George Lucas. Knock It Off.

i'm going to keep this short, because i don't want to ruin anything for those of you who haven't yet seen indiana jones and the kingdom of the crystal skull.

before i continue, i'd like to point out for those of you who don't know me well that i'm quite possibly one of the grandest indiana jones fans who ever walked the face of the earth. seriously. i'm about one tier down from those nerds (see picture below) who dress up like indiana jones on a regular basis (exploits while being drunk do not count - so don't bother bringing up my college years). the original trilogy is the main reason i joined the peace corps and spent years sweating away in sub-saharan africa, and one of the main reasons i decided to start teaching middle school social studies.

to me, the films are practically flawless. ...temple of doom isn't as good as the other two, but its still an awesome movie. i expected the new one to be a lot worse than it was going in: you definitely heard a lot from the nay-sayers for this movie (which isn't that surprising, as the coolest thing a person can do these days is hack away at a legend and act like some sort of critic). anyway, the movie was decent - i won't even bother saying 'it wasn't as good as the first three,' because even a chimp is going to know that before hearing anything about the movie. nothing can be better than the original three... unless, of course, they someday stumble across a secret vault and uncover a couple more movies that were shot around the same time frame, with the same cast and crew... you get where i'm going with this. so yeah... for those of you who haven't yet seen it, i'd recommend it watching it for sure.

but please remember this: george lucas is now completely mad with power, and his CGI stench and his God-awful script-writing and his market-whoring runs rampant throughout the entire picture. just a heads up, there.

if, like me, you grew up with harrison ford as your john wayne or steve mcqueen, then, for the love of God, go see this movie. if, for whatever reason, you only sorta-liked the original movies ("what's with the whip thing?") wait 'til it comes out on DVD before dropping $8 on an over-priced cinema ticket.

...and, if you hate indiana jones, and hated the original films since they first came out, please do the world a favor and go play in traffic. you are the reason bad things happen in this world. and, there's a good possibility you are a nazi.

cheers.

- brian