I thought when they first showed the Mayans in the cemetery that they were skeletons. It sure looked like one of them had a skull instead of a face.
The guardians popped out of pods. Remember the preservapods from the beginning, well these ones had a seal (looked like a Maya-inspired gold-painted solid mahogany toilet seat) over them? Some tripwire flips a switch and the little fellows start flying out, armed to the teeth, followed by a cool puff from the fog machine.
That’s because Indy was still pretty radioactive. He was giving free xrays for a while.
It was a movie that happened to have Indiana Jones in it. That’s basically my opinon of it. Hell, I liked ToD better than this one. Hell, after the area 51 part, if the FBI had left him alone, he would have had no reason to do the rest of it.
And why didn’t the Russian soldiers shoot the aliens at the end when everything started getting glowy? Basically I agree with the other posters…it felt like a first draft that missed the vetting process and was made without further revision.
Okay, so if Area 51 had been vacated then why the heck did they leave all of the country’s “national treasures” there?
Saw it last night. Just a couple of thoughts:
[spoiler]Magnetism. They make it a big deal to show that the skull/corpses of these aliens are magnetic, yet non-magnetic objects seem to be seriously attracted to it while ignoring other highly magnetic objects. Note that the corpse attracted gunpowder from many yards away, but the Russians had no problems holding their guns so close to it. Later in the movie, Indy and Mutt have a moment, “Wait a minute! Quartz isn’t magnetic! Neither is gold!” They then make no attempt to explain it further.
I agree with most dopers in this thread. Some situations Indy was put in seemed to just have existed to show how tough he is. Surviving a nuclear explosion? I actually groaned.
The Russians weren’t the least bit menacing to me. Comical, in fact.
Mac was completely useless. Characters that flip-flop between sides more than twice need to be canned due to lack of believability. He served no plot purpose whatsoever.
I thought Shia LaBeouf did a great job as Mutt. His lines were funny, he examined everything from a teenager’s perspective (such as asking a lot of questions), and I thought the vine-swinging thing was stupid fun to watch. I did not, however, see how he would have sword skill that matched Irina’s, given that since she owned so many swords, it would be implied that she had years of sword training. Mutt did mention fencing as something he took in school, but it seems he implied he didn’t learn much from it or didn’t like it.
Indy is a master of escape, yet why didn’t it dawn on him to just use his whip when they got caught in the quicksand?
Someone asked what happened to Irina at the end. My friends who I went to see it with put it perfectly, I think: She was the one who actually returned the skull. She said, “Tell me everything,” so they did. They filled up her brain with so much knowledge that she couldn’t contain it all and was subsequently destroyed. I don’t think the aliens knew or cared whether or not she was evil.
How’d Indy get is job back, or even further, obtain a promotion?[/spoiler]
Just my two cents.
I thought it was pretty cool.
I only recently saw the first three films for the first time – they are cheesy, unbelievable, and thin on plot, but because they don’t take themselves seriously, they are funny – almost like a satire/homage to the pulp novels that inspired them.
I enjoyed it for what it was. I laughed at the ridiculous parts. I thought the action sequence with the sword fighting and moving about on speeding vehicles was great fun.
My husband and I laughed hysterically at the end when Indy solemnly said, ‘‘Their treasure was knowledge.’’ (Pause.) ‘‘Knowledge was their treasure.’’
Just as profound as the other movies. None of the Indy films are believable. It was exactly like the others in this sense. But it was good fun, just like the others. So I give it a B.
Yeah, but they didn’t have to stay cramped up in pods, did they?
Or maybe the Mayans only crept into the pods when they knew intruders approached? I suppose I can imagine them lazing about and having a beer, then suddenly having to squeeze themselves into the cave walls every time they thought someone was coming.
I’m probably over thinking this.
And on an amusing side note: Communists accuse “Indy” of anti-Soviet propaganda.
I’m not sure that would have been feasible. And they did have the perimeter guarded ostensibly.
They probably didn’t believe that the Ruskies would know that the base would be empty or able to insert a crew capable of getting in and out on such a tight schedule. Possibly the Russians wanted to do it before the blast in the hopes that it would hide some of the evidence of their coming, but only had an hour or so after the area had been cleared in which to act, or such.
(Mmm, fanwank.)
Boy, what a mess that screenplay was; really did feel cobbled together from bits of different versions.
[spoiler]In the overly-long jungle chase scene, the Commies forgot all about needing Jones and Oxley alive as guides, and devoted enormous energy to trying to kill them instead.
Though, since they ended up just following them with the help of the (I presume) little radio beacons that Mac dropped, they could have saved themselves the trouble and simply let the group escape. (As noted, Mac was pretty much a wasted character in the story.)
I guess my biggest disappointment was the lack of imagination. The Ark of the Covenant and the Holy Grail, even if they’re made-up nonsense, at least have a lot of historical resonance and tradition. But this story was stuck together from the most moronic bits of 20th century pop-folklore bullshit – Area 51, Roswell, and that Ancient Astronauts crap. It really was like a fairly simple-minded video game.
Good to see Karen Allen again, of course. Cate Blanchett was wasted (and I think with Ukranian she’s found an accent she can’t do; like Meryl Streep and Irish).[/spoiler]
I’ve never understood the confusion over the Holy Grail. Everyone thinks it just grants immortality, but the knight explains that the grail itself can not pass the seal outside. “The price for immortality,” I believe he says.
You would have to wait there, drinking from it(daily I’d guess) to maintain your life. It’s basically the “plot twist” of the movie.
I have read professional reviews that ask the same question about his father. Did Last Crusade state somewhere that I’ve missed that Indy or his Dad are immortal now? I’ve never seen it and have never understood the confusion.
Don’t even get me started about the “aliens” at the end of A.I. 
When the first Mayan guy appears at the tomb of the 7 conquistadors he is wearing a skull mask. Either Indy or Mud (I don’t care what you people say, I heard him say “My name is Mud”, which is way better than Mutt.) smacks him on the head with a big stick and the skull mask breaks off and he is revealed to be just some Mayan who knows kung fu. I know this because when I saw the skull masked guy appear I thought “oh, great, now it’s going to turn into a zombie movie.” The tie in is that Oxley’s notes say that the temple is guarded by an army of the dead.
Of course, if you’re a dead/undead warrior you shouldn’t be hurt by poison darts (the Undead type confers both immunity to poison and disease, and darts only do a d4 anyway. ;)) or machine guns. I seem to recall that in the temple the warrior guys sort of appeared out of the ceiling or something. I thought they were part of the temple and not just local natives hanging out in the rafters. I would be willing to bet good money that by the time they got to that point in the script the writers had no fucking clue what was going on anymore and didn’t really care to make it make any sense.
At the end, when the Russians were following the good guys into the city of gold, how did they get down there? We clearly saw the stairs moving into the wall to the point where the good guys fell down into the water. However, none of the Russians looked any worse for the wear or even wet when they charged into the room.
They teleported. Duh.
Seriously, it makes as much sense as most of the movie. 
Henry Jones I (Sean Connery) exclaimed “we named the dog Indiana!” in The Last Crusade so it makes sense that the kid’d be known as Mutt. But now that pop-pops is busy making his own mummified remains, Mutt is Henry Jones Jr or Indiana Jones. Bleh.
I figured they just tagged along with the camera crew.
The name Mutt was stitched into his effing jacket. :rolleyes:
It was Mutt, and it was Mary, people.
I’m surprised to hear the almost universal hatred for Temple of Doom here. I never realized that fans had apparently agreed that ToD was utter dreck and I can’t believe anyone would rate this movie anywhere above the bottom in the legacy of Indy movies. Doom felt like a little bit of an outlier because of the Christian nature of Ark and Crusade but I didn’t think it was particularly bad. It had the “try and shoot the swordsman scene” and what might have been the first time I’d seen the now cliche “crumbling rope bridge collapse scene” on film.
Why all the hate for Temple of Doom and how could it possibly be worse than this mess?
Agreed, heartily. (I don’t particularly like the quasi-hindu stuff they’re saying but that’s another matter.)
In this mess, in the cafe Indy says “I’ve been with a lot of Marys” which sparks the kid’s overly-tough reaction. Marion on the other hand is prolly a name he’d remember.
I didn’t like the Temple of Doom because:
- there was a silly food scene
- the heroine just kept screaming
- there were lots of kids in slavery
- it seemed full of stereotypes (but not in a witty way like the other films)
- when a rope bridge collapses and slams violently against a rockface, everyone shuold fall off