A few people wearing indy hats to the cinema who, after all the hype, were obviously looking forward to this film. I was surprised at the age of the audience with the majority being younger than the original films.

This film is faithful to the original concept with a few references to former films including people, places and artefacts and animals. You do need to know those original films well to really appreciate these references.

Indy delves deeply into an archeological find and gets his feet a bit burnt. So he has to go through numerous events to make it right again.

His faith and respect for other people comes through in the film though it is obvious, in his demenour and posture, much of the time he has aged. He is no James Bond as he does get dirty and really into the action. However with the added age he does bounce back a bit too quickly in many of the ott and lengthy action sequences.

The scenery is quite spectacular and though a % may be cgi it is not used ott throughout being kept to the size of the story. So many films these days think they can be impressive by making scenes bigger and events more crowded using cgi throughout. Cgi was applied here starting on a scale with the surroundings and getting more in relation to the developing intricacy of story to build the climax.

The classic indy storyline sees with him working against the political bad guys of the time. It was beleivable with the Nazis in the 'Arc' but rather darker and obscure with the occult as in the 'Temple of Doom'. This time its the KGB who had a significant effect on the stability of politics in the 50's. Also being an age of nuclear development but the depiction of this was a step away from the story, an added extra which was a bit unnecessary.

The sci-fi aspect was in keeping with interest in other worlds at the time though the film does take it a lot further. The ending is certainly far fetched.

One character summarises the key feature the artefact had that was being sought when he says the 'power.....,of the artefact,..is knowledge. Maybe meaning the greatest thing we can get from history is knowledge but this thought perhaps is me thinking a bit to seriously.

Without trying to give too much away, in my opinion, it would be a real let down if indy retired and let the next generation take over as that was a weak character in the film.

Another let down was the crystal skull as it appeared to be made out of clear plastic stuffed full of scrunched up polythene.

The very end is slushy, a bit of a disney happy ending leaving the door open, not being retirement......

I thorougly enjoyed the film which was really funny, loosely realistic to history but fantastically far fetched. Indy is classically predictable which makes one feel young and absorbed watching it.