Indiana Jones 5: 7 Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull Mistakes It Must Avoid

1. Too Much CGI

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull CGI
Paramount

At best, computer generated effects can finely complement a practical stunt or build upon some great makeup and production design. At worst, they can completely remove the audience from a scene and break the suspension of disbelief that's vital to the success of an adventure movie. Sadly, Kingdom of the Crystal Skull was firmly planted in the latter camp, and it was a dumb move for a franchise that fared so well back in the 80s, when CGI wasn€™t really a thing.

From ants and monkeys to prairie dogs and cartoony chase sequences, the special effects were poor across the board. Like the recent Hobbit trilogy, which succumbed to the special effects boom when the preceding Lord of the Rings series was a brilliant display of practical effects, Indiana Jones ditched a lot of what made the franchise special with Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.

Nowadays, the very best effects are the ones you don€™t notice - there€™s a reason Ex Machina won the Oscar over the more visual-heavy Star Wars, and there€™s a reason movies like The Revenant, Mad Max: Fury Road and The Martian were nominated alongside it. Hopefully, Indy 5 learns from this mistake and brings back a hefty dose of that practical sheen.

What do you want to see in Indiana Jones 5? What can that movie learn from previous entries in the series? Leave your thoughts in the comments below!

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Danny has been with WhatCulture for over ten years, and is currently Doctor Who Editor and WhoCulture Channel Manager, overseeing all of WhatCulture's Whoniverse coverage. In 2022, he took charge of WhoCulture and has grown it into the biggest Doctor Who channel on YouTube, and one of the biggest Doctor Who communities on the web full-stop. He has been writing and video editing since his early teens, and first got a taste for content creation after making his own Doctor Who trailers, off the back of a burning obsession with the Matt Smith era of the show. Like many his age, he first got into Doctor Who with the 2005 revival, but has since gone back and fallen in love with the classic years too. If you need someone to recite every Doctor Who episode in order, or to give you a random factoid about the making of Gridlock, Danny is the person to ask!