You know, I was gonna say.  But to me, the inclusion of the.... accompanying monkeys sort of kept the silliness of the whole situation valid. :p   

Aww man, that really would've been perfect.  Seeing Oxlay there placed me within the same mindframe that there should have been more present.  It might have made the resolution somewhat more fulfilling.

i don't understand why it's doing so well in the theaters.. This movie brought practically nothing new to the Indiana universe that we haven't seen in the other movies, had very little character development or genuine moments of nail-biting tension.

The only good thing about the ending was that it reminded me of the Stage 2 Boss Battle in Metal Slug 3 (minus the second part with those Falling Tombstones Of 'Crushing Reality'),

(spoil)

..would it have been too much to ask to have some of the ending take place on the spaceship instead of just 'showing the ship to the audience and assuming they will fill-in-the-blanks for themselves'?

What a cheap way to end a movie, '..just spend some money on having a CGI UFO taking off into the night, that's Brilliant!!'

Yeah, whatever.

This movie was a mess. There was only one moment that I found engaging (figuring out that sand puzzle, mostly thanks to John Williams' music) and the rest was one long, poorly paced incomprehensible bore. Aside from the ants sequence, even the action sequences were lacking energy, mostly because I never once felt that any of the good guys were in danger. I felt especially bad for Cate Blanchett because the script gave her nothing to do (same with Karen Allen, missing for half of the movie and then essentially invisible for the rest).

The climax (more of an anticlimax) was laughable. I really have no idea what they were thinking. Between the bad CGI and Blanchett overacting, the whole thing felt like a parody. And what was up with the prairie dog closeups? And that damned tarzan sequence?

Interesting article on what is and isn't believable about the new movie, from the view of a real archaeologist:
http://www.asylum.com/2008/05/22/indian … -and-lies/

I don't disagree with the final CGI shot being a bit much. I wonder if people would have been more accepting of the mythology had they not included that shot?

Then again, Raiders had spirits coming out of a gold box and melting people; Temple of Doom had mind-control blood, heart surgery, and voodoo; and Last Crusade had magic cups of immortality and Sean Connery playing Harrison Ford's father. I really don't get how anything in Indy IV was much of a stretch compared to those (except for the Tarzan thing, of course ).

I certainly could have done without that shot.

But, for all the flaws of the story, I didn't have a problem with the subject matter. It fit well with the time period and was no more of a stretch than anything that was in the previous films. Actually far more believable.

But what the film did on occasion was break the rules of its own real world. Yes, it's a world that has an Ark that shoots out God's wrath but that doesn't mean that a guy can walk away from being right smack bang in the middle of a nuclear blast by hiding in a fridge.

You know the way the artefact they had was like a key to get in? So... how was it stolen in the first place? You know, it's like locking your keys in your car.

It's not, really. My problems with the movie started looooooooooooooooooong before the aliens showed up. Clunky pacing (I was starting to check my watch halfway through), gigantic exposition dumps (Raiders elegantly gets all of its exposition out of the way at the very beginning. Crystal Skull endures practically to the end), characters that are pretty much all plot devices... and so on.

The bottom line is that I was bored. Other people's mileage may vary, of course.