Indiana Jones 4 and the Echoes of the Past

The fourth installment in the Indiana Jones franchise is much maligned. This might seem strange because on the face of it, the fourquel reprises many of the visuals that made the first three movies so popular, and it features similar setpieces.

 

Just how much of the classic Indiana Jones iconography turns up in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008) becomes evident in this video essay. It uses a side-by-side comparison (well, top-and-bottom, to be exact) to trace the many visual similarities. In doing so it shows that recreating the visuals was apparently not enough to recapture the magic. The fourth episode’s silly plotting (the extraterrestrial elements are farfetched even for an Indiana Jones movie), and its extensive use of CGI as opposed to practical effects, were the main reasons for its unpopularity.

 

It is widely known that Lucas and Spielberg sought inspiration in the movie serials of the 1930s when they fleshed out Indiana Jones. Therefore it would be interesting to see a similar video essay comparing the visuals of those serials of old to this modern day incarnation.