1. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull - $786,636,033
Remember when I was talking about Twilight and mentioned mostly decent film franchises? Kingdom of the Crystal Skull somewhat echoed the fate of Spider-Man 3, only far more severely. After a gap of 19 years since one of the most beloved action-adventure trilogies of all time, this fourth instalment in the exploits of the whip-cracking archaeologist is not a dreadful film when judged on its own merits but, come on, it was never going to be judged on its own merits. If you watched Indy 4 without prior knowledge of the original trilogy a number of things were lost on you: the significance of Karen Allen's character, the picture of Sean Connery on Indy's desk, Indy's reaction to the decapitation of Marcus Brody's statue on-campus, and the brief focus on the Ark of the Covenant during the opening warehouse scene. You probably also wondered how any filmmaker could justifiably have the now 65-year-old Harrison Ford perform so many action sequences, but most importantly you had no idea just why the film proved so disappointing to so many. It makes actually for an interesting comparison with Twilight. Repellent though most people find those films, the fact remains that they had an ardent fan-base that would eagerly lap up every new entry in the series irrespective of the critical malaise that surrounded them. But for Indy 4 it was almost the exact opposite. How do you reconcile a Rotten Tomatoes overall approval rating of 78% with a Razzie award for worst prequel and an episode of South Park in which George Lucas and Steven Spielberg are convicted of raping the iconic character? Perhaps the inclusion of aliens was just too far-fetched, even by Indy standards and, fan or not, the film contains a numbers of scenes that simply cannot be let slip under the radar: Ray Winstone's character Mac changes sides at least once too often, Indy escapes a nuclear explosion in a lead-lined fridge that protects him from both radiation and blunt force trauma (hence fanboys' nuked the fridge meme), and Shia LaBeouf swings from vines Tarzan-like amid bad CGI monkeys. But whatever anyone thought of it KOTCS was nonetheless a huge financial success, the second highest-grossing film of 2008 and the highest of the franchise (although only when unadjusted for inflation- adjustments made it drops down to third). So don't go writing off a fifth movie just yet...