YES! I love a good argument!
I wouldn't say this is the best of the four by any means, but I rather think it fits into the
Indiana Jones franchise exactly the way it's supposed to. Sure, we'd all like it to be the long-lost film that was finished in 1990 but somehow never released. But it's not. It's the 2008 "last romp" release that's more a celebration of Indiana Jones than a crown jewel masterpiece. At least Spielberg and company didn't presume to think that the original films could be bested by this new one. It's impossible. Two decades of fan love that makes those movies what they are cannot, by any means, be broken.
In response to
gohansrage, with the exception of...
WARNING: "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystall Skull" spoilers below
Indy surviving a nuclear explosion
Indy surviving a nuclear explosion
...which I will address later...
...YES, there are a few tremendously unbelievable events in the film. There are even a few laughable ones. But I actually agree with meatwad in that a certain degree of unbelievability isn't foreign to the magic of Indiana Jones; and anyway... it's easier for me to stomach because I feel like the magic is still there. If Ford had seemed old and tired, and we'd have had flying saucers leveling everything in sight, for example, I would have felt that the magic was dead. But come on, this is still classic Indiana Jones. Perhaps a little inflated, but classic nonetheless.
Now, with regard to the above spoiler, I have to say that as unbelievable and over-the-top as it is, I can still stomach it when I remember that Spielberg made some attempt to reflect the flavor and mythos of the 1950s throughout the film (greasers, spies vs. spies, Communist paranoia, Russians, aliens, and of course, nuclear weapons testing). There's even a faint inkling of the "nuclear" (lol) 1950s family aspect, if you watch carefully. I would argue that Spielberg captured similar "reflections" of the 1940s (Nazis, impending war, the Renaissance of archaeology, increased European obsession with the exotic, Indian oppression, etc.) in the previous films. So once again, in my view this new film is the most logical progression of the Indy films. Perfect? Not at all. It could have been better. But it was still, I think, on exactly the right path.