Indiana Jones And The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull Soundtrack

Even if you're not a big Indiana Jones fan you'd have to have been living on Mars all your life to not know John Williams' "Raiders March". Probably better know to most people as the main theme from the Indiana Jones films. However, the main theme only featured as it's own track ("Raiders March") on the Indiana Jones & The Raiders Of The Lost Ark soundtrack. Indiana Jones & The Temple Of Doom and Indiana Jones & The Last Crusade just mixed the main theme in with the rest of the cues like this soundtrack does with the track "The Journey To Akator". This is why I was quite surprised to see the "Raiders March" as a track on the Indiana Jones & The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull soundtrack. But then I guess it has been 20 or so years since Indiana Jones & The Last Crusade, a time when some of us weren't even born, so the chances of us owning the Indiana Jones & The Raiders Of The Lost Ark soundtrack are slim.

However, it is not the same "Raiders March" from the first Indiana Jones film and it is in fact an expanded version. The original version was 2:50 in length, where as this version is 5:06, which is substantially longer. The reason for it being longer is because it also includes Marion's theme. Yep. If you didn't know by now then you probably weren't going to. Marion who was Indiana's love interest from Indiana Jones & The Raiders Of The Lost Ark is back for Indiana Jones & The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull.

Marion's theme isn't the only returning theme though. "The Map Room" theme from Indiana Jones & The Raiders Of The Lost Ark can be heard at the beginning of the track "The Spell Of The Skull".

Some great cues from this soundtrack include: "The Adventures Of Mutt", "The Snake Pit" and "The Journey To Akator". Three playful little pieces which provide a very enjoyable listen.

But it wouldn't be Indiana Jones without some of the more mysterious cues. Whilst "Call Of The Crystal", "Irena's Theme" and "Orellana's Cradle" do sound very nice, I don't quite enjoy listening to them as much as some of the action cues such as "The Jungle Chase" which is quite a comical action sequence. A darker action sequence and equally great listen is "Grave Robbers" which goes a bit crazy on the percussion at the beginning but sounds great anyway.

I found the last portion of the soundtrack pretty average and the only cue that stood out was "Finale", which revisited most of the major themes including Marion's theme and the main Indiana Jones theme ("Raiders March").

With this soundtrack John Williams definitely returns to his usual sound which he pretty much threw out the window with the last film he scored which was Memoirs Of A Geisha in 2005. This soundtrack is really for fans of the movie, fans of Indiana Jones, fans of John Williams, and probably fans of the older style of film music composing. I'm more of a remote control/media ventures man myself, although I did still enjoy listening to the soundtrack and there are some definite cues I would go back and listen to. But there are also some cues which I would probably only listen to again if I decided to listen to the whole soundtrack. In my opinion, Memoirs Of A Geisha is still John Williams best score.