Critiquing of the Crystal Skull - What Went Right?

Yeah, the finale's pretty awesome. Nothing like that old chestnut, the fertile valley swirling into chaos from the action of a gyrating interdimensional starship only to be flooded with a giant waterfall and river which obliterates all remnant of the archeological find of the ages, to climax your action-adventure movie! Just. Awesome.

I find I like Ray Winstone's character better the more times I see the movie. He's rather an anti-Indy, a triple agent/grave robber with no loyalty but to money... similar to Belloq in that regard, but not as sinister and yet somehow less likable. That's pretty darn interesting.

 

Mac wasn't really a character, he was a plot device. He's not acting under his own internal motivation, he acts only according to the story's need. If Spielberg needs Indy to be ahead at one point in the story, then Mac will help him out. If he needs the Russians to be ahead, then Mac is on their side. As much as I enjoyed the movie, I never believed Mac, and thought it laughable that Spielberg and Koepp thought they had made him a complex character.

 

Well, then I guess it's laughable that I found him interesting, too. A character can be both a plot device and an interesting personage in their own right -- qv Belloq, who serves the function of taking away what belongs to Jones, only so Jones can go after it in an exciting action sequence. Belloq is really only interesting by virtue of the actor's performance, but what a performance! Mac suffers from something of an underwhelming turn by Winstone, but the character itself is an intriguing one, IMO.

 

A character can be both a plot device and an interesting personage in their own right

They are an interesting personage if they have an internal, character-based motivation behind what they do. Mac doesn't. That was the problem.

 

Well, I disagree. Mac's motivation is greed, which is a common-enough human frailty. He's Indy without the innate morality (or good looks, heh): a "grave robber", which is the insult that Jones repeatedly bristles against. At the climax of KotCS, Mac dies precisely because he is unable to let go of his lust for antique treasures -- a fate that Jones can avoid because, like the aliens, Indy's treasure is knowledge.

They're reflections of each other, in a similar capacity as Belloq, but in this instance these two characters are old friends rather than old rivals. Whether you find that interesting or not is a subjective opinion, but your dislike of Mac does not translate to "he had no internal, character-based motivation". That simply is not an accurate statement.

 

I thought Mac was two faced like one minute he was Indy's side and then the next the russians

 

Yeah, that is the point of the character.