0% chance this will be good
You heard it here first and I'm the biggest Indiana Jones fan on the planet so trust me on this.
shareWith James Mangold directing, I have hope.
shareHe's not the brilliant and unassailable Steven Spielberg though, is he?
LOL I think I detect sarcasm in your post, but I'll just say it's been a little while since Steven made a GREAT movie. He's made some good ones, but his last film that could even be argued as a great film is Lincoln. The last one before that would be Munich in 2005.
And we know how his last at-bat with the Indy franchise went.
I'm talking about his first half-dozen to dozen movies.
And that abomination known as Indy 4 (spits) probably was bad because he made the bad movies you describe, and probably because he had Lucas whispering his "genius" ideas into his ear.
I will never know what the hell happened to Indy IV. I think you're right that Lucas was largely to blame--some of the plot ideas in that movie are just bad--but even beyond that the direction was just off.
It's not like Steven's movies since then had the same problems--Lincoln is very good if not great, and Bridge of Spies, The Post and RPO are all solid as well--so you can't blame it all on him declining with age. He's clearly still a highly competent filmmaker. But with Crystal Skull it's like everyone involved just went retarded and forgot how to do what they do.