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After waiting almost two decades, it’s hard to believe that what everybody went to go see was the best that Harrison Ford, Steven Spielberg and Co. could do.  Truth be told, this one doesn’t even hold a candle to any of the previous three and makes Temple of Doom look that much better.  However, this is coming from a guy who thinks Temple of Doom is the second best and offers giddy pleasures in a way vastly different but equal to Raiders.

With that said, though, Kingdom of the Crystal Skull just comes off as a hack job.  There are bits that work (is there a better action director than Spielberg?) and silly bits that take you out of the movie (yeah I’m looking at you George of the Jungle sequence) and more insect scares (holy shit those giant ants frightened the hell out of me) and moments that left me crying like a little girl (those first two or three scenes with Marion Ravenwood).

But it’s hard to take the movie serious when Indy is actually surprised by shit, ya know?  This is a guy, who is not only immortal after drinking from the Holy Grail (which helps explain him surviving an atomic blast in a refrigerator!), but he’s seen more crazy shit in his lifetime that by the time this adventure rolls around I almost expect him to be utterly detached, blase to the point of being apathetic.

Regardless, it didn’t pervert my childhood (yeah I’m looking at you George Lucas) so it has that going for it.  And still, with all the crazy stuff Indy has been through, I’m drawing a line at aliens and spaceships.

Oh and Shia LaBeouf didn’t ruin the movie, so let’s not start calling him Jar Jar Binks.

In light of recent images surfacing of the actual Crystal Skulls that will appear in the upcoming Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skulls, (just google it for all the deets) MTV sat down with noted Harvard archeology professor Marc Zender to discuss what those pesky skulls could actually mean.

“The dentition, vestigial nose orifice, massive eye cavities and dolichocephaly [or 'long-headed-ness,' to a layperson] put this thing into a very different class of entity,” Zender said, describing the “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull” centerpiece. “It looks foreign — really strange.”

“Definitely not human, no doubt about it,” Zender said of the skull’s structure, indicating that it obviously comes from an alien culture. “It’s got a mixture of the alien’s mouth from those movies with Sigourney Weaver [the 'Alien' series] and then really, really big eyes.”

Well, great but that doesn’t tell us what the point of it all is.  Besides anyone with an internet connection could figure out there’s going to be some connection to aliens in the fourth installment of the franchise.

What does it all mean, by god!

“Assuming that the filmmakers took their cue from some prevailing New Age beliefs,” Zender said, “these crystal skulls are supposed to be computer-like repositories for the lost knowledge of the ages. The idea that these things have the knowledge of lost civilization or space-faring cultures or anything like that in them, that’s pretty prominent.”

What is it that they say, the more you know or something.  So Indy has the all-powerful Ark, everlasting life from The Grail and now he knows everything because of the skulls.  Just doesn’t seem fair does it.  Though, it surely would make for a great pickup line at a bar.  You know besides the obvious, “Hello, I’m Indiana Jones.”