I took my beloved bride to see the latest Indiana Jones movie recently. I've been reading and listening to reviews that have been mostly negative. I stopped listening to reviews and projections several days ago and decided that I should see it for myself.
The best thing I can say about the experience is that we saw the trailer for The Creator. It appears to be a sci-fi flick. My beloved bride is (mostly) not a fan of sci-fi movies. She saw the trailer and put it on our shared iPhone calendar. The premise looks pretty good to both of us.
The Indiana Jones franchise has been pretty uneven thus far. Raiders of the Lost Ark and The Last Crusade are masterpieces of American cinema. They are individually nearly perfectly executed films. Commentary from The Big Bang Theory notwithstanding.
I've never been a big fan of The Temple of Doom. It isn't a bad movie. It just doesn't attract me in the same way that the other two movies do. It may be that we drop into an adventure without much framing and that there isn't a great motivation for Indy to get involved. Also eating monkey brains (and other things) just isn’t in my wheelhouse.
Kingdom of the Crystal Skull was a bit of a hot mess. The villain would have twirled her mustache every four seconds if she'd had a mustache. The big stunt on the nuclear bomb test range strained the limits of the suspension of disbelief. Many of the other stunts were equal tests of credulity. There are other elements that are a bit of a mess, but it was largely a decent outing.
Call it (2) installments that get an A+ and (2) that are B- movies. Now we have (3) movies in one category; B-.
Spoilers lie ahead. If you like the Indiana Jones franchise and haven't seen the movie, I encourage you to go see the movie. It is not bad. It is just flawed.
Last chance.
Here we go.
