I'm giving this a 7/10, but just to be clear, I'm rounding up.
Starting with the good, this one fixes some of the problems that its immediate predecessor had. It has a more grounded premise and a way less absurd McGuffin, it's got a much better villain, Nazis are the bad guys again, and no refrigerators get nuked.
For a short while in the beginning I almost felt like I could be watching a true classic Indiana Jones adventure... a very short while. Almost as quickly as the feeling comes it gets shooed away by over-the-top action sequences, one-too-many chase scenes, a lack of classic Indy dungeon crawling, some convoluted plotting and extraneous characters; pretty much all the other things that ruined the last Indiana Jones movie (and most action movies nowadays).
I think the worst thing about this is how the musical notes don't quite resonate. I hear the Indy themes playing but they're not really connecting in the moments.
All that being said, I still rather liked this one. There were makings of a good Indiana Jones movie here and I wonder how this might've turned out if they went with this premise back in 2008 instead of the weird alien stuff that George Lucas pushed on everyone.
With a tighter script; by streamlining some of the plot points and characters, I think this could have been really good.
I think James Mangold does a good job making the action Spielbergian, and that shouldn't be understated. You could believe it was him sitting in the director's chair.
I'm not going to touch too much on Mads Mikkelson and Phoebe Waller. While I like their characters in the movie, one is given too much to do and the other not enough. I'll leave it at that, but otherwise they make good supporting characters. Boyd Holbrooke was really downgraded as an actor. He's just a henchman... and not a very interesting one.
Had it not been for Crystal Skull lowering my expectations, this one would have been a real disappointment, but it's a step up if you ask me. I almost want them to make another one just because it would round out these latter films as it's own thing separate from the older ones... and in that respect they might be appreciated better.
Starting with the good, this one fixes some of the problems that its immediate predecessor had. It has a more grounded premise and a way less absurd McGuffin, it's got a much better villain, Nazis are the bad guys again, and no refrigerators get nuked.
For a short while in the beginning I almost felt like I could be watching a true classic Indiana Jones adventure... a very short while. Almost as quickly as the feeling comes it gets shooed away by over-the-top action sequences, one-too-many chase scenes, a lack of classic Indy dungeon crawling, some convoluted plotting and extraneous characters; pretty much all the other things that ruined the last Indiana Jones movie (and most action movies nowadays).
I think the worst thing about this is how the musical notes don't quite resonate. I hear the Indy themes playing but they're not really connecting in the moments.
All that being said, I still rather liked this one. There were makings of a good Indiana Jones movie here and I wonder how this might've turned out if they went with this premise back in 2008 instead of the weird alien stuff that George Lucas pushed on everyone.
With a tighter script; by streamlining some of the plot points and characters, I think this could have been really good.
I think James Mangold does a good job making the action Spielbergian, and that shouldn't be understated. You could believe it was him sitting in the director's chair.
I'm not going to touch too much on Mads Mikkelson and Phoebe Waller. While I like their characters in the movie, one is given too much to do and the other not enough. I'll leave it at that, but otherwise they make good supporting characters. Boyd Holbrooke was really downgraded as an actor. He's just a henchman... and not a very interesting one.
Had it not been for Crystal Skull lowering my expectations, this one would have been a real disappointment, but it's a step up if you ask me. I almost want them to make another one just because it would round out these latter films as it's own thing separate from the older ones... and in that respect they might be appreciated better.