Vaderisnothayden said:
Indy 4 is still much more Indy than the PT is Star Wars and and much better.

That's back to the checks & balances I was mentioning before, which were absent from the SE & Prequel processes.

For Kingdom - Lucas, Spielberg, & Ford forced each other into making a film that was true to the series. It wasn't as serious as Raiders, not as dark as Temple, not as comical as Crusade, but it looked & felt like the world of Indy because there were three people making sure it did - the same three people who had been involved in the other three films.

Spielberg said no when Lucas wanted it to lean more science fiction - Lucas said no when Spielberg wanted scenes like a ricochet bullet hitting someone's belt and causing their pants to fall down (honestly, that's the sort of bullshit from a Mel Brooks movie - lame). Add in Ford as a third voice further honing the story and we got a film that fits with the others.

That creative process was completely absent from the Star Wars franchise the past twenty years and it really shows. The only prequel I saw (Phantom) stopped resembling Star Wars as soon as the crawl faded.