No one's linked to this yet?

Looks, well, a bit plastic.

If by "plastic," you mean "awesome," then absolutely. I can't imagine that this won't be my favorite film of the year. Granted, it does appear to have more CGI than I had hoped, but nobody does this type of film better than Spielberg. Or Ford, for that matter.

I'm just a little disappointed to see so much blue screen compositing, a la LAST CRUSADE - and in car chases, no less. Also, It all looks maybe a bit *too* cleanly photographed, and on very art-directed sets. I know it only has footage from a few setpieces, but what I'm seeing says relaxed, taking it easy, working vacation, and I hope that's not the case.

It made me think of the teaser for Temple of Doom that followed the plane around the map, telling you about all the places around the world where they were currently filming. I know that there was location work done, but that whole trailer looked like Culver City. I think I'd rather spot the stunt double for Ford driving a real Jeep down a real road than see Ford, crystal clear, as just another digital composite element.

That having been said, I could have mailed the three of them my admission money the moment I heard it was going into production.

bingo.

When is this movie set? Given that it's been 27 years since the first one, which was set around 1938 and 19 years since the last one, which was set sometime just before WWII, I can't recall the year, this one should be set in the late Eisenhower era or the early Kennedy administration. Doesn't look like it from the trailer, which looks more like the Truman era. I caught the Roswell, NM reference, which dates it to July 1947, if they're using the UFO crash there as a plot point. However, the trailer doesn't indicate any presence of UFOs or visitors from another planetary system, which would be selling points for me. It all just looks like more of the same Indy stuff we got in the first three films. And, as someone who has very little nostalgia for the 1980s, that doesn't bode well for me.

Oh, I'm in like a ....I don't know. Like somebody's who really in with this one. With this, IRON MAN and THE DARK KNIGHT this looks to be a good summer for movies, for once.

doug

It's set in 1957, with a prologue taking place at least a few years prior, and aliens heavily rumored to figure into the main plot.

Thinking about aliens and watching the trailer reminds me of an episode of the 50's tv series Science Fiction Theater called "Sun Gold". As I remember it, some archaeologists go in search of a legendary Inca tomb. Aligning some gold mirrored discs produces a beam of sunlight that burns a hole into the hidden rock tomb's ceiling. They descend into it and find a skeleton with a skull too big to be an ordinary human and an inscription as to how the person buried came from the sky. In other words, an ancient astronaut. I'm also thinking of how some people have linked crystal skulls to the idea of ancient astronauts coming to earth and helping civilization do things they were supposedly too stupid to figure out themselves. So let me just take a brief guess as to what happens in this movie: a UFO crashes in Roswell and a crystal skull is found in the wreckage. Possibly it appears usable as a weapon and also wanting to know what makes the UFO tick, the government sends Indy to South America in search of the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull ("After all, Dr. Jones, if you can find the Ark of the Covenant for us, surely you can find something as simple as the blueprints to a flying saucer"). Of course, a group of bad guys gets involved also. In the end, though, the Indian tribe at the site of the old Kingdom turns out to be descended from the intermingling of ancient astronauts and earthlings, and the good Dr. Jones, and this being a Steven Speilberg movie, decides to let the tribe stay lost and denies it's existence when he gets home ("There is no Yeti...er, I mean Kingdom of the Crystal Skull").

“I know it only has footage from a few setpieces, but what I'm seeing says relaxed, taking it easy, working vacation, and I hope that's not the case.”

I hope its a DONAVAN’S REEF / EL DORADO type of vacation and not that quota assignment that stood in for a pilot for a TV series called YOUNG INDIANA JONES CHRONICLES.

“I'm just a little disappointed to see so much blue screen compositing, a la LAST CRUSADE - and in car chases, no less. Also, It all looks maybe a bit *too* cleanly photographed, and on very art-directed sets.”

Um…actually blue screen is no longer in use. Green screen is now the backdrop used for such SFX CGI sequences from ILM. Gee Whiz any 40 year old man wearing crimefighters can tell you that.