I finally got around to watching the last (it better be the last) Indiana Jones film. It started well. The silhouette of Indie putting his hat on was fantastic, it felt like we were in for a true Indie film, another classic. Sure, Ford is old, but he’s clearly still got it! If only, the opening few minutes were the high point of the film, it was down hill from there. At first we were heading slowly down hill, but the speed soon picked up.

[tags]Indiana Jones, The Kingdom of the Crystal Skulls[/tags]

Sure, there were a few good moments, a few great one-liners, but even those were over-done. I mean, they didn’t just re-cycle some of his great lines from other films, the used the same ones repeatedly within the same film! How low in inspiration do you have to get to copy and paste a one liner?!

As a physicist and a scientist you’re probably expecting me to pan this film because the physics in this film is abysmal. Well, I’m not going to. Why? Because that’s what you expect from an Indie film. It’s not as if any of the previous ones were big on scientific accuracy or sceptical thinking is it?! You not only tolerate fantastical plots in Indie films, you expect them! You willingly suspend your disbelief in an Indie film, and you enjoy every minute of it. However, willing suspension of disbelief is not a license for wild inconsistencies!

I still remember the exact point when my brain just exploded, and I realised I was watching a sell-out, a hack job by people who have either lost their touch, or who just don’t care anymore. At the start of the film they made a really bid deal of the insane magnetism of the crystal skulls. You see one attract guns, glasses, even crowbars, all with insane force. They really went out of their way to show us just how magnetic these things are. After all that they proceed to have a SWORD FIGHT within feet of one, and it has no effect on their swords what-so-ever! None. Not an iota. Later in the film the magnetism kicks in again, but for the entire forest scene the writers, producers, directors, everyone, seem to have forgotten that these things were insanely magnetic. We’re supposed to be seeing the work of some of the greatest film makers of all time, yet they let a mistake slip through that an amateur hack making their first film with a cheap camcorder would notice in an instant!

The thing with willing suspension of disbelief is that it can only go so far. You can only expect it of an audience so many times in a film, and you need to remain consistent within your made up universe. This film asks too much, too often, and offers too little in return.

From that point on I just couldn’t take the film seriously anymore. It’s probably a good thing that I gave up on it at that point and just started laughing at it, because things went down hill pretty fast from there. I could make a list, but really, why bother.

Then we come to the sound track. I’ve been a huge John Williams fan for years. He’s created some real masterpieces, including THE Indiana Jones theme from Raiders of the Lost Arc, THE Star Wars theme, and of course, THE Potter theme. You recognise them instantly, and from the very first moment you heard them, they were imprinted on your brain forever. Just hearing them sends tingles down your spine! You’d never believe that the genius behind those masterpieces had anything to do with this film. There was not one memorable theme in the entire film, save for the occasional lapse into the Raiders theme that is. To come out of a Williams scored film not humming some fantastic theme (probably with lots of brass in it) is just wrong. He quite clearly wasn’t trying. In fact, I don’t think anyone involved in this film was.

The only thing this film left me with is less respect for John Williams, Stephen Spielberg, George Lucas & Harrison Ford, all people I had great respect for. Oh, and a new euphemism for “selling out”, “nuking the fridge”.