“I have a bad feeling about this.”

That is what I was saying to my self in the theater while waiting to see the new Indiana Jones film. It is also probably what Harrison Ford said to Gorge Lucas after reading the script. The special effects are of course amazing. You almost feel as if you are in the nuclear fire ball, unfortunately the script is so bad you almost wish you were. In the 1985 documentary From 'Star Wars' to 'Jedi': The Making of a Saga, George Lucas said, “Special effects are just a tool, a means of telling a story. A Special effect without a story is a pretty boring thing.”
He must have thought no one believed him, why else would he devote most of the rest of his career to proving himself right?
There is of course lots of action in Crystal Scull, and it is mostly boring. Even with The Arc* making a cameo, the opening sequence failed to impart any gravitas. 
Lucas does toss us an exposition bone every once in a while. (Exposition is the part of the script where he has to write something besides “they fight”.) But if we peace them to gather is there actually a skeleton there? Let alone any meat. It seems the basic idea is that some inter-dimensional extraterrestrials came to earth a few thousand years ago to teach some ancient Americans (of course they were not ancient at the time) how to farm and build a giant temple around their hyperspace ship. But then one day some conquistadors showed up and cut off one of the hyperspace dudes' head, and since they were one of those collective consciences things, it shut them all down. But before the conquistadors could get very far the natives caught up with them and berried them and the scull in an elaborate tomb complete with booby traps (of course what else would they do with it?) The hyperspace dudes home world apparently sent some scouts to find out what happened, but it is not clear why it took them centuries to get here, or why they apparently could not keep their ships in the air once they got here. Enter the soviets (the Nazis were unavailable) that want to capture all alien gobbledygook for their own nefarious psychobabble and what not. Does any of this make any since? Of course not. Does it matter? Not really. Because that is not what the movie is about any way. 
It is about Indy finally marrying Miriam Ravenwood, oh, and by the way they have a son. Which means Indy and Jr. have to spend thirty minutes of screen time very awkwardly “bonding” with Indy supposedly not knowing that the kid is his son, and an even more awkward “we are all going to die” scene where Miriam tells him (However, I did like the bit where Indy has to grab onto the snake to save his life). I must say Miriam looked pretty good after all this time. But this only served to make that bag of bones, DR. Jones, look all the older. I wonder if when they go out together people say, “Where did she dig up that old fossil? Yah, yah, I know, it’s not the years, it’s the mileage.

*Apparently it is kept in the same warehouse as all the area 51 stuff, and apparently security is so tight that any one with a dozen or so guys can break in loot the place.