Indiana Jones and the Scientology Skull

Man, I wanted so bad to love this movie.

I am a huge fan of the other 3 I.J. movies. HUGE. Could probably recite the lines from "The Last Crusade" in my sleep. Or... maybe not that big of a fan. I don't know. But big. Real big. I bought the hat.

So, without further ado I must weigh in on the state of the current Indy franchise direction, and it can be summed up in one question: I WAITED 20 YEARS FOR THIS???

By far the biggest disappointment of this, or any other year. As the lights dimmed and the Lucasfilm logo appeared, the energy was electric in the theater. But, as the film progressed that energy was sucked out of the crowd like the life out of a russian psychic.

Let me sum this up: Unlike Alien vs Predator, where we know the movie is going to be awful and expect it, with Indy 4 it was built up to be such a great movie! I kept hearing how the reason this waited for 20 years, was because they wanted to agree to the right script first. So this was the right one? What the heck did the wrong ones look like?

Long post today, folks...my top 10 worst things about the movie. I'll try and keep the spoilers to a minimum:

1. Movie Sets - Every scene actually LOOKS like a movie set. There is no true feeling of realism in this movie at all. At one point in the movie when Indy and Mutt are at the token ancient burial site the camera pans over the site first and it's so overwhelmingly obvious that it was a minature model that I half expected Red Five to fly over and try and drop a photon torpedo down a ventilation shaft (was secretly hoping that would happen). And then in a later scene, the jungle set was so obviously off a back lot at some movie studio that I kept looking in the bushes for Gilligan to come running out with Marianne and the Professor in tow. Instead, we got MARION, the Centrum-Silver popping Professor, and the kid with the OCD comb habit.

2. Acting - Won't go there. I have to go to bed before midnight. Not enough bandwidth to upload this blog once I get started on the acting.

3. George Lucas and Spielberg - These guys were geniuses twenty years ago. After the first five minutes I was expecting Jar Jar to pop out of one of those prairie dog holes. And then lo and behold, they find Jar Jar's skull!!!

4. Aliens. Indiana Jones fights space aliens. The gray ones with big eyes that we've seen in fifty other movies. It's not tongue in cheek, or an homage to 50's saucer cinema. Spielberg and Lucas are completely serious. Aliens. psst...Spoiler: Aliens aren't even real! At least he could have fought something real like Bigfoot or the Chupacabra.

5. Age - Spielberg, Lucas, Ford, Allen...they are all reaching the point where "life has stopped giving and has started taking." Harrison Ford's first appearance - the one where he "looks 80" - cries out for a little creative make-up. Come on, we expect him to have aged, but THAT much?

6. Weak Villians - So we don't get to fight Nazis on this go round. So be it. I was sold on the idea of fighting the Commies in the spirit of my hero Mr. Reagan, but I guess once you've dealt with Nazis you just can't find a comparable group of nasties to play the villians. But THESE Commies were more like the kind that cranked out millions of wooden stacking dolls and picked mushrooms in the forest than the hard-core Stalinists who murdered 20 million Russians to maintain power. But hey, at least the reunited cast of Apocolypta in the last 30 minutes was a little menacing.

7. Meaningless End to the Bad Guy - And not to ruin anything, but why did the alien burn out the Russian psychic's eyes? Was he a McCarthy Communist-hater or was she just too broad in her request for knowledge? See, I need to know because I don't want to be punished and have my eyes burned out just because I want a little knowledge if I ever run into a crystal-skulled alien the next time I end up in Latin America.

8-10. Lucas and Spielberg will still get a ton of money!!! Because, like millions of other Americans, I will have to buy the trilogy box set now tomorrow and watch it for a week to get the bad taste of Indy4 out of my mouth.