The Inception of 'Kingdom of the Crystal Skull'

Here is a short documentary - probably stolen from the DVD - about the inception of 'Indy 4'. Now, this movie receives a lot more ire from the viewing public than it probably deserves...but I still kind of like it. Parts of it - ahem, the vine scene - are ridiculous, but for the most part the movie holds up as an 'Indiana Jones' flick for me.

Sure, if Michael Corleone had hopped into a lead-lined fridge and been catapulted into the desert by an H-Bomb, then yeah perhaps that would have been too much, or if Jake Gittes had discovered it was aliens behind the problems in 'Chinatown', that would have ruined the movie. But I submit to you: this is the franchise that has contained (1) the Ark of the Covenant melting people's faces off; (2) a dark priest ripping the still-beating heart of a grown man out with his bare hands (3) people falling out of an aircraft on an inflatable raft and surviving (4) the actual fountain of youth and an eight hundred year old knight (5) "voodoo" dolls, with which people can be controlled (6) many, many more improbable events.

The fact that there are aliens (or interdimensional beings) shouldn't detract from the movie. Mutt Williams, maybe, but not the aliens. Of all the complaints that I've heard, that's perhaps the most steadfast one. "Aliens! Come on, aliens!" Aliens do not ruin the integrity of the franchise. It was a silly, campy homage to the movies of the 30s, 40s, and 50s in the first place, so using aliens is not that far off the mark. I'm not making the argument that nothing is off the table for the franchise; far from it. I'm just saying that the level of ridiculousness in the fourth movie is relative to the sources of its inception. I will accept the argument against aliens if you say that the movie just wasn't good enough to support that Mcguffin; I can see that, possibly. Personally, though, I think that the vast majority of people don't like their genres to be mixed, so they thought that making 'Indy 4' "sci-fi" (it totally isn't) was a travesty. "How dare they do this to my childhood!" some might say. And they are wrong.