Movie magic ain't so magic once you figure it out. The movie is shot, the actors are paid, and the film is given to a group of graphic artists. These artists have roughly a year to put cool effects into the movie. A problem arises once they realise that three hundred sixty days has passed without them doing anything but jacking off to "character study" pictures. With only five days left they have to add roughly half the movie due to lack of real content- and they have to do it fast. Lucky for them all the spooge they threw over they keyboard caused it to commit acts of random input and 3D Studio Max has all sorts of neat shapes that they can work with.
Artist 1: OK, I got this! Just a few tweaks and this is an Alien. Were going to be ok.
Artist 2: And I have a space ship. This may work for us yet.
Artist 1: If I adjust the hue on this random scribbles I think i get ants.
Artist 2: I'm pretty sure I animated a monkey back in art school. Monkeys are always funny. Does a sci-fi movie really need animals like that?
Boss: So how goes the final draft of Indian Jones, fellas?
One & Two: Well crap.
Nuclear explosions, random CG-animals and a total lack of respect for what came before it plague the new Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. It makes a great example of why people today would rather steal movies than pay for them. So much crap out there your never sure when your about to spend eight dollars to sit there wondering what your going to have for dinner.
Starting out we get a big slap in the face as a CG prairie dog that looks like someone would have rather been working on another "cute critter has an adventure with other cute critters" movie pokes his head out. Indie lives though a nuclear explosion (NUCLEAR EXPLOSION!) in a fridge. FBI agents try to call him out as a communist, never to be heard from again. Desiphers a riddle written by a former colligue gone insane and finds a priceless artifact with unnatural powers like attracting all metal of any kind for no reason other than to further the plot in the first scene. And has to go to cool places in South America though the power of doing everything in front of a big green bed sheet animated up to look like Peru. So far an Indiana Jones movie, if a bad one.
BUT WAIT! We have a NUCLEAR EXPLOSION. The commies have a dead alien body. The skull is part of a telepathic hive mind. Its not an alien from outer space either, it had to be from another dimension. The travel method of choice for inter-dimensional aliens: Flying saucer. Add random CG for no good reason and call it a movie.
Hollywood: they ran out of movie ideas so all they can produce is sequals. They ran out of actors so they have to use the same ones again and again. They can't afford to build movie sets and pay the big names so everything but pre-build foam bricks is CG.
Mr Lucas, Mr Spielburg: I salute you. Surely you have won the 2008 Award for Most Failure Wwrapped Into 124 Minutes.
