Spoiler alert. Invasion of the bad movie stylings snatchers.

The only thing worse than Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull has been the reviews of the movie. Seemingly, they all miss an obvious point.

I had left the theater feeling empty and perplexed. The plot was nonsense, and unlike other Indiana Jones movies, I summed it up by saying “Nothing awesome happened.”
Raiders had been a perfect movie. Temple of Doom had weaknesses. There was no archeology, for one (why would an archeologist ancient remains to a gangster for a diamond?), and the protagonists were completely reactive – they merely reacted to changing circumstances without real direction, as opposed to the other two where the characters choose to undertake a challenge and followed a self directed path, facing challenges as they arose. But for all its weaknesses, Temple of Doom was nothing if not a series of one awesome and memorable scene after another. The song and dance in the beginning. Entering the Indian village. The interactions between Willie Scott and the jungle animals. The dinner scene. The heart getting ripped out. The mine shaft chase. Indy cutting the bridge. Most scenes in between. Most dialog was memorable. The characters were loveable.
In Last Crusade, the banter between Sean Connery and Harrison Ford was top notch, and the supporting cast was as well (especially the guy who also played an art plunderer in Dr. Who’s City of Doom episode).

But Kingdom of the Crystal Skull had none of this, and seemingly didn’t try. I couldn’t even understand what they were trying to do.

Finally, I read one line in a blog review, and “got it”: “….the entire shift of the movie went from the adventure series of the 30's (as originally intended) to the sci-fi B-movies of the 50's…”

Now, I got it. While the first three movies were homages to movies that everyone holds in high regards, this was a spoof of movies that are generally considered to be terrible. Each scene was a slice of what might have happened in such a movie. While it is absurd that someone might survive a nuclear blast riding in a fridge in real life, it is not absurd that someone might do the same in a bad 50’s sci-fi movie. Every bad and inconstant scene can be explained in this way. At one point, blacklisting was the enemy. In another, communists. Why? Because each scene was a spoof of a different movie type. Killer ants. Crazy old hermit. Psychic bad guys. Aliens.
In the originals, the hero wears a fedora, like a Humphrey Bogart movie. His younger heir in this movie, wears leather and rides a motorcycle like Marlon Brando in the Young Ones or James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause. (and he’s obsessed with coming his hair, while Indy is insistant about wearing a hat)

This movie was more similar to Kill Bill than Raiders, which I believe holds up without the 30s movie analogies.
The difference between Crystal Skull and Kill Bill is that Quentin Tarentino’s masterpiece was based on an obvious love for the second rate movies he ‘spoofed’ He took all the good qualities from a rather horrendous group of genres, kung fu, blaxploitation, and westerns, polished them and reset them in a way that proved their worth. The values and effects that were buried in the camp of the 70s were used to their maximum potential. Everything in Kill Bill is in those movies, but most people can’t get past the other lousy qualities of those movies.

In Crystal Skull, I get the idea that Speilberg holds the 50s spacesman/ redscare/ giant monster movies in contempt.

This understanding did soften my disappointment in the movie, although I still think Spielberg did a disservice to the series.

It is rather artistic what he did, and I don’t think I’ve heard it mentioned before. He did something similar in War of the Worlds. Another nonsensical movie, taken at face value. One moment the aliens are wantonly killing humans by the thousands. The next, they’re painstakingly searching for two random individuals hiding in a basement.
But War of the Worlds wasn’t really meant to be an integral movie. (at least I hope not – I’m worried about letting Spielberg handle sharp objects or drive or whatever one doesn’t let mentally incompetent people do if it was!). It seems to me that it was quite purposefully meant to be a series of vignettes demonstrating to a younger generation what it might have been like to live in Europe during World War II. In reality, these shorts weren’t even meant to be related. First, Blitzkrieg. Next, hiding in the attic from Nazis. After that, being separated from a loved one during battle. Finally, being rounded up in a cage being brought to who knows what horrible fate.
I think he did a good job in that respect, but might have done a service by spelling it out for the audience. I believe this was his goal because Spielberg has a history of chronicling World War II experiences.

Perhaps Sean Connery sat this one out because they were a few years away from stepping on sacred ground?