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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mouseferatu" data-source="post: 4240873" data-attributes="member: 1288">Saw it yesterday. I'll start with the short and completely spoiler-free version reaction:This really is an Indiana Jones movie! Whereas most of the Star Wars prequels had the name, but didn't really feel the same (to me, anyway), this does. This is very much a continuation of the series. It's a lot of fun, and if it doesn't do anything new with the character, well, did we really expect or even want it to?It's not Raiders of the Lost Ark. (Every review of this movie is required, by law, to say that.) I'm not sure yet if it's even Last Crusade. I'm not sure if I'm prepared to say it's "better" than Temple of Doom, but it's certainly more fun. If you liked the previous movies in the series, I highly recommend it...With two very important caveats.1) The "Oh, come on!" quotient of this movie is higher than the others. I don't mean things like supernatural devices that melt people's faces. I'm talking about scenes that are silly and/or over the top, scenes where you think "Even a star in an action movie shouldn't be getting up after that," or where you think "Okay, that's just dumb."They're only a few scenes--not nearly enough to ruin the movie--but they'll bother some people.2) The biggest problem that some people are going to have with this movie--and yes, I include myself--is the underlying conceit. What do I mean by this? Well, the underlying conceit of the prior three movies was, in essence, "Magic and religious mythology are real."The conceit of this movie is different. I can't go into any further detail without some spoilers. [sblock]The movie goes a little far in the direction of sci-fi for my tastes. I don't mind the movie implying that aliens exist. But did we need to see them? Did we need to see the flying saucer, or actually have the aliens defined as "interdimensional beings"? It was basically that one step too far that somewhat soured the ending of the movie for me.I fully understand why they did it. Historically, and in the pulp of the era, the Nazis had a fascination with the supernatural. During the 50s, the fiction was all about aliens, and the Soviets (and the U.S., for that matter) were studying psychic phenomena and the possibility of alien life. So it does fit, especially if you consider the IJ movies as an attempt to recreate the pulp of the eras in which they were set; in fact, in that case, they almost had to. But it still rubs me the wrong way a little.(Oh, and my "Oh, come on!" moments, mentioned above? Refrigerator, monkeys, Tarzan, waterfalls. If you've seen it, you know what I mean.)[/sblock]But that said? I can get over it. Because the bottom line is that this was a damn fun action-adventure movie. Because damn if Harrison Ford didn't slip back into the roll like he'd never left it. (And this from someone who feels that all of his performances for the past decade or more have been largely dead inside.)Because all told, this really is an Indiana Jones movie, and that's really all I asked of it.</blockquote>

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