To understand “Crystal Skull,” you must first fathom why “Raiders of the Lost Ark” vies with “Die Hard” for the title of “Best Action Movie of All Time.” And to get that, you have to understand how I once failed a willpower save and watched all of “Raiders” even though I had work to do.

How? Because the glory of Raiders is that it’s such a network of amazing action sequences that I couldn’t leave because I knew what was coming next. My wife turned it on just as I was going to another room to finish up some programming – but as soon as the credits hit I said, “Well, the boulder sequence is coming up, I’ll just stay through that.”

Then once the boulder sequence hit, I said, “Well, he’s going to have to escape from Belloq. I’ll just stay through that.”

And then I said, “Wait. The bar fight at Ravenwood’s is next? I can’t miss that.”

Before I knew it, I’d been strung along into watching the whole of Raiders, because there was always something so incredibly cool coming up next that I didn’t want to miss it? After Ravenwood? The bazaar sequence. Then the snake pit. Then the fight around the plane. And the truck chase scene. And then, hell, might as well stay for the ending.

Raiders is packed with so many great stunts that even though I’d said I wasn’t going to watch it, I was like a fat guy reaching for just one more potato chip. That’s why Raiders works so well. The script is fast, the characterization punchy, and every fifteen minutes there’s one of the most magnificent action sequences of all time.

Yet if you want proof that an artist does not always understand his own creations, you need look no farther than George Lucas….. Because Lucas evidently thinks that the reason we enjoyed Raiders of the Lost Ark was the amazing story.

Crystal Skull spends a lot of time talking about, well, Crystal Skulls. We spend half an hour watching Indiana standing on magnificent sets, unraveling the mystery of how this Mayan note leads to the mazes in Peru and then to the temples in the jungle. And poor, deluded George Lucas thinks that we have arrived at an Indiana Jones film because we really, really liked the clever way that Indiana solved the puzzle of the Lost Ark.

I was checking my watch. And when I returned home, I looked up the original Raiders. By 65 minutes into the original Raiders, we had had:

1) The temple sequence, complete with psychotic traps, whacky boulder, and “throw me the idol and I’ll throw you the whip”;
2) The escape from Belloq, leaping onto a plane;
3) The fight at Marion Ravenwood’s bar;
4) The bazaar chase sequence, complete with gibbering monkey and Indy just shooting the swordsman.

And that doesn’t count the not-quite-an-action-sequence-but-still-pretty-tense moments of the kids saving Indy from Belloq and the “bad dates, Indy” line. And at T-plus 65 minutes, Indiana Jones is just about to be thrown into a pit of snakes.

By 65 minutes into Crystal Skull – which was when I checked my watch to see how long this damn movie had been going on – we have had:

1) One awesome chase sequence through an abandoned warehouse (it’s in the trailer, you gits, I’m not spoiling);
2) An unlikely brush with death, where Indy is saved via cleverness, an astonishing unfamiliarity with physics, and gratuitous usage of CGI;
3) One all-too-short chase scene with Shia LeBoeuf that’s fun, but we’ve seen most of it in other movies;
4) One brief fight scene that lasts literally ninety seconds;
5) Lots of talking about Crystal Skulls.

And we don’t have another chase sequence arriving for another ten minutes. Houston, we have a problem.

Indiana Jones is the precursor to flashier movies like The Bourne Identity where you put a talented everyman in the middle of zillions of people who want to kill him, and somehow he escapes. With Indiana Jones in particular, you want ten-minute long nailbiters where you’re sitting there going, “God, how’s he going to get out of that?”

Crystal Skull works during the two action sequences when they do that. The rest? Well…. Again, let’s look at Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Indiana is introduced by whipping the gun out of the hand of a man who is about to kill him. Belloq, the clever villain, is introduced with a tribe of mislead Indians at his back, having anticipated Indy’s next move. Marion Ravenwood, tough as nails and independent, is introduced during a drinking contest where she wins decisively.

The main antagonist of Crystal Skull, however, introduces herself by telling Indiana Jones where she’s from. And what she does. And who she is. And then doesn’t do any of it, because her awesome Russian accent should tell us how bad she is. Likewise, Indy’s faithful companion tells us of all the great adventures he used to have with Indiana Jones, cranking the exposit-o-meter up to 11 in an attempt to create character.

Raiders showed by showing. Skull shows by telling. And in a movie that should be about blazing craziness, not taking the excuse to show off the characters with whacky quasi-action scenes is a mistake.

I am reminded of a great sex essay called “Just Fucking Fuck Me, Already,” the sad tale of a woman who wants a guy to be aggressive in bed and not wait for her to take the lead. I kept sitting there during all of Crystal Skull going, “Just fucking fuck me!” because I wanted the great action sequences to come – and when they did, it was awesome. I was getting rightly rogered, my cinema-clit spasming in delight.

Then they talked.

I didn’t come to a goddamned Indiana Jones movie for a relationship, George.

When it’s on, it’s great stuff, although the CGI is still a bit overmuch. There’s a difference in your nailbiting level when you know it’s an actual, flesh-and-blood stuntman going underneath a real fucking truck and not some CGI guy being dropped under a green screen. There’s a lot of CGI work where I said, “This is exciting, but Shia LeBoeuf is as safe as houses.”

Also, Skull has these strange CGI boundaries where all the characters instinctively know that the special effects are going on over here and they are over here in greenscreen land, and so they stand as though they don’t have a care in the world while everything on the right-hand side of the screen is exploding. This makes it a little hard to suspend disbelief at times.

That said, Crystal Skull is not a terrible movie. It’s not as bad as, say, Temple of Doom, where all of the characters were actively annoying. It’s just not really what you’re looking for.

Just fucking fuck me already. Plow me with stunts. Jason Bourne did it. And sadly, I think he’s gonna have to be my booty call here from now on, guys.

That's right - I'm fucking Matt Damon.

(Tell me I'm full of it)