| T O P I C R E V I E W |
| benj clews |
Posted - 05/23/2008 : 00:49:45
Just come out of this and it's hard to describe how I feel. Kinda' like there's been a death in the family. I seriously sat silently in the cinema unable to move for some time afterwards.
Everyone knows Lucas lost the plot years ago, but how did Spielberg and Ford think any of this monstrosity was a good idea? The 'stunts' are so CGI (which Spielberg claimed would be kept to a bare minimum) there's absolutely no feeling of peril and at it's very worst, it's absolutely barmy- like watching a Tex Avery cartoon. Even when not doing action sequences, there was so much green screen I was inclined to think Harrison Ford only agreed to do the film if he didn't have to leave his house. And don't even get me started on the MacGuffin... I'm sorry but Indiana Jones and sci-fi just don't fit.
I'm sure others will pitch in with their feelings in the days to come but for now I'm still having trouble forming the words of how I feel. For me, there is only the original trilogy- this never happened  |
| 15 L A T E S T R E P L I E S (Newest First) |
| Airbolt |
Posted - 11/27/2008 : 00:16:06
Finally caught it on DVD. Tired looking Indiana Jones fights commies while audience fights ennui. Enough has been said about the CGI - it was incredibly fake in places tho.Not a fitting end to the series.
Oh well, they might have Wall e in tomorrow! |
| Beanmimo |
Posted - 10/28/2008 : 10:10:04
I saw the ad for Indy iv it while waiting to watch Irom Man (again).
I turned to a friend who hasn't seen it and told her that the only way she might be able to enjoy it was by treating it as a normal run of the mill action movie and not part of the Indiana Jones series.
That's my final word.
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| Cheese_Ed |
Posted - 10/19/2008 : 14:56:37
Finally caught it on DVD last night.
1 out of 10
       
Failed on every level for me. Can't think of one thing I admired.
If you get it on disc, you've got to watch the making of featurette and see how long you take Spielberg/Lucas/Ford trying to convince us (or themselves) they've made a good Indy movie here. I took it for about 10 minutes. |
| randall |
Posted - 06/28/2008 : 23:57:14
My instant take? George and Steven are a generation older than the guys who made the original trilogy. [That would be George and Steven.] But these days, they're not as comfortable with CGI as directors [and I assure you the first three were co-directed], even though ILM has blazed many passages. The technology has overcome them as surely as it did Bill Gates.
Indy was all about passing on the thrill of 40s serials to a new generation. INDY 4 is about passing on INDY 1,2 and 3 -- and the experiment fails. GWL was on much firmer ground when he tried to tie Young Indy into actual history, and that's where the future lies. |
| silly |
Posted - 06/26/2008 : 21:12:29
quote:
Originally posted by benj clews
...but you know what? At least I do wonder about it. None of the above scenes made me want to do anything but yell "Oh... f*ck off!" at the screen.
I find that happening to me a lot in the latest Superhero movies that are video games placed on screen.
Indy IV was basically treated like a superhero movie, he just didn't wear a cape.
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| benj clews |
Posted - 06/26/2008 : 18:51:28
I agree about not questioning the realism and plausibility in the Indiana Jones films... to an extent. In the previous three, the only thing questionable was the MacGuffin: the Arc of the Covenant, powerful holy stones, the Holy Grail. I think the important thing, though, was that everything else was grounded in reality, making it that much easier to forget about the unfeasibility of the central idea.
Had the fourth film had vaguely believable action sequences, I have no doubt I would have gone along with it as I have the original three. But surviving a fall from hundreds of feet inside a fridge, driving a truck off a cliff into a tree, at least 2 pensioners surviving dropping over three huge waterfalls in a truck (miraculously staying upright and with everyone inside the first two times), swinging merrily through jungle vines like the character had done it all his life... all of it was just too stupidly unrealistic.
I'll admit, even now I do wonder if you really could parachute out of a plane in a dingy, but you know what? At least I do wonder about it. None of the above scenes made me want to do anything but yell "Oh... f*ck off!" at the screen. I don't even think it was the green screen that ruined it for me- it was just, aside from a couple of fist fights, none of that gritty somehow-he'll-make-it Indiana Jonesy-ness was there.
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| Wheelz |
Posted - 06/26/2008 : 13:34:30
I think it's pointless to argue about realism and plausibility in a film such as this. Let's face it, there wasn't a whole lot that was plausible in any of the 4 Indy movies. Aliens are not inherently less believable than a thousand-year-old knight guarding the Holy Grail, or a box of sand that melts people's faces off. The magic of movies is that a great film can make you believe.
In Crystal Skull, there were enough elements -- from the undeniably plexiglass titular prop to the extensive and obtrusive use of green-screen -- that removed me from the movie and made it impossible to believe what I was seeing, much as I wanted to.
But for me, the biggest thing this film lacks is the breakneck out-of-the-frying-pan-into-the-fire pace of the first three. In those, you barely had a chance to absorb what you had just seen when, BANG, we're on to the next action sequence. At the end you were left catching your breath and marveling at what a great time you just had, and thus you didn't bother going back to pick apart the details.
This one, though, is so plodding and leaves so much room for introspection that one can't help but continuously question its very premise throughout.
There were indeed plenty of problems with this movie, but I would have been more apt to forgive them if I'd just had a better time watching. |
| GHcool |
Posted - 06/05/2008 : 06:37:12
I just came back from seeing it with friends. I kept thinking to myself, "Its got to get better than this! Soon its gonna be better!" And then the monkey scene came and I wrung my hands of it. |
| Salopian |
Posted - 06/05/2008 : 00:55:27
quote:
Originally posted by Mr Stupid
Unlike other films with artifacts that have a clear power (i.e. healing and immortality of the Holy Grail), the crystal skull is a "magic key". Any problem the charectors run in to, the skull has a new power to help them.
Ah yes, that's a good way of putting it. I'd rather the skull did not have magical powers or had only one very specific one. One should be surprised that it can reattach itself to the body and thus reanimate and combine all thirteen beings, but it's done so much by then that one doesn't bat an eyelid. Although it doesn't harm anyone that I can remember, it appears to be a good forcefield against otherwise fearless ants and the soil people who are presumably supposed to be guarding it in some way.
I also liked the fight scene you mention. The way in which the two groups gang together is a nice combination of being both stylised and realistic. |
| Mr Savoir Faire |
Posted - 06/05/2008 : 00:20:32
quote:
Originally posted by Salopian
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
The biggest area of disagreement I have with most here is that the first films are so much more realistic than this one. What are you talking about?! One of them features a 900-year-old man!
This is true. also, one has a drop out of an airplne with an inflatable raft(I have no choice but to ignore this part of Temple of Doom). The 900 year-old man works though. The setting of Last Crusade has established rules regarding the supernatural in it.
Unlike other films with artifacts that have a clear power (i.e. healing and immortality of the Holy Grail), the crystal skull is a "magic key". Any problem the charectors run in to, the skull has a new power to help them. Sometimes it is magnetic, sometimes it is not. Sometimes it is magnetic but the magnetism can be blocked by a cloth. Sometimes it can drive people insane, sometimes it can help people remember.
I really liked the fridge part until he was blown two miles and happened to land on the Russians that were trying to kill him. It would have been a great scene if some scientists examining the wreckage discovered him in the fridge, where the house stood, and Indy was on the verge of death, and then they took him into questioning.
My favorite parts of the movie were the choice name of Mutt and the Greaser and Socs fight scene. Other than that, I don't think we should commend Lucas and Spielberg for what is mediocre work (at best). These are talented people who have done great films in the past. Now that they have unlimited budgets and access to more resources, the quality should at very least stay the same.
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| Salopian |
Posted - 06/04/2008 : 01:03:47
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
The biggest area of disagreement I have with most here is that the first films are so much more realistic than this one. What are you talking about?! One of them features a 900-year-old man!
A lot of the stupid things I found perfectly fine and entertaining, such as the nuclear-retardant fridge (what's not to love about that?) and the vine-swinging (good enough for Tarzan although Mr Stupid is right that it's not possible).
A few stupid things I didn't like were the ants being able to carry the body, the portal looking remarkably like a flying saucer (as demonic has mentioned), everyone calling him Henry all of a sudden, the people living in the soil and Indy bizarrely believing Mac's unsubstantiated assertion that he is a double agent (as all of which Mr Stupid has mentioned).
The three waterfalls are a bit much but I assumed that Ox or whatever his name is was quoting real poetry and that the script needed to accommodate that.
I found the choice of the name Mutt endearing and the lack of Connery a vast improvement. Indy's character works perfectly well in the 1950s. I probably wouldn't have gone with the aliens, but they fit the time too. |
| silly |
Posted - 06/02/2008 : 01:17:50
I've been thinking about this, and the ending is making even less sense to me now.
Okay, his friend resigns the school, he is let go, Red Scare stuff. He dissapears for a few days in the jungle. He comes back - with nothing but a story - and bang, everyone has their job back, Henry gets a promotion (I think), and presumably the FBI is no longer interested in him. There aren't even any Russian / triple agent bodies to show, these folks have just been disappeared.
I know, I'm expecting too much realism, but c'mon what a cheesy ending. He didn't even get a picture. |
| randall |
Posted - 06/01/2008 : 19:39:29
Just like when I waited a month to see THE PHANTOM MENACE and my expectations were so low that the flick actually was a pleasant surprise, so with INDY 4. The buzz was SO bad that we had to say, "Yeah, sure, but they earned our money." And it was a real pleasure to see Karen Allen again. I thought Cate chewed her scenery appropriately. The alien ending was hogwash.
My LEAST favorite sequence was the ants. The underbelly of CGI. Not convincing in the slightest. Park the brain [I really don't try to catch gaffes in LFL productions, even after having worked on STAR WARS minutiae for five years], reach for the popcorn and enjoy. It was fun in a Forties-serial kind of way, though absent the grin-inducing joy of the first flick, by far the best in the series IMO. |
| Mr Savoir Faire |
Posted - 05/31/2008 : 16:43:05
3 out of 10
there's too many unanswered questions in this film.
Why are there people racing outside of area 51? I guess it's to beat it into our heads that it is the 50s.
Why does it take an archeologist to figure out Mutt is his son? this is painfully obvious from the first time we see him.
Why does no one call him Indiana in this film? They might as well call it "Henry Jones Jr and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull"
why can't aliens talk? The keepers of all human knowledge are unable to communicate effectively. Strange.
What made john Hurt go insane? Why did he turn back the first time?
What powers the living dead that protect the graves? This was never explained. Is it vampirism? Nuclear mutation? alien inter-dimensional powering? Please tell us!
What types of vines are not attached to the ground? You can't swing from them! Why did Indy not care he lost his son? He had no idea he was about to defy physics/biology/logic and catch up to him. maybe he left Mutt because he thought he was an unnecessary character in the film.
Since when can a fridge can sustain a nuclear blast and a 2 mile aerial trip threw the sky? This is the worst scene I have seen in any movie since the Transporter 2 (when Stathom does an aerial roll to unhook a bomb).
what made me the angriest though, the character who was a triple agent that they decided to trust, and, wait, what do you know! He betrays them again. the whole time I saw it coming. No, too obvious, I said. no way he's going to let the plot go there.
the ending was exactly like the first indiana Jones. I have a box of knowledge and opening it will kill me because I wasn't meant to have it.
Indiana Jones should not take his family on jungle expeditions. Indiana Jones should not have a family. He should be a depressed, single professor at a college who travels the world for excitement.
I can't believe this film is so well-reviewed. While a mayan setting with Soviet bad guys is not a bad set-up, this is horrible. If this had not been part of the Indy series, this would have gotten horrific reviews. Parts of this are just way too over the top. Swinging vines, falling off the cliff onto the tree, 3 drops, a sword fight on what look to be well-traversed roads in the middle of the jungle, 1 man defeating a whole battalion in a warehouse, et cetera. Indy Jones ended at part 3 as far as I'm concerned.
Indiana Jones and the Accruing Treasure of George Luca$: An adventure in revisionism.
Aliens, nukes, OTT, unnecessary characters, unexplained plot points. I say this is Mystery science Theatre 3000 deserving. |
| w22dheartlivie |
Posted - 05/31/2008 : 14:19:03
So... is everyone saying that Sean Connery made the right decision when he said he'd not do another Indiana Jones film? Or was that just because everyone knew they couldn't pull off a still kinda sexy 78 year old man being the father of a badly aging 66 year old Harrison Ford? |
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