My view was, basically, this:
I've seen the first 3 Indy films and I thought the Last Crusade was
pretty darn fine - I wondered if they'd be able to pull off a worthy
end to the series. To be honest, I'm glad they put the Aliens in: they
took the franchise in a new direction, which, in my opinion, is much
better than if they'd just done a tired old rehash. I mean, Indy's
already gone after the Arc of the Covenant and the Holy Grail - you
can't very well top those for religious significance, can you?
Plus, the inclusion of aliens does make sense if you follow Spielberg's
(slightly strange) logic: the first Indys were basically up-to-date
versions of the old 40s movies where Nazis were the bad guys and
the born-and-bred American beats four kinds of blood out of them,
gets the girl and grabs something cool while he's at it. Now that
time's moved on, he's moved the inspiration to the old 50s movies
like It Came From Outer Space, about aliens. By setting it in the 50s
and linking the aliens to Indy's archaeological background (via the
old "pyramids are UFO landing pads" idea which has been around for
ages), Spielberg makes a film that can also be seen as a symbol of
America moving out of the shadow of WW2 and into the fear, paranoia
and new culture of the 50s and the cold war. Yes, it sounds
pretentious, but I think it kind of works. Another bible-themed
artifact quest would have worked, but it might have felt a bit...
tired?
Having said that, I do wish they'd turned down the CGI at the end.
The tornado was cool (and I'm just about willing to accept that
the characters were fortuitous enough to be far away enough to escape
the destruction) but the shot of the Alien at the end sort of said
"Look what we can do! Aren't we cool!" I also miss those Raiders of
the Lost Arc melting plasticine faces, but, well, I suppose this
is the 21st century...
The fridge is my biggest gripe. Something in my soul just says "no,
it doesn't work like that!"
My overall view is "they took a risk and took it in a new direction. You may not like it. As long as you don't go in expecting this to be too much like the old ones, though, I think you should have fun."
I'm not actually a Kiwi, I just randomly thought it up one day.
