Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (no major spoilers in OP)

Cafe Society
181

[QUOTE=Omniscient]
The biggest issue I had was that Indy and Co.'s motivation throughout the film is spurious at best. He was ostensibly sent on this quest in order to rescue Marion and his old friend Oz, but then once they are free and clear the motivation to go on with the quest is pretty thin.
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Indy and Ox have both stared into the eye socket of the crystal skull and had its need to return implanted in their brains. Mac is going along to aid the Russians and/or enrich himself. Marion and Mutt go out of affection for Indy and Ox.

182

Wow… really? a B minus? About half way through I was thinking “This is a solid D+”. But then the ending happened and now it’s a solid F. Horrible movie. An insult, and a spit in the face of the Indiana Jones series. I had 2 major problems with this movie. First, the story line was incredibly stupid. I won’t go too far into details on this so not to spoil the already spoiled movie. The unrealistic survivals Indy and friends went through was also way out of the realm of ridiculous, and deep into the realm of ridonkulous. I mean c’mon… I know Temple of Doom has that scene with the inflatable raft, and they miraculously survived a fall from an airplane to a snowy hill, then over a cliff to the river, but Crystal Skull had like… 4 scenes like this. This movie also takes the old theory that the bad guy has poor aim way too far… I swear there were instances where Indy was ALMOST point blank, and got away from dozens of machine guns being fired at him. I can accept this cliche thing that the bad guys always have poor aim to an extent, but this was just plain stupid.

On the bright side, I will say I had a GREAT laugh with my friends on my way out of the theatre about how bad some of the lines and scenes were.

“The Space BETWEEEEN the Spaces…” hahaha… what a joke that was…

183

Just saw it last night. Forgive me if some of these points have been stated:

1.) I have to agree with Stranger – there really wasn’t that much of a plot here. It was bunch of incidents strung together.

2.) There was no image lifted from a Carl Barks Uncle Scrooge comic!!!

http://www.straightdope.com/teemings/issue12/calmeacham.html
3.) I, too, was disappointed in the lack of a John Rhys Davies/Saleh cameo of some sort. C’mon – you could’ve given us a picture or something!
4.) There was no religious article here, as in the other three movies – Lost Ark, Holy Grail, Sankara Stone. Crystal Skull is juwst not the same.
5.) Hey, if those magical spiral stairs disappeared into the walls as the temple/tower/whatever collapsed, how the he;; did the Russians get into the building?

6.) The idea of tying the Mayan head shape and the head binding to the alien skulls was kind of cute, and the idea of Aliens Who Brought Us Civilization is old and kinda nifty, but it bothers me more than a bit that our conception of dark oval-eyed “greys” wouldn’t have flown in the 1950s – the conception of aliens that looked like that hadn’t developed yet. For that matter, “intra-dimensional ships rather than space ships” is a much later concept, too. In the 1950s, most folk thought of Flying Saucers as extraterrestrials.

yeah, yeah, I know. But it breaks the whole 1950s mood they’re trying to set up.

184

[QUOTE=CalMeacham]

3.) I, too, was disappointed in the lack of a John Rhys Davies/Saleh cameo of some sort. C’mon – you could’ve given us a picture or something!

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I too was pissed; Sallah and Short Round could have bothered their arses to come to the wedding, f’christs sake.

185

[QUOTE=Siam Sam]
My question (and sorry if this has been asked and answered, but I’ve not read the entire thread): Has Shia LaBeouf been tagged to take over the Indiana Jones series? With maybe Harrison Ford with him in the next film or two? I thought the “passing the hat” scene, so to speak, at the end was an indication of that. He seems like he’d be good.
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I don’t know how that’s even a question.

They even set up the “fear of scorpions” scene, and have given him a marketable name and some soon-to-be iconic accoutrements (comb & knife).

Who’s willing to bet me that in “Mudd Williams and the Curse of the Golden Stones” that he means to pull his switchblade out and comically grabs his comb instead?

Movie: meh.

Nothing is boringer in movies than action scenes that go on way too long. Did Spielberg have any ideas for action except car chases? There were three separate vehicle-centric action pieces in this movie, and virtually no other ones.

186

[QUOTE=Trunk]
Who’s willing to bet me that in “Mudd Williams and the Curse of the Golden Stones” that he means to pull his switchblade out and comically grabs his comb instead?

Movie: meh.
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Oh, I dunno. Move him up 10 years when he’s finally finished school and following in Indy’s footsteps and have him search for some lost treasure in Southeast Asia. Indiana Jones Meets Apocalypse Now.

I think the current Indiana Jones installment suffers from familiarity. The first one was fresh and could do no wrong. Now we’re used to it.

187

[QUOTE=Siam Sam]
Move him up 10 years when he’s finally finished school and following in Indy’s footsteps
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Perhaps if they wait until he is old enough to shave.

188

[QUOTE=carnivorousplant]
Perhaps if they wait until he is old enough to shave.
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Oh please the guy is in his 20s. :rolleyes:

189

[QUOTE=Illuminatiprimus]
Oh please the guy is in his 20s. :rolleyes:
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And he’s sporting some serious facial hair in the trailer for his next movie (which doesn’t look too bad), Eagle Eye.

190

[QUOTE=CalMeacham]
5.) Hey, if those magical spiral stairs disappeared into the walls as the temple/tower/whatever collapsed, how the he;; did the Russians get into the building?
[/QUOTE]
This one’s been addressed: apparently the clever Russkies had something called “rope”. That’s about the only defense I’ll make of what passes for logic in the movie.

(Note: There’s no character named “Mudd”; there’s a character called “Mutt”. Which is annoying enough.)

191

[QUOTE=Sage Rat]
Unrelated to that issue: I think that the idea of Mutt and the monkeys was that they thought he was one of them because the greaser hairdo looked like theirs.
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I thought it was a shout out to Disney’s Tarzan, which has a similar looking sequence.

192

[QUOTE=Achren]
I thought it was a shout out to Disney’s Tarzan, which has a similar looking sequence.
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I think it really was a shout-out to every old jungle serial ever. There were tons of them from the '30s-'50s, probably owing to the popularity of the Johnny Weismuller Tarzan movies. And the name “Mutt” isn’t too far off from “Boy,” Tarzan’s adopted son.

193

I rarely go to see movies in theaters these days due to crowd misbehavior, but I figured this one I had to see on the big screen. I went to the Arlington, our grand old classic theater, the one where I saw the last Indy movie premiere. I purposely ignored reading this thread or reviews.

I’ve been to some of those places depicted in the movie, including Nasca and that place in the Peruvian desert where you can wander around looking at 2000 year old mummies lying in holes in the ground, so I got a bit of a kick out of that. Also, you can see those deformed skulls in Cusco.

I found it to be thoroughly mediocre with unimaginative dialog, chase scenes that went on too long, and bizarre Close Encounters type of imagery. I don’t regret seeing it at the theater though, as it was a fun bit of nostalgia.

194

I saw the movie in the theater today, as the finish of a complete Indiana Jones marathon together with friends. I have things I would like to add to this thread, some which have’t been mentioned:

  • Cate Blanchett looked awesome in her USSR look. Too bad Lucas had to downplay her character the very first thing in the movie (he really hates women, doesn’t he?). They should have tried harder to make her character more menacing and, well, more relevant. A lot of potential was lost there. Her russian side-kick was also interesting, but was never really fleshed out enough as a character.

  • John Hurt is a great man. His character is a vegetable state homeless person in rags and his lines are useless. However he still manage to outshine Ford on several occasions. Good job.

  • I absolutely hated the sci-fi take. I realize that it was a homage to the 50’s and also that the religious aspect had already been done several times. However, Indiana Jones is an archaeologist, that’s what motivates old religious findings and creates a theme to the series. Sci-fi is a modern thing, thusly out of place. And honestly, South America is not lacking of interesting history. It’s almost like the culture of Mexico, Peru, etc. takes a backseat to CGI space aliens.

  • I disliked the crystal skull itself. Partly because of the sci-fi reason mentioned above, but it was also aestetically displeasing.

  • I’m not sure I appreciated the glimpse of the ark. It was a cute throwback, but I thought the storage room itself was throwback enough. The point of the ending of Raiders was that the ark was “lost”, yes?

  • My favorite part was the car scene in the jungle (up until the notorious monkey scene, which is basically the point where the entire movie “jumps the shark”). Sword fighting made it even better, though there is no way Mutt should be able to keep up with Irina. I also liked the motor cycle scenes in the city, with all the extas in 50’s clothing. So even if the movie was comparably heavy on vehicle action, that was still something that was pulled off pretty well.

195

“You know what this scene needs? Some monkeys. You know what? A fucking lot of monkeys. A big shitload of CGI monkeys. Also, they should hate Communism.”

I saw this with my Peruvian wife tonight who grumbled that they played Mexican music in Nazca, that any plane going to Nazca would stop in Lima and not Cuzco and that people in Nazca don’t wear heavy alpaca wool shawls given that they’re in the desert. She also doubted hearing that you’d be hearing much Quechua in Nazca since it’s an Andean mountain dialect. Oh, and she questioned the use of Mayan temples as opposed to Incan temples. And the Peruvian (Mayan? Incan?) natives in the graveyard using Capoeira (but I said they were hired on a work permit from Brazil).

I don’t expect any of these things to affect your enjoyment of the film but this is what I got to listen to :smiley:

It was a… relatively fun movie. But it seemed like an okay action movie with Indiana Jones plunked into it. It rarely felt like a real Indiana Jones flick.

196

I saw this over the weekend at a drive-in. I went in with very low expectations, and even so I’d rate it an F. If it is possible to be an F minus, then that is what I give it. I thought it was beyond stupid. Insultingly stupid. It wasn’t “outlandish and hilarious” stupid, it was just “poorly thought out and wretchedly executed” stupid. Everything was completely predictable, and the stuff that wasn’t predictable was random and unjustified–like the villain lady saying “it’s a hive mind!” with ZERO evidence–just a magical guess. The special effects were special in the way that special ed is special. The green screen was worse than stuff filmed in the '60s. The fight scenes were long and tedious and repetitive–in fact I’m not sure they didn’t just loop 15 seconds of fight over and over for 10 minutes each time. I hated it. I HATED it. I hated it worse than I’ve hated any movie in recent memory. Utter crap.

As an example: ok, sword fight while straddling two jeeps. I could buy a scene like that if it was done well. Think having a hard time keeping your balance while the two jeeps are mostly-but-not-totally staying in relative position to each other, etc. But instead what you get is a guy filmed standing on a completely still stage in front of a green screen, superimposed on footage of two jeeps driving side by side. Awful.

(Sorry, I read about half of the first page but I didn’t like the movie enough to read 4 pages of thread about it.)

197

[QUOTE=cactus waltz]
Sword fighting made it even better, though there is no way Mutt should be able to keep up with Irina. I also liked the motor cycle scenes in the city, with all the extas in 50’s clothing. So even if the movie was comparably heavy on vehicle action, that was still something that was pulled off pretty well.
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It was stated earlier that Mutt learned fencing in one of his fancy private schools… He claims to be “good with a blade”.

198

[QUOTE=cactus waltz]

  • Cate Blanchett looked awesome in her USSR look. Too bad Lucas had to downplay her character the very first thing in the movie (he really hates women, doesn’t he?).
    [/QUOTE]
    What did George Lucas have to do with it? He’s got a story credit, but Stephen Spielberg directed the picture; you’d better talk to him. And I don’t think Stephen Spielberg hates women; he just doesn’t know a good screenplay from a bad one.
199

[QUOTE=Martini Enfield]
Oh, and incidentally: There’s no metal in gunpowder, which makes an early scene in the film completely daft and makes you go “WTF?”. Someone should have picked up on that, really…
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I saw it last Friday, and I picked up on this immediately. Now, granted, I had to calm myself down from thinking he was going to MacGuyver his way out of something. But, I let the movie play out and had fun watching it.

Up until Indy gets back home, I counted no less than six references to Raiders: some dialog, obviously the giant warehouse full of boxes, the one obvious reference where they damage a crate and you see the damn thing, but the one that stuck out in my mind was the musical score from Raiders (think of the part where Belloq opens the Ark. . .)

[spoiler]
I also thought that Winstone. . . eh. John Hurt, eh. Hurt could have been developed a bit more–he’s a damn fine actor. Winstone, I never heard of him. The KGB colonel (the one eaten by ants) ought to have been developed a little more to be more menacing, and should have died some other way instead of being carried down an ant hole. Shia, I think did well! Better than the sidekick-ness of Short Round, but not quite as useful as Sallah (who, I wished had made an appearance too).

Plot line: could have done better. There are plenty of Red Scare materials that could have been quasi-feasable. . . say, the Commies are after Nazi Gold or some other more down-to-earth thing. Alien technology? It was a bit of a stretch. Fun to watch, but you can only see so many ‘alien flicks’. The redeeming factor? Indy may hate Nazis, but I hate Soviets, so I thought it was awesome to watch. At the end of the movie, it took all of my effort not to chant USA USA!

Oh, and in retrospect, they could have made the bumbling G-Men funnier as the comic relief. There’s always comedy in the paranoia of bumbling government bureaucrats.

However, I am not as talented a movie critic as Cervaise, nor do I have much more to add that hasn’t already been said, and I have a sinus infection (not related to the movie).

In parting, I do have question: when Indiana says “I have to go in alone”, why the hell did everyone go into the space capsule/parlor with him?[/spoiler]

My personal order of preference:

Raiders
Crystal Skulls
Last Crusade
Temple ‘o’ Doom

I mean, where the hell else are you going to get a copy to the headpiece of the Staff of Ra?

Tripler
I’m buying a fedora. I don’t care what my wife says.

200

[QUOTE=Trunk]
…

Who’s willing to bet me that in "Mudd…
[/QUOTE]

heh heh

I for one will not take that bet.

You have a fine career awaiting you as a Hollywood scriptwriter sir.