You would think after the disappointing ridiculous unbelievable mess that was the last Jones film, the Crystal Skull, with that cringe worthy alien plot, that lessons had been learned for the final instalment of the franchise. The formula for a good Indy film is not complicated: focus on real special effects, have a religious/historic/culturally specific artefact plot, epic action scenes, good villain, some light humour, some sense of wonder or mystery, bring back old characters, play on nostalgia and most importantly have a final climax scene that is spectacular. For this latest film to not only have not learned from the mistakes of the last film, to have in many ways doubled-down on everything that made the film bad was actually shocking to me. This film is actually worse than the worst of the franchise. Added to the lessons not learnt are so many frustrating missed opportunities especially an excellent cast, I love both Phoebe Waller-Bridge and Mads Mikkelsen but they are lost in this film. The breathtaking level of failures on nearly every count really did shock me: clunky overused CGI with robotic de-ageing (one scene in the parade people looked like Sims), a truly stupid unbelievable plot barely related to history/reality (with so many holes my head hurts thinking about it), long cartoonish action scenes that become boring, lack of humour, a fairly good villain left sidelined, zero wonder or mystery, corny humour, old characters present and barely used, and worse of all a rushed climax that is so anti climatic it makes the alien reveal in the last one look entertaining. That’s not to say that the film doesn’t have good elements, it does have an excellent cast, obviously loads of money for locations, and plenty of nostalgic moments. Yet all of this make the disappointment all the more pronounced. One aspect that really frustrated me was how little Dr Jones seemingly cares for the destruction of artefacts or history (his great love) in the pursuit of the case/goal, in the same Bond-level disregard for collateral destruction around him. This will probably be the last Jones film as currently it’s on track to be a box office bomb. As someone who admired a PhD hero, the film feels like a tragic ghost of its former self. In recent times there’s been a lot of nasty backlash to Disney, especially from the intense Star Wars fandom, this being I my view overstated and problematic in some cases (I.e. Little Mermaid). However in the case of the Jones franchise I think the fan criticism is justified, even if you aren’t a fan, this film is a painful mess to sit through and an epic missed opportunity. Disney seemingly can get away with bad remakes/films as long as they make money, but if this film bombs as badly as it’s on track to do, the company will have to take notice and change. 4/10