Raiders of the Lost Ark is my favorite adventure movie of all time, and because of that this movie could have been a fantastic sequel, but it could have also easily been a giant disappointment. The movie we ended up getting is somewhere in the middle, it’s a solid sequel to the first, but certainly a drop off from the original. All of the great, old fashioned adventure elements that made Raiders an absolute classic are back here, Dr. Jones is a fantastic character for this type of exciting story, he has everything you want from an action hero rolled into one character. He’s smart, he’s suave, and he’s awesome in the action sequences. While many of the superficial elements are just as good as the first movie, it’s the actual story where this one disappoints me. The heroes in the film come across this entire adventure essentially by accident which isn’t a very interesting setup, and I think there are a fair share of pacing issues in the mix, the actual Temple of Doom doesn’t show up until over halfway through and together these things make for a plot that isn’t nearly as compelling as in the first Indiana Jones movie. I also liked Willie as a character significantly less than I liked Marion, because her personality is so different from Jones’ I never really wanted to see them get together, she’s too scared to spend the night in a jungle and eat exotic foods, and so as a viewer you know her and him will never really work out and it’s not a pairing you’re really rooting for either. As much as I wasn’t crazy about her, the movie makes up for it in the character of Short Round. Ke Huy Quan is great in the role and plays off of Harrison Ford nicely, and it’s fun to see him get in on the action as well. Certainly, I have my issues with this one, it doesn’t live up to the original by a long shot, but it does enough that I enjoy and honestly, it gives me what I want from an Indiana Jones movie, I just wish more time had been put into the writing and this truly could have been on the same level as the first.