Forbidden Eye said:
Most of the "problems" in Skull are still pretty evident in City of the Gods, the aliens are still there, and the ending flat out sucks(quoting Independence Day, really?). Plus, I'll never forgive Darabont for introducing the idea of having Marion return, which I'm not crazy about, despite Darabont giving Marion more to do than what she did in Skull. All in all, I'm actually kinda glad Kingdom was made instead of City of the Gods.
I don't see any of Crystal Skull's real problems in City of Gods. I do see far more memorable dialog, a wealth of great character moments, wonderfully written set pieces, a grateful lack of offspring, charismatic villains, narrative momentum, general cohesion and structure, established stakes, effective reveals, a sense of danger and thrilling escapes. Not to mention an inspired Hitchockian/noir tribute in the New England segment, and the McCarthysm angle used for more than set dressing.
Otherwise Gods and Skull are exactly the same.
"Aliens" is not a problem with Crystal Skull; shoddy storytelling and its bizarre lassitude were. But if you wanted to harp on aliens, I'd point out that Gods treated the subject matter, and all of its mysteries really, with a heck of a lot more tact and intrigue than Crystal Skull did.
I'm mystified that you despise Marion's return when it's one of the strongest elements of Darabont's script. He nails their dynamic perfectly and there's tons of fun banter. She has some of the best lines. More importantly, her role is an active and integral one. Spielberg liked the idea of bringing back Marion so much that he insisted it remain as an element in subsequent versions, but it's not Darabont's fault that the story evolved to completely change the function and depiction of her character. She's fantastic in his version; in the final version she's a cameo that's initially kept secret for no reason and then relegated to the background until the wedding because she has three other people to share the sidekick role with. Gods has a lot of characters, but most of them are villains (as opposed to ersatz family members) and few of them survive the movie. The scripts are so apples and oranges in execution that the fact that they share a lot of high-level ideas is almost meaningless.
Also, a groan-inducing line of dialog does not ruin an ending, but an inert anti-climax certainly does. Your criteria for what makes a movie's
ending suck is bizarre. Darabont's got some indulgent bits in his work, but that hardly compares unfavorably to a movie that doesn't work period. If you're actually throwing the touchdowns then you get a little more latitude. Crystal Skull didn't earn the goodwill for people to laugh off weightless vine-swinging across aggressively CGI canopy, but Darabont keeps the reader/viewer into his story.