I can agree with that but then why not bring her back sooner like maybe crusade? or was it because she hasnt got work in real life in quite some time?
Well, I think they were trying to do the James Bond route, where there was a different love interest in every movie. It also could have been that she wasn't available to be in tLC. As for WHY they brought her back for tKotCS, it has everything to do with creating book ends for the series and trying to capitalize on the nostalgia of the first movie.
It makes sense from that aspect but the indiana jones character just doesnt mess with the alien mythology and it felt kinda shoe horned in ya know. I would have liked to have seen him go after the city of atlantis instead for his last journey. Now this is just my interpretation but I think having the aliens in the story it just came off as silly and really brought the overall experience down.
I enjoy alien flicks, ufo documentaries, ancient alien shows, etc. I also greatly enjoy standard archeological fare. A huge part of archeology has to do with religions, since religion of any kind is a huge part of society, especially from an archeological standpoint.
Remember, Indiana Jones is an archeologist who specializes in religious artifacts and the occult. His first 3 movies were based around either finding incredibly important religious artifacts, or getting them back from the wrong hands.
The flicks have dealt with two religions - Christianity and Hinduism. Both are very mainstream religions. The idea of mayans worshiping an alien's skull is not based on fact. There are no religious undertones or consequences of faith in this movie like in previous flicks. Sure, they tried to bridge the gap between aliens and religion - "maybe they thought THIS was their deity?" but it was a very thin line connecting the two and was never convincingly handled. It seemed more like an excuse to use aliens than anything else. And no one really seemed surprised that alien's existed. Indy saw a freaking alien's corpse, and didn't say a word. What made it harder to take was how at the end, all the skeletons came together to form a living, breathing alien, er, excuse me, "inter-dimensional being".
While I didn't like the angle they chose for the movie, I wouldn't have minded the ancient alien route if they had gone somewhere different with it. For one, I think showing the alien (dead or alive) was too much. Second, I don't think the "proof' that aliens had a role in the creation of modern man was as an important part of the story as it needed to be. A focus on that - and on the wonder of it - would have been a more enjoyable story.