen Allen was back and that Shia LeBeouf played Indy's son. After seeing it, I wondered how the movie would have been different without that relationship knowledge. It would have been nice to see it that way.

Overall it was an Indiana Jones movie, and a pretty good one at that. Part of it is the fact it is so well-made, in terms of the richness of Spielberg's world. The script, at least in terms of dialog, was also good quality, and it retained the charm of the first and third (I loathe the second in the series, largely because the screeching of the now Mrs. Spielberg overwhelmed any charms it had).

The story, of course, has issues (I won't even bother going into everything wrong the nuclear blast or vine-swinging monkey scenes). The double-crossing friend of Indy's has an appetite for money and riches that should have set alarm bells off about his trustworthiness years ago. The main villain is inexplicably disintegrated during the movie's climax, evoking the famous face-melting scene of the first movie. The CIA men who with McCarthy-esque zeal are pursuing Indy as unAmerican at the beginning of the movie have vanished by its end with not even a throw away line to explain their evaporation or Indy's return to his university; certainly what he accomplished in the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull wasn't anything to save him from the accusations of being unAmerican (although the main villain and the traitor were annihilated, but not in a "here are the bodies" sort of way).

Of course, the flying saucer just made me feel like Spielberg was tying together his legacies. At least there was no 'Close Encounters' in the soundtrack. The third act wasn't quite the mess I'd been warned against, but it definitely wasn't as tight as the rest of the movie. And really, do pan-dimensional beings need a flying saucer? I wouldn't think so, but where's Douglas Adams when you need him?