Indiana Jones is an iconic series of films that everyone knows. Everyone knows the boulder scene from Raiders, everyone knows how the whip cracks, and everyone knows that in Top Trumps, Fedora always beats Swastika. So I think it goes without saying that the new Indiana Jones movie ‘Kingdom of the Crystal Skull’ had to live up to some huge expectations.

It’s been 19 years since ‘The Last Crusade’ and even though time has taken it’s toll on Jones, everything we loved about him is still present in Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. The fedora, the whip, the humour; it’s all there, but there’s more to Jones than there was in the originals. He’s fought in the war and spied on the communists, and brilliantly it hasn’t fazed him, and he appears a much character because of it. As well as the thick air of nostalgia surround Indiana, there is also a lot of nostalgic references to the original movies, with the Ark of the Covenant making a guest appearance that will bring a smile to the face of every ‘Raiders’ fan.

Kingdom is an incredibly entertaining film to watch, and this is down to some great stunts and the return of the old musical score. It’s great to see Indiana running across the rafters of that warehouse, or swinging from his whip and into a moving car. However, while all the stunts are entertaining, sometimes they just seemed a little bit too extreme, and this risks taking away the some of the realism that, personally, I liked in the films.

Describing the plot of the film is near impossible, because it’s completely nuts. If I had to describe it in a sentence, it would be “After helping Russian spies recover an alien artefact, Indiana Jones is guided by a mad professor holding a crystal skull to the lost city of El Dorado”, and now I have to finish the review quickly, because several men in white coats are knocking at the door holding a large sack with “Crazy Tom” written on it. It’s hard to mock the storyline though, because everyone in the film knows it’s bad, with Indiana constantly wise cracking about the insanity of the plot line. What did annoy me about the film is something that is very typical of recent films by Lucas; which is when he was presented with a potential plot twist, he decides to instead disregard it and just throw in a big CGI scene instead.

Still, even with the ridiculous plot, I thought Kingdom of the Crystal Skull was incredibly entertaining. Harrison Ford is superb, and reuniting him with the role should have been done a lot sooner. New and old characters alike are portrayed very well by the actors, even if the dialogue is occasionally lacking. It’s a fair bet that this isn’t the last we will see of Indiana Jones, and I expect that Shia Labeouf’s character will have a big role to play in the potential future films, however whether an Indiana Jones movie will be any good without Harrison Ford is questionable.

I definitely recommend that any fans of Indiana Jones go and see this, just to see Ford don the fedora again. There’s never a dull moment, and the ending (after the CGI fest) is conclusive. I just hope they don’t try and write aliens into the storyline again.

3.5/5