Because if that's the case, then that's no invention of theirs - that's just shooting a few-minute-long sequel to Lewis's idea, so to say.

Oh, and on the one hand, it's good to see that the Shrek director will disappear - but on the other, del Toro won't take over, so there's actually a danger of the best entries - Dawn Treader & Silver Chair - falling into some horribly wrong hands... just imagine seeing:

Disney & Walden Media Present

Liam Neeson | Shia la Boeuf | Lindsey Lohan

in

Brett Ratner's CSS Lewis's THE SILVER CHAIR

And yes, the kids aged at the end of the first movie only to return to Narnia as if time had no passed. That's one of the central parts of the book! I didn't have Moriarty's specific problem with the first film in the ending. It's supposed to have a magical fairy tale 'it was only a dream' ending. It's only in the 2nd book that that life is meant to have an impact. And boy, it does in this film. I've said elsewhere, I think the two elder kids are fantastic at portraying the sadness, and frustration at having to live normal lives after being kings and queens of a magical land, and just as sad and desperate once they return to Narnia knowing that it will only be temporary. Especially Peter in his conflict with Caspian and drive to win a battle, any battle. And yes, Peter and Susan ARE only in the first two books (well, and the last one, but that's an apocalypse thing).

I think Moriarty also undersells Dinklage's incredible acting work in this. His character, with Dinklage's trademark expressively sad eyes, is called upon to stand for both a once-great fading culture, and the decline of magic and fantasy in an increasing rational world. He's brilliant, one of my favorite actors around today.

I also think Moriarty does the film a disservice by dismissing the issues of faith present. It's not just about 'did Lucy see Aslan or not.' But about whether or not you believe someone's going to save you or not. Which can be about Christianity. Or it can be about the situation of living in a world where you can no longer rely on magic, or a higher power. The point of the book (and the film) is that there is still magic and God in the world, you just have to work a lot harder to reach it. While the first film/book is a more straightforward parallel to elements of the Jesus story, this film feels more 'religious' in a mature way, in that it deals with questions of faith and what happens to a cultural belief over time (especially after the culture that originated that belief has faded). And like others have mentioned, this is not necessarily a Christian thing, but a universal thing. But it is a religious (even theological) thing. Or call it cultural if you like. But again, even these issues don't overtake the film in any kind of preachy or didactic way.

The ending is somewhat sad and bittersweet when the children return, but Aslan's suggestion that Peter and Susan must know integrate what they've learned in Narnia into their mundane adult lives is quite poignant. This film certainly does have significantly more depth than the first, as it should. It's a decent fantasy film.

I'm sure part of the film not hitting expectations is the fact that all the reviews are saying this is too dark for the younger children, when that should be the audience for these movies. Reading the books, you can tell these are very specifically targeted for kids.

The old-guy jokes are as true for director Steven Spielberg and producer George Lucas as for the star. It's 27 years since Raiders of the Lost Ark started the Jones boy on his adventures, 19 years since the most recent Indy movie, The Last Crusade, and 30 years this month since Lucas and Spielberg sat on a Hawaiian beach and made a handshake deal for an action film that one would produce and the other direct. They'd be stupid to ignore the toll that time takes on moviemakers and movie stars. All were in their 30s when they made Raiders. Now Spielberg, Lucas and Ford are, respectively, 61, 64 and 65. And don't forget two other crucial collaborators, composer John Williams and editor Michael Kahn, who have given all the Indy films their cheerfully martial sound and cut-to-the-bone fury.

There are scenes in the new movie that seem like stretching exercises at a retirement home; there are garrulous stretches, and even the title seems a few words too long. But once it gets going, Crystal Skull delivers smart, robust, familiar entertainment. Ford looks just fine, his chest skin tanned to a rich Corinthian leather; he's still lithe on his feet, and can deliver a wisecrack as sharp as a whipcrack. Karen Allen, 56, who was Indy's saucy love Marion Ravenwood in Raiders, still has that glittering smile and vestiges of her old elfin swagger. They needn't break a sweat keeping up with the (relative) kids: 39-year-old Cate Blanchett, the movie's villainess, and Shia LaBeouf, who plays the young lead Mutt Williams, and who may be tapped to continue the series after Ford's retirement — at least that's what Lucas hinted a few days ago here in Cannes.

Crystal Skull is intended, and works effectively, as instant nostalgia — a class reunion of the old gang who in the '80s reinvigorated the classic action film with such expertise and brio. So don't expect the freshness of the what-one-man-can-do plot in Iron Man, or the oneiric visuals of Speed Racer. Spielberg and Lucas, and screenwriters David Koepp and Jeff Nathanson, are looking not forward but back, to the first three films. They know that moviegoers would be disappointed not to see the talismans of Indys past reappear here. Shall we itemize?

1. The Paramount logo dissolves into some kind of mountain. Every Indy films opens this way, from one monument to another. (As Veronica Geng wrote in a review of the first movie, "Spielberg" is German for "play mountain.") In Raiders the logo became a mountain in South America; in Temple of Doom, a bas-relief on a Chinese gong; in The Last Crusade a big boulder in Utah. This time, suggesting more modest aspirations, or maybe kiddingly deflecting the audience's gargantuan expectations, it's a weeny prairie dog hill, from which a critter emerges just before being nearly run over by speeding cars. We're in Nevada, near Area 51, and it's 1957, a time of rock 'n' roll (Elvis's "Hound Dog" on the soundtrack), fear of the Soviets (and why not? they've just penetrated a U.S. military base), fear of The Bomb (hey, what's that mushroom cloud on the horizon?) and mass sightings of UFOs (coming right up).

2. International conspiracies. Nazis in the first and third Indys, Indian Thugees in the second. But it wouldn't be the '50s without Commies, in the chic person of Irina Spalko (played by Blanchett with the severe demeanor of Cyd Charisse's Ninotchka in the 1957 MGM musical Silk Stockings and the black bob Charisse sports in The Band Wagon). Rather than the simple matter of conquering the West militarily, Irina is part of a Soviet plot to cloud our minds by getting access to some secret technology that is concealed either in an Area 51 warehouse or in the remotest jungle mountains of Peru. "We will change you, Mr. Jones, all of you, from the inside," she proclaims. "We will turn you into us." Ewww, creepy. Glad that didn't happen.

3. The Fedora, the bullwhip... the snakes! We see the hat just before we see Indy; brown headwear is still in style in 1957. As for Indy's bullwhip, it's still faster and deadlier than a bad guy's gun. In the opening Area 51 scene, he uses it to disarm about a quillion Russkies, and to swing in Errol Flynn style from one warehoused beam to another. (Mutt will later show the same swinging derring-do on Peruvian jungle vines.) As for the snakes, there's just one, but indy is readier to die in quicksand than to use it as a lifeline. The nifty new predators are South American red ants, which Spielberg and Lucas may have remembered from the 1954 movie The Naked Jungle, and which can swarm over a man by the millions and drag him into their formicary for a nice fat meal.

Woody Allen's latest, unveiled at Cannes, nails the art of falling in love and messing things up

4. A cool car chase. A lot of the elements in Crystal Skull may feel like mandatory reprises of the old tropes, but the high-speed two-vehicle fight between Indy's team and Irina's goons is up there with the Raiders jeep sequence, more complex and sophisticated in its engineering of physical action. (In the post-film press conference this afternoon, Spielberg said, "I believe in practical magic, not digital magic," and in "real stunts with real people.") If there's a scene that film students will be poring over, decades from now, this is the one.

5. Family revelations. Spielberg movies are often about the separation and reconstituting of a family, and the last two Indy films are no exception. In Last Crusade we met Indy's father (Sean Connery) and learned that Indy's real name was Henry Jones, Jr. Indeed, "Junior" was Dad's apparently derogatory form of address for his son. That gag is repeated here, since — as everyone who's paid the slightest attention to pre-release scuttlebutt knows — Mutt is Indy's son by Marion. (Why is he called Mutt? Presumably because, as we learned at the end of The Last Crusade, Indiana was the name of the Jones family dog; Mutt's just extending the breed.) He enters on a motorcycle, in the leather-jacket regalia Marlon Brando sported in The Wild One, and soon displays some of the athletic skills he must have inherited from his absent dad. Whether the smooth-visaged LaBeouf can grow into Ford's craggy machismo — or even whether he can top the teen Indys that have been played by River Phoenix (in The Last Crusade) and Sean Patrick Flannery (in the TV series The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles) — is a question later Indy installments will have to answer.

6. Archaeology! Recall that our hero's day job is as a professor of archaeology. On vacations he goes out, makes trouble and saves the world. Or does he? Indy's job, basically, is plundering indigenous cultures for treasure, in capers that will cost hundreds of lives and add exactly nothing to the lore of civilization. (And, in three of the four movies, he comes home empty-handed.) But heck, it's an adventure movie; leave all ethnic scruples home. Scholars of antiquity will be pleased to know that Crystal Skull — with its runic inscriptions, vanished languages, hidden caves and dreadful secrets — is the archaeolog-iest Indy film yet. In fact, the movie is a little plot-heavy around the middle. It seems more determined to tell a complicated story than to use a story as the excuse for a convulsive. nonstop thrill ride.

7. Start with a big bang, end with terrifying mysticism. The creation of these movies always has this method: start with the opening and climactic sequences — in Raiders' case, the South American cave with the rolling rock and the opening of the Ark with the melting skulls — and work inward. (Or as Spielberg says on the new Last Crusade DVD: "How do we fill in the middle?") Here, the bang couldn't be bigger. The 12 min. opener takes Indy into Area 51, where he escapes into what seems to be an ideal Levittown ... except that the people are mannequins, a nuclear bomb is about to be detonated, and Indy has exactly one minute to find a safe place to hide. (That place is one of the film's smartest inspirations.) As for the ending, well, we're not giving everything away. Let's just say that Indy and Marion could be The X Files' Mulder and Scully on assignment in Peru.

We'll see how David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson cope with middle age in their X Files movie later this summer. They may suffer from the occasional creaking joints of Crystal Skull. (And, truth to tell, there was more applause here at the beginning of the screening than at the end.) But they'd be hard-pressed to inhabit the sleek, satisfying adventure that three septuagenarians and their pals dreamed up here. There's a moment in the film where Mutt sees Indy negotiate some really cool bit of action, and the kid can't help mouth a "Wow." That's the right response to this inevitable summer blockbuster. Lucas, Spielberg and Ford ain't the Over the Hill Gang yet.

La Douche has to have golden rectum that hypnotized Spielberg into believing him worth the bet for Indy franchise, because IMO his acting skills are just below what you see at the average Lawyers TV series.

And Narnia looks to be another rental.

Disney took it's sweet time with this canned sequel and had to take the kids as they are now. For fuck sake, the older sister is 20!

That said, I also think the box office expectations for Indy are possibly too high, so it might end up being a "disappointment" as well, but far from a flop. I could be wrong, though, it being Memorial Day weekend and all.

The battle scenes were excruciatingly boring. When you know there's ZERO chance of any main character dying, it just becomes an exercise in drudgery. And why couldn't that little munchkin just give some of that resurrection juice to EVERYONE??? She had a totally full bottle there, and all it takes is a drop. Little skank.

No way this was superior to the first film in any way. The villain in the first was FAAARRR more interesting, the appearance of Father Christmas, etc.,etc., etc. THis was far from a bad movie, but it was also far from enthralling to me.

dannyglover(I'm not saying your whole ridiculous name) - I totally get your dislike of the cg stuff in Lord of the Rings. I hope someday Jackson can pull a Lucas and clean some of that stuff up. But just because a movie has better technology and it looks better, doesn't make it a better film. If you think Treebeard is an unnecessary character than you COMPLETELY miss the point of the films and the books. And, um, the whole point is that Frodo is in danger every step of the way, so the near deaths are kinda part of the journey. And though I appreciate some of the character work in the Narnia films (way more than the books had), you're on crack if you think that work even approaches the depth of the LOTR performances. Hell, even Gollum was an achievement of amazing acting and depth. But are you really saying that these unknown teenagers are even close to the great Ian McKellen, Ian Holm, Cate Blanchett, Elijah Wood, Andy Serkis, Viggo Mortensen, and Sean Bean? I'll give you Orlando Bloom and Liv Tyler (maybe even Sean Astin), but come on!

dgdb: again, the trees coming to life in Narnia is a different thing than the Ents in LOTR. With Narnia, the implication is that the trees are literally a faceless group mind, probably controlled by the power of Aslan (or God), whereas the Ents are an age-old specific consciousness. Tolkien makes a distinction between Ents and those who have given up the world of consciousness to become trees. This was a concept later borrowed by Alan Moore and (more thoroughly) Rick Veitch, in the DC Swamp Thing run of the 80s and 90s, with the earth elementals and the Parliament of Trees. For the LOTR movie (and the book), it was important that there be a race of beings for which time (mostly) didn't matter, who were older than any other race and had seen it all. They usually couldn't care less about the petty wars of Middle-Earth. But the threat of Sauron and Saruman were enough to get some of them thinking, thus the Entmoot. The whole point is that there has to be a debate, and then they finally decide that Sauron and Saruman are a threat to Middle-Earth itself, so they get involved. That even this historically neutral and oblivious race has determined that they must take a side is pretty significant. This is a much more complex process than some trees coming to life. It's a discussion of the nature of evil, and true to the depth of Tolkien's tales. And on a practical level, you needed a character with a face for Pippin and Merry to interact with.

Haters need to stop hatin'. "Prince Caspian" was in keeping with the spirit of the book. It's the weakest of the first 3. So weak the BBC version told the whole story in 50 minutes. The notion of "where is Aslan" is about all the loss and bloodshed during WW 2. How could God foresake the world at that time?

****SPOILER****

What Peter and Susan learned while in Narnia was how to cope with the ravages of the war. So there is no need for them to return. Edmond is the one who grows the most in the series, and I hope the film shows that growth. And his scene halfway through with the mega-asshole EUUUSTACE better be kept word for word.-----later-----m