Surprisingly, I actually found the film to be pretty thematically strong. Jones is presented as a character who has always been willing to, more or less, ransack the sanctity of cultural artifacts in the pursuit of knowledge, and "Crystal Skull" is more or less about him trying to make things right–about coming to grips with the idea that knowledge isn't everything. Indy realizes here that his adventuring ways have caused him to abandon the only woman he ever loved and a child he never knew he had, and in attempting to bring the skull back to where it belongs he aims to make good.

Granted, this isn't all presented in a neat, cohesive way. I guess that's why it's so frustrating. There really is a dynamite film there, they just didn't execute it.

By the way, A). The Darabont script is an in-jokey mess that Lucas must have thrown across the room in frustration. It reads like fanfic, complete with somebody loudly proclaiming at one point "Adventure still has a name, and it's Indiana Jones!" Yes, let's have a character qoute the poster of Temple Of Doom. Brilliant idea. Of course, I'm sure the anti-Crystal Skull-ers probably would have loved it. B). There never was anything resembling a 1973 script by Lucas called "The Adventures of Indiana Smith". Nobody ever wrote a word of any script involving Indiana Jones until Lawrence Kasdan got hired in the late 70s. C). There were never any plans to do a full out alien invasion movie. D). The idea of inter-dimensional aliens and Erik Von Dainaken type chariots of the gods is present in the Raiders story conference transcript. It's always been part of the vision for the character. E). Crystal Skull is VERY far from Spielberg's worst movie. It's a whole lot better then Hook, The Color Purple, and Last Crusade.

And, last but not least, everybody who wants to complain about Crystal Skull and how terrible it is should take a look at some of those many rejected drafts for a fourth Indiana Jones films. I'm thinking particularly of Chris Columbus' truly awful script, which was called something like "Indiana Jones And The Monkey King". This makes the Darabont script look like Robert Bolt's draft of Lawrence Of Arabia. You don't like what's in Crystal Skull? Be glad you didn't get the Columbus moment where a gorilla drives a tank.