Movie Review: Indiana Jones

Spoiler Alerts ahead (but you'll probably find more entertainment here than at the actual movie)

Bottom Line: don't believe the hype, it sucks.

Can someone please tell George Lucas to NEVER FREAKING DO ANOTHER MOVIE AGAIN! ! ! The man who single-handedly ruined Star Wars by creating an inconsistent story-line and catering to marketing gimmicks in order to reap money he does not need has now severely crippled the Indiana Jones franchise. The fun thing about "Indy" movies is that the unbelievable become somewhat believable (example, Indy parachuting from a plane about to crash into a mountain via an inflatable raft). This last movie goes beyond the "somewhat believable" to the "there's no way in hell I can even entertain this as even plausible" realm. This movie features Indy surviving a nuclear blast, a guy going more than 60 mph by swinging on vines (well, he manages to catch up to cars going 60 while he seems to be going at a brisk 10 mph), people surviving three drops from 100+ foot waterfalls while in a "floating" car, and more completely asinine situations sprinkled throughout the film.

"What can be worse?" you ask? How about the story! Indy gets away from traditional religious themes and enters the space-race of prehistoric aliens that came to earth to teach the early Mayan culture about building things. Apparently there's a lost city of gold (you'd think they'd think of something more creative) that's missing a crystal alien skull (how it goes missing is never addressed). Indy finds it, returns it, and manages to thwart a Romulan, err Soviet, colonel and her band of Nazi-esque minions (see Raiders of the Lost Ark). And that's the tip of the iceberg! I don't know why Lucas decided to take a page out of Star Trek, but whatever sells, right? The colonel doesn't even suffer an agonizing death at the end, but has her mind zapped and she eventually turns to dust. Strong-arm the return of Myriam from the first movie, Indy's long-lost son, and dialog that spends half of the time explaining what's going on to the audience, and VOILA! You have baked yourself a movie that produces more methane than the entire American Mid-West.

It was terrible. It was awful. It was more forced tripe from George Lucas which depends more on nostalgia than storyline. I now officially hate Lucas and everything for which he now stands: money and sticking it to movie-goers.