Indiana Jones and The Kingdom of The Crystal Skull: The Race With The Devil Cut

I've always had a love hate relationship with Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. It has lots of great moments but suffers from tonal issues. Indiana Jones has always featured fun and even over the top action adventure, but with the Crystal Skull, Indiana Jones ventures into moments that are just outright silly, even for the Temple of Doom.

First off, watching this edit made the film more tonally consistent throughout, making it feel more inline with the original trilogy. I'm also happy to say the most "cringe" parts have been removed and what's left is a story that moves at a quicker pace and is more enjoyable from start to finish.

This edit is very well done and I honestly had a hard time remembering where some of the most "cringe" moments were. This film really does feature some excellent action that is so well choreographed. Even when things have been removed, such as the monkeys, the action sequences never lose their continuity and what's left is exhilarating Indy action.

Overall this is a fantastic edit and will definitely be my preferred way to watch going forward. Yes, this edit even makes you consider the possibility of repeat viewing. Well done!

The theatrical version of Indiana Jones and The Kingdom of The Crystal Skull is and always will be a bad movie with poor plot structure and campy and/or bad acting. It's a bad sequel to an awesome trilogy and many believe it should never have been made because it tarnishes the series. When it came out in 2008, I thought Lucas and Spielberg completely lost their minds. It was atrocious and easily the worst movie they ever made. This fan edit, however, changed my mind and it'll change yours too.

In short, it's fantastic!!!

There have been many attempts at trying to polish this turd and present it as something digestible but no one has come as close to making this movie as palatable as DonkeyKonga's fan edit has accomplished. This fan editor used their magic touch to finesse and extract the best parts of this movie and restructured it so that it is not only entertaining but enjoyable to a great degree.

Tweaking the beginning nuclear bomb sequence doesn't save the opening but it's far better than any other fan editor's out there. Removing bad sequences such as the quicksand scene, the monkees scene, the escape scene, and the vine scene elevate this fan edit far above other fan edits out there of this movie.

Now just removing bad scenes can't save a bad movie. Fortunately DonkeyKonga went the extra mile by restructuring the plot by making vital changes such as removing the horrible plot line of making Indiana Mutt's dad and tweaking as many scenes as possible to streamline the story making it as smooth as silk for this reviewer.

In closing, I can't recommend this fan edit highly enough! It's a completely different film from the one you've always hated in the theater so please give this fan edit a go. It'll change your mind and make you a believer in this Indiana Jones adventure.

DonkeyKonga.... Well done!!!

This edit wound up being a somewhat odd viewing experience for me, since I couldn't help but mentally compare it to njvc's edit "Raiders of the Lost Skull" more than the theatrical edition of "Kingdom of the Crystal Skull".

My overall impression is that it feels like a sort of halfway point between "Kingdom of the Crystal Skull" and "Raiders of the Lost Skull", being better than the former but not as good as the latter. As far as I can recall, "Raiders of the Lost Skull" makes all of the improvements that this edit does (other than removing references to Mutt being Indy's son), as well as quite a few more. However, I did like that this edit kept Mac yelling "You don't know him!", a line that I find funny but which was cut in njvc's edit.

In my opinion, the tweaks to the nuclear bomb scene still don't save it. Indy still appears far too close to the bomb to survive, and even the shortened version of the flying through the air and flipping around looks like something that would seriously injure if not kill him.

The video quality was good overall, with good grain detail and color. The audio also sounded good, and the new song at the beginning was a nice touch.

EDIT: DonkeyKonga has since made an updated version of the edit that removes an editing glitch that I mentioned in an earlier version of this review.

Good God - this is almost a different film! I can't recommend it enough, tbh.
I could trawl thru all the marvelous editing [dammit, it's almost a reconstruction!] on display here - but I won't, just read DK's 'Changes' tab here, it tells you everything you need to know.
I just had to make a slight deduction for 'Narrative' - no slight intended on DK's work, but it's the plot/writing of the ending - I keep expecting to see Nick (over-actor supreme!) Cage come bounding along on a National Treasure-vibe horse to the music from Close Encounters!!
WTF were they thinking with that ending??
Even the Master, DK, couldn't rescue that train-wreck but my God he gives it a great shot.
A Masterful piece of work - miss it at your peril!
;)

I really should have rewatched the original cut of this first, because I just watched the edit thinking "I thought I hated this movie? This is really pretty good. Maye I just haven't gotten to the parts I hate yet." But then they never really came, happily. Your opening song is perfect, even though I am a huge Elvis fan, your more rockabilly song established the same time period and is a cooler song. The biggest edit I actually noticed was an edit I imagined making last time I saw the uncut movie--no utterly pointless escape attempt, no quicksand scene or snake vine and of course, Indy no longer has an idiot son named Mutt. Excellent choices! The movie moves along at a great pace, it never drags and I never stop caring until the very end when it finally becomes clear at the end "The skull goes to a crystal body that is still alive and there's 12 others and they are aliens and they are going to fly away... " and there is just no edit that stays within the source material that can fix that. But you fixed everything else! I agree with you that it is almost as good as Temple of Doom now--it is only the lifeboat jump from the airplane and the mineshaft rollercoaster ride that puts Temple of Doom ahead for just being fun. But you really have taken this one right up there, much MUCH closer to the original 3!