Indiana Jones 5

Huh. Well, there it is.

Unfortunately there isn't much to process. You referenced above the Roderick Heath review as fair approximation of how you felt about the film and likewise it sums up my general takeaway as well, some minor differences aside. I simply haven't a proper review of my own to generate here. Maybe time and an eventual rewatch will spur deeper insight from me. Till then...

The 1st act, from WWII Nazi Germany through present-set New York City, was solid. Not leaping off the screen, but solid. Along the way I kept thinking, "What's the problem? Why has this thing been getting so much shit?" Once Indy globetrotts his way to Morocco and onward into the Mediterranean is where the proceedings glaze over with a vaguely dull feeling of repetition and misplaced downtime, as if all of Mangold's keenest homework notes concerning Spielberg's instinctual filmmaking talents for throwback serialized invention & thrift where exhausted on aforesaid 1st act.

Crystal Skull is only relatively my least favorite of the four previous Lucasberg installments on a structural level, with a midsection lacking some crispness in pacing. But it's also a shorter film that makes up for such irregularity with simpler stage stetups and comic-strip personality; Indy's delineated moments with Spalko, Mac, Marion, Oxley; that wonderfully goofy scene with him starring into the Skull. Dial of Destiny drags by comparison even when somehow busier with chases and sharp plot-turns. Again, not abysmal. It just idles for noticeably too long a time and with the script adding on too many utterly forgettable side characters.

And then the last, say, 25-minutes of the film happens... and I'm sitting there (in a depressingly empty theater, to boot) realizing just how plainly Mangold has botched what on paper is the wildest of scenarios Indiana Jones has ever experienced. Botched in showmanship, or lack thereof, to be exact. I was onboard with the 'Antikythera' macguffin up to that point and enthused enough with my loose notion of where it was all going, even ready for something pretty batty. Yet it all amounts to such an awkward, fussy anticlimax severely deprived of awe, terror, mystique or any bringing down of the curtain that felt dramatic. Our heroes parachute down on a hillside and stand around in stilted conflict before the whole thing is disposed of rather flippantly with a punch-to-blackout. It just didn't work. It didn't grab me with pulp verve à la Ark phantasms, flaming magic rocks, a Grail knight or an interdimensional super-saucer zapping out of spacetime. It had neither the thematic poise nor the boyish abandonment of those finales, nor even really a single memorable frame or striking image.

Equally out of place was the epilogue that follows. Where I appreciate the return of a beloved character and therein a nice bit of tenderness between two aged actors, it still came off like a wet blanket attempt at anchoring a franchise genetically rooted in both Depression Era Republic Serials and Silver-Screen Hollywood at large too far into the spectrum of conventional sentiments nondescript in nature. Ford and Connery had nuanced moments throughout Last Crusade that were nonetheless kept in check with an offhanded, pre-method-acting cheeriness. Mangold aims more for straight character drama here that ends the movie on a flat note.      

I won't get into the much jeered Helena Shaw heroine—suffice to say, the corporate manufactured scripting was far more a detriment than the otherwise lively actress cast in the role.

Ford however acquitted himself nicely. No real surprise there.

  

I tried convincing some friends to go see it with me. Alas, they were insistent on a "no way".

Maybe they're secret NF lurkers....