Always good at the movies:

Indy is back, May 22!

Just the theme song alone made me tingle.

Hell yeah. I rewatched the originals over Christmas Break.

Anything else "big" coming out this summer that I'm not thinking of? Or is this all we have for a "summer blockbuster"?

EDIT: Of course I remember as soon as I post that the "Dark Knight" is out in July.

The Dark Knight and Indy 4 are going to make me a happy movie-goer this summer.

You've got "Iron Man" as well. Despite what Marvel's trying to tell us, it's just a b-movie masquerading as a "summer blockbuster". Thus the early May release. I don't think it'll be as big as the first Spidey movie...more like what "Ghost Rider" or "Fantastic Four" were.

I'd say "Iron Man" is going to be more like the first "Blade"; well-received both critically and by audiences, but not a huge blockbuster.

Comparing it to "Ghost Rider" and "Fantastic Four" is, I think, underestimating it a little too much.

Yeah, the trailer tells me that it's going to be a couple of notches above Fantastic Four, but a few notches less than Spider-Man 2.

I think comparisons to "Ghost Rider" and "Fantastic Four" are fair. Those made both made money and people seemed to enjoy them for what they were: harmless fun. They rank up there with stuff like "Lost in Space" or "Small Soldiers". Quick, disposable entertaiment that grabs a crowd for about two weeks. Not nearing the blockbuster status of stuff like Lord of the Rings, yet not approaching flop status, like 1998's Godzilla.

If I was going to give it a bad comparison, I'd say it'd be like... "Hulk"! And say what you want about "Daredevil", I thought it was okay and it made decent money at the box office. "Hulk" made enough money..but egads that was a terrible, terrible movie.

I really loved "Small Soldiers".

I have mixed feelings on Daredevil, but in the end I think it was an okay enough of a movie. It didn't live up to it's potential, but most films don't, so I won't rag on it too heavily.

I can't think of anything redeemable from Hulk though. It was one of the few movies I ever paid a full 20 bucks for, and that made me hate it even more.

I got the feeling from the Incredible Hulk that Ang Lee really wanted to make a movie that had some real social commentary -- at the expense of making an entertaining Hulk movie.

You can't make "HULK SMASH!" a pretentious art film without either the Hulk smashing or the art suffering. Guess what actually suffered most in the end?

Yeah, I know what you're saying. Ang Lee tried something with Hulk, he wanted to make a comic book movie that wouldn't fall into the comic book movie category. And it didn't work. While I don't want all comic book movies to follow the same formula, at the same time you shouldn't try to make it into something that it just shouldn't be.

And otherwise, I tend to like Ang Lee's work, so it was just a blunder. The upcoming Hulk movie should fix everything.

You're exactly right about Lee trying to make it a pretentious "artsy" flick.

I thought the animated comic book window panes were actually kinda' neat. But Hulk fought.....a giant mutated poodle. No Gamma Bomb with Rick Jones. Buncha' crap about his dad.. who was apparently the Absorbing Man. Yeah....

But let's swing it back to Indy! I actually got chills when the preview showed his silhouette and the hat. Would've been better if I had seen the preview in a theater, without background graphics blasting the logo and already announcing what it was building up to. Still excited for it, though. The theme song alone is worth the wait.

So..finally saw "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull" last night. I wouldn't say "disappointment", but I would say it felt like a random episode of an Indiana Jones series.

Reminded me of the DuckTales series premiere. Yup, that's right. Where Scrooge, Donald, the nephews and Launch Pad all search for the Lost City of El Dorado. Scrooge and Indy has always shared similarities, but halfway through "Crystal Skull", I found myself nostalgic for that DuckTales yarn.

I thought too much depended on the crazy old guy, Ox. At one point they said something like: "you could go insane staring at this skull". Well, you could go insane staring at this movie!

Aliens? (Errr...sorry, they're "interdimensional beings")

I kept waiting for some relevance to be dropped into the bomb test and the pre-fab town, but it never came. "Oh, there was also a bomb test that day in Nevada". That whole sequence bugged me. The other scene that I couldn't stand was the jumping masked cave kids at the graveyard. Although that scene ended with a good gag (the blow gun reversal).

Indy getting married?! Dammit, that sucks. Part of his appeal is that he's this John Wayne type of hero. While he may have his tender moments, he'll always be a ...umm, Wyld Stallion. But suddenly he finds out he has a kid and he's Ward Cleaver with a whip? Yeah...not buying that. Harrison Ford can walk into any bar and get a high-five from any American male for playing two of the biggest male movie icons: Indy and Han Solo. Marrying him off and instantly making him a dad is castration. It was horrible to watch.

---Yeah, I know that the Star Wars "expanded universe" crap also did the same to Han....but I've never followed that junk. Did I ever tell you about MY script for "Episode 7: The Malevolence of Walrus Man"?!! Well, Han's formerly frozen genetalia is a good subplot in it....

But I did like the final scene where Indy's hat blows in. Mutt picks it up and it looked like a painful "passing of the torch" moment. But then Indy walks by, plucks the hat away as if to say: "uh-uh...there's only one Indy, kid".

Some fun sequences, though. I liked the fight at Area 51 (even if most of it had been leaked via trailer). The duck vehicle and the waterfall agreed with me. Kinda' ambiguous about the ant stampede, though.