Spielucas set out to sell toys and made a farce of a moive.
I love this argument because it's so nonsensical. If Kingdom of the Crystal Skull was designed as a toy commercial it would have been a completely different film. There would have been far more toys in it than the jungle cutter, for starters.
Nolans group set out to make a good movie and it sold toys.
The Dark Knight is a much better example of the cynical manipulation you describe, because all those toys were made for a movie kids shouldn't be allowed to see! It's the ultimate example of corporate greed and idiocy. The Dark Knight is by no stretch of the imagination a kids' movie and yet you can find little homicidal maniac Jokers in boxes of Cinnamon Toast Crunch and a whole line of action figures aimed at kids too young to be let into the theater.
Kingdom of the Crystal Skull made so much money because, a few insecure nerds on the Internet aside, people liked it and either saw it again or told their friends to go see it. It's a fun movie with characters people like and relate to, and unlike most summer blockbusters it's actually about something more than chasing after a crystal skull. It's a great example of how the Internet is completely unrepresentative of real life in most cases, and how Internet nerds forget that and get so swept up in the echo chamber.