7. Indiana Jones And The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull
The opening scene to Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull contained everything fans of the franchise could ask for. We're introduced to a squad of uniformed villains (Russians this time, replacing the Nazis from Raiders of the Lost Ark and The Last Crusade); an excellent reveal of the hero himself, casting a shadow on a car as he dons his trademark hat; a fast-paced fight and chase sequence through the iconic warehouse which closed the first movie in the series - all interspersed with some witty dialogue which tells us that this version of Indiana Jones has moved on from his last appearance. Granted, the closing moments to the sequence, where Jones miraculously escapes a nuclear explosion by hiding inside a refrigerator, required a suspension of disbelief above and beyond most action movies, but up to this point the scene was perfectly in keeping with the prequels (and the image of Jones silhouetted against the nuclear blast was admittedly pretty impressive). Unfortunately, everything went downhill from here on - the jokes about Jones's old age were repeated ad infinitum from one scene to the next and immediately started to wear thin, while the plot felt like something a talentless fan might write, cramming in one cliche after another. It felt like a poor copy of an Indiana Jones film not the sequel the series truly deserved. Criticisms aside (the less said about the monkeys swinging through the jungle or the alien revelation the better), Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull hardly suffered at the box office, taking in nearly $800 million worldwide, which just goes to show that - as with the dreadful Star Wars prequels - marketing and nostalgia are bigger box office draws than decent scripts and restrained directing.
