Has Indiana Jones technically acquired an "even number curse"?

Raiders- good
Temple of Doom- Pretty awful
Last Crusade- good
Crystal Skull- bad
Fifth movie therefore must be good!

What can I say, I'm an optimist.

As one of the few people that liked Kingdom, I did realize it was pretty weak sauce compared the other films. Hell, how can any new Indy movie be any good when Ford is so friggen old, and Lucas has a lot of bad ideas. A lot.

I'd like to make fun of this. I really would. But the fact remains that like Lucas' Star Wars, I'll subject myself to any Indiana Jones based project, if only in the name of hope.

Given that, any sort of snark on my behalf would seem hypocritical.

If the 5th movie doesn't bring Hurricane Shia -- the destroyer of childhood heroes-- I would okay with it.

Lucas' track record this far since the new star wars episodes has brought us dashed hopes, torn down heroes, theater rage riots, the plague, and a splitting headache and hangover the next morning. His story lines and plot devices have less content than Mormon Porno flicks. Seriously my inner child can't take any more abuse from daddy Lucas. Someone get him into therapy.

Um...I liked Crystal Skull.

Crystal Skull was an abomination.

Shia LeBoof its tossed into the trees, and the monkeys decide to teach him how to do the Tarzan swing, AND decide to help him fight the bad guys.

In the real world, they would have been torn between just throwing feces or giving him some exotic disease.

The other Jones movies worked because it didn't engage in cutesy crap like that. Getting nuked killed you (even if you were in a "lead lined" refrigerator, getting punched hurt, and the monkeys mostly tried to poison your dates. Indy was a badass, but he was sore afterwards.

Gophers did not engage in amusing antics.

This movie was the opposite of Episode 3 of Star Wars, in that it was mostly good until Lucas directed some scenes and it went to mushy crap, and then got good once he was out. Ep. 3 was mostly crap, and Spielberg came in and gave it some punch and drama for 10 minutes at a time until Lucas came back in and took a wet shit all over everything.

"Crystal Skull" had plenty of flaws (and a truly horrific ending), but it was definitely better than the crappy 2 before it. If THEY had come out today, EVERYONE would complain about Short Round and the Medieval knight in the cave. Any compliments people give "Crusade" are compliments that could also be given to "Raiders," as the both have EXACTLY THE SAME PLOT (other than Sean Connery).

@toxic:
Indiana Jones has so many moments that make no practical sense, so LeBouf swinging on vines and monkeys following him is really not a big deal. Pretty much everything with Short Round would qualify just as much as "cutesy crap." Getting nuked was definitely more unrealistic than the other stunts, but jumping out of 5th story windows and the car chase from raiders both left not a mark on him, when anyone who really attempted them would have been killed or seriously injured.

Also, Lucas wrote and directed pretty much everything in Episode 3. Spielberg designed some of the weapons, if I remember right, but it was almost entirely Lucas.

Speilberg directed parts of ep 3.

And granted, Temple of Doom is possibly still the weakest of the four.

Also, I wasn't arguing that Indiana Jones was realistic; just that it mostly stayed away from the sort of camp the 4th indulged in. You didn't sit there trying to turn your brain off, in other words.

I liked Temple of Doom more than The Last Crusade. The Last Crusade lacked any type of originality or creativity, for that matter.

Also, I did some research and, as it turns out, Spielberg designed and co-directed parts of the Anakin/Obi-Wan fight. I would argue that overdependence on special effects and green-screen in the outdoors portion made that scene weak and largely difficult to follow, so I'm guessing spielberg directed that part, as he generally goes for excessive, stuff-exploding climaxes, whereas Lucas is all about conveying emotion and situation through contrast and little details, with attention payed to every little element.

I'll reiterate...I liked Crystal Skull. The "unrealistic" moments mentioned above aren't any more implausible than the power of God coming out of a box and melting a guy's face, mystical rocks, or a cup that heals your dying dad's gunshot wound.

I don't see why people complained. Crystal Skull was the same Indy we've always known...just a bit older. I, for one, was glad to see Harrison Ford playing this character again.

I think Myth busters should test the "Refigerator gets nuked." I'm sure North Korea could supply the bomb, and a 1950s Fridge can't be too hard to get ahold of.

I have loved the Indy movies since I was a kid and right up until now. Crystal Skulls main problem for me was that it was way too slapstick with the humor. They went for way more laughs this time round, even more than Last Crusade and I think it definietly affected the atmosphere.

Both Raiders and Temple had their darker moments which had an appeal for the older viewer. The last two seemed very much geared toward a much younger audience. Having said that there are some great moments in Crystal Skull, and for those complaining about realism...come on! It's Indiana Jones! It doesn't matter that a person would not survive a nuclear explosion in a 50's fridge, or that a person could not do the underneath the truck trick in Raiders without getting some nasty knocks or even jump out a window 5 stories up and land in the car. This is an adventure movie!
It's not real, it's not meant to be, it's entertainment, made to let you ESCAPE the real world for an hour or two.

If you want reality in your movies, watch some home made video or maybe you've just all lost your sense of adventure and are too tied down by the real world to allow yorselves an out from it for awhile.

So yes please, give us another Indy film, try make it better than the last and if possible no Mutt swinging through the jungle. Because lets face it, fiction or no, that was pretty bad.