Is terrible.
The story is really screwy. If you don't know, it's about aliens. Apparently, between Last Crusade and now, Indiana Jones helped with the alien autopsies at Roswell, New Mexico, and before that, he was in the OSS during WW2. These are not good additions to the mythology of Indiana Jones. I kind of think that Indiana Jones needs to stay within the spiritual realm for its stories and not venture into science fiction. So, for me, this movie was a lot like putting the character Indiana Jones into a movie in which he did not belong.
This is true in two other ways. First, the actions sequences were not Jones-y. Combined with the story being the way it was, this movie felt to me like a cross between National Treasure and Pirates of the Caribbean. Both NT and Pirates are essentially knockoffs of the Indiana Jones franchise. So, this movie felt like a cheap imitation of imitations of Indiana Jones. There was one really cool motorcycle chase scene through Indy's college campus. But that was outweighed by Shia LaBeouf swinging through the jungle on vines like Tarzan with monkey helpers, a sword fight in which LaBeouf straddles the gap between two speeding trucks, and an unnecessary tomb sequence in which Indy and Mutt (LaBeouf's character) are attacked by blow dart wielding amazonian natives.
Now normally, when you say things like "blow dart wielding Amazonian natives," that should be pretty cool. It was in Raiders, after all. But this brings us to the second problem: the entire scene was shot on a soundstage and obviously so. It looked terrible. And this is true for most of the film. Even when they introduce the character at the beginning, they are supposed to be standing outside in New Mexico. But nope, it's on a soundstage. Shia LaBeouf doing Tarzan? Soundstage. Amazonian Natives? Soundstage. Things that should have been and could have been easily done outside were shot on a soundstage.
Ultimately because of this, it just didn't look like an Indiana Jones movie. Instead, it looked like Peter Jackson's 2005 version of King Kong which was largely computer created. Everything was lit with bright white lights and then shot in soft focus. Having watched it on Saturday, my impression of it at this point is that the highlights were essentially washed out, but that they used post production processes, either computers or normal techniques, to up the color density of the rest of the composition. If you know what I mean. The point is think King Kong. That's what it looked like.
So, insofar as it involved aliens, that the action sequences were not in keeping with previous versions, and the fact that it simply didn't look like the other entries in the franchise, it felt to me like a movie where the character was out of place.
Generally, I don't have a problem with using soundstages and alternate sites. I mean, Tunisia isn't Egypt, and I know that all the tomb scenes in the previous IJ movies were shot indoors. But they shot them straight and didn't manipulate them afterwards. And when possible, they shot outside. They had that good natural light to help make it look like something.
Piece of Crap. Don't watch it.
