I note that about ninety percent of the complaints here essentially boil down to "ableeblabloo my childhood waaaaah not my indiana jones *sniffle*"
Seriously, people, it's taking everything I have to not be TOO harsh, but sack the fuck up. Times change, things change. You can't have thirties conventions in a movie taking place in the sixties. For years now, they've been saying they were going to go with more sci-fi conventions than the old pulp ideas because that was what was prevalent to the age this film took place in.
Yes, the villain's accent was atrocious. Fair point.
Yes, there were some rather groan inducing points, like the monkey swing scene and the wedding scene (Which is no worse, to me, than the mine car scene from Temple of Doom).
Yes, there was some cheesy dialogue (About half of Marcus Brodie's dialogue).
Yes, some shit was pretty drastically unbelievable (As said, no worse than some of the utterly fucked up stuff the prior movies have done).
But you know what? These are primarily things that apply just as bad, if not worse, to the originals. The movies have ALWAYS had cheesy dialogue and ridiculous moments that would've made us all groan had we not been watching these movies since some of us were fucking toddlers.
I basically agree with the last sentiment of singeivoire's post. Why in the fuck are you people going into an Indiana Jones movie with an analytical mind?
Woopdy do, there were aliens. Bluntly speaking, and I'm no conspiracy nut, I am MUCH more heavily inclined to believe that maybe an advanced alien race could've given a surprisingly advanced ancient civilization a helping hand than to believe that there's some omnipotent, yet unknowable being controlling history.
Yeah, Jones deals heavily with history and legend, but guess what? El Dorado is history and legend. The Mayans are a great historical society. The Roswell Incident is a modern peace of historical legend.
Overall, I enjoyed it. The fact I'm 24 and watching a movie whose last installment was released when I was 5, I didn't expect it to have stagnated for 19 years. Some of you are too young to remember and understand the real wait between Return of the Jedi and Phantom Menace. I watched the original trilogy in 1987, when I was three. Twelve years later, sixteen for those who saw it originally, they were greeted with Phantom Menace (Which, while not a good movie, is not as atrocious as people like to say, in my view). This movie was an even longer wait and many of you were around for the last movie. There was no feasible way for it to live up to elevated expectations. Also taking into account it was much better than Phantom Menace was, I'd call it a success.
Overall, it wasn't the greatest movie of all time, but it was a good action flick in the vein of the prior films in the series. My only legitimate grievance was something no one had control over: how much Harrison Ford really has aged. He's one of my all time favorite actors and having grown up on his work in Star Wars and Indiana Jones to finally look at him and think "This guy is essentially done with movies after this" was rather heart wrenching.