4) Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008)
The Story: After a long absence, Harrison Ford’s iconic, bullwhip-cracking, fedora-donning archaeologist returns in an adventure that finds him partnering with his son Mutt Williams (Shia LaBeouf) in order to prevent the Russians from gaining possession of powerful artifacts. At the height of the Cold War, Soviet soldiers led by the brilliant Irina Spalko (Cate Blanchett) pursue Indiana Jones and Mutt into the jungles of Peru in order to secure mysterious crystal skulls and harness their otherworldly abilities.
The Twist: After entering a temple in the mystical city of Akator, Indy, Mutt and Marion Ravenwood (Karen Allen) realize that the crystal skulls belonged to inter-dimensional beings who were once worshipped as gods by ancient Mayans. When Spalko arrives and attaches a skull to the head of one alien skeleton, the beings begin to communicate with the group, thanking them for returning the skull and offering a “gift.” Spalko demands they transfer their collective knowledge into her mind, which causes an inter-dimensional portal to open and her body to disintegrate. Indy, Mutt and Marion escape, along with a colleague named Oxley, just in time to watch a flying saucer rise from the collapsing temple and disappear in the sky.
Why It Sucks: After such a long gap between the original trilogy and Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, there was no way that the film was going to satisfy all Indy purists. And yet, it’s so much worse than it needed to be. Director Steven Spielberg and series creator George Lucas each let their fondness for CGI-heavy sci-fi seep over into Indiana Jones, which has never been about those kinds of plots. Solving the mystery of the film’s main MacGuffin with the introduction of crystalline alien skeletons is careless and silly even by Lucas’ standards. The Ark, Hindu stones and Holy Grail were also completely central to their films’ plots, while Kingdom of the Crystal Skull throws an entire alien civilization into its third act without nearly enough build-up.
Worse still, the film shows cheesily-CGI aliens, which is like showing an angry God personally striking down Nazis in Raiders of the Lost Ark. Clearly, some things are much better left to the imagination – what a fourth Indiana Jones film could look like, for example. Kingdom of the Crystal Skull worked hard to ruin the franchise by shifting genres from rip-roaring adventure into ill-conceived sci-fi.