And the biggest problem with Skull (of many) is that there are no stakes for the final act. Nothing to be concerned about. The whole final act is pointless. Does it really matter if the ship flies away or stays buried? Nope. No one’s life (or all of humanity in the case of the first three movies) is at stake. Give Blanchet her damn skull and go home. Who gives a shit!?

swarez,

You seem to be forgetting one very important element of today’s youth. Video games.

Sure their movies may have been toned down, but I submit that Grand Theft Auto 4 would not have been acceptable in the eighties. They may not have a shaman pulling out a human heart in the movies, but they’ve certainly made up for it by being able to kill a cop and run over hookers in photo realistic graphics. (Think of the controversy when Mortal Kombat was released)

I think kids are getting most of their entertainment from their XBox nowadays.

Have the 80’s produced some massive number of mass murderers or drug addicts because of those family films? Cause I can’t understand why the things those films showed back then are bad now.
Remember that Jaws is a G rated movie, something it would never be today. It’s also a film Spielberg would never do today because of its graphic nature and there are kids who get eaten in it.
Bah! Grow a pair Spielberg and keep your kids out of the movies you make.

I only go by what was done in the original 3 movies, which for me have aged remakably well. I see the ‘kid’ elements in all three films, but let me give you a few examples of why the original 3 indy films were dark and why Skull pulls all the punches.

The original films actually expected a lot of maturity from young kids when watching the films, The Mummy, National Treasure and Skull all dope things down to the lowest common denominator. Yes Pulp is supposed to be lowest common demoniator, but in 1981 Spielberg & Lucas actually brought pulp up to art. yes Art.

Raiders – Indy drinking ‘hard’ when Marion dies. There are two quite graphic head-shots in the Nepal bar, and while the melting sequence is obviously fake, it is bloody and creepy. Furthermore, when Alfred Molina bites it, it’s pretty visious, as is the dead tracker brought in by the natives, as is the offscreen death of the big German mechanic. The film is quite bloody actually.

Doom- Heart Ripping, in a kids film. Oi! also the blood of death drinking, the beating up of kids, etc. Pat Roach (here big Indian Goon) getting killed by the grinding wheel is bloody without being over-the-top graphic. Also think of how creepy the guy being hung on the fan with the whip is in the middle part of Doom. Also the alligators, etc.

Crusade – Even as you can see Spielberg backing off with this one, making it more or less bloodless, you certainly see the pretty graphic results of a guy with his head chopped off.

When I complain about how cuddly Skull is, it is because I’m going by the rules set the by original three films. I don’t think Spielberg or Lucas are backing off from the gore as a challenge or original thought (and if they did, they failed the challenge insofar as the stakes in Skull seem fuzzy), in this genre territory, both of them just have nowhere else to go as artists.

I don’t think Skull ‘soils the bed’ in the same way that Lucas did with Star Wars (and my main gripe there is the actually constant revisionism of the Original Trilogy to make it ‘look newer and CGI Filled’ and changing key story points and character tone, etc. etc.

Skull for me will simply be ignored as a Jones adventure.

The LAST CRUSADE had the characters RIDE OFF INTO THE SUNSET, that’s pretty final for me.

Same with Alien series. I love the first 3. All of them are equally good in my opinion. But they definitively killed Ripley in 3. And I pretend the 4th one doesn’t exist, same for the vs. movies.