The second film is hardly my favorite, but it’s the only film where Indy actually made an impact.
Take the original Raiders. Even without Indy and Marion, the Nazis would have still found the ark, would still have opened it, and would still have had their faces melted off.
Then in Last Crusade the Nazis would have still (eventually) found the entrance where the grail was kept, would have gotten to the knight, and would still have chosen… poorly, before the whole thing came crashing down.
At least in Temple of Doom Indy is directly responsible for killing Mola Ram and saving all the children.
I don’t know, in my opinion, the Indy/Dad interplay is perfect. Their relationship was distant because of his Grail obsession. And then they became estranged after his Indy’s mother’s death. As a result Indy goes off and becomes a bad-ass on his own. But when the two reunite, the relationship is still stuck at the time of his mother’s death. Dad is emotionally distant and doesn’t treat Indy like an adult and Indy just wants to be recognized and respected by his dad. Thats a pretty realistic dynamic IMHO.
As far as the Dad doing the things first, thats not really a fair chacterization. It takes Indy to find the X on the library floor and get the shield. They even point out that his dad wouldn’t have been able to pull it off because he was afraid of rats. As far as them bagging Ilsa, the only reason the Dad managed get any is because she was trying to get info from him. They make it pretty clear in the Castle and in the Grail Cave that if she digs anyone, it is Indy.
But I don’t WANT to watch realistic! I am watching an adventure movie, not a relationship movie. Count me in as disappointed with the third, too. And when Sean slaps, Indy, I hate it. Indy’s the star, not his father, and that scene really irritates me.
Can’t it be an adventure move with a realistic relationship dynamic?
To me part of the joy of this movie is the fact that Indy had done all of the things he has done, yet his father recognizes none of them (maybe he doesn’t know). It helps to give alot more depth to the Indy charachter. Plus, tell me you didn’t love the line about the dog being named Indiana.
If there is one characterization to complain about in this movie, it is how they made Marcus into a bumbling fool.
Too much realism detracts from the feel of the movie. I didn’t entirely dislike the third movie, some of it was amusing.
I guess I never took the Indy movies serious enough to feel he needed any depth. I mean, with the whining screechy girl in 2, annoying Ilsa in the third, and the easily-forgotten girl in the first, it’s not as though the relationships are ever real.
Sometimes you can put two big names as two main characters in a movie and they go well together. Sometimes not. This was a “not” most of the time.
But my favorite line is “No ticket.” And then everybody jumps to get their tickets out.
By the way, before turning this thread into a hijack about Indy III, I just wanted to echo my general agreement with the OP that Temple of Doom is a horrendously inferior movie to the other 2. Furthermore, having seen the general bufoon that George Lucas is, it come as zero surprise to me that he is mostly responsible for the movie. I don’t have high expectations for the fourth one, but can we pass some kind of law that only lets Spielberg do it and keeps Lucas as far away as possible?
I understand your viewpoint. I guess I just liked the relationship between Indy and his dad, and thought Connery and Ford had good chemistry. What else would you expect from a stuffy Medieval Literature professor and his somewhat dissolute son?
I also think that we have differnt viewpoints because I spent a large portion of my childhood wanting to be Indiana Jones. In fact, I still haven’t entirely given up on that dream. I took (and still take the movies) very seriously. I would be dissapointed if they never tried to develop Indy into more than a one dimensional figure, a 1930’s James Bond, if you will.
This was a big annoyance for me in part 3, among many others. Marcus in the first movie is an authority figure; if Indy reports to and respects him then he has to be pretty cool. That scene where he’s warning Indy about the adventure ahead while Indy is packing has all kinds of menace and gravitas, and it’s just Denholm Elliot sitting at the end of the bed while the camera slowly pushes in. He speaks with authority; he might even have been Indy’s equal in a previous life. A great, standout character in a movie filled with them.
Then in part 3 he’s a doofus with chicken feathers stuck to his face. :mad:
I always thought that Temple of Doom was supposed to be a little more “over-the-top”, comic-book, cliff hangar style, compared to Raiders of the lost Ark.
So the 1000 foot drop into a croc’s gullet, paragliding with an inflatable raft, and so on, are supposed to be viewed with a tongue planted in cheek. (An ode to the campy serials of yesteryear. “Will the hero be dropped into the vat of acid? Will the heroine be forced to marry the evil Dr. Killgood?” You’ll have to watch/listen to next weeks epsode…)
I have no problem with somebody playin the part of the bumbling fool. In the context of the movie, I thought it worked pretty well. My problem, for the reasons that you outlined above, is that it is Marcus. I too saw him as a mentor figure to Indy in the first movie. Like you said, he may have been Indy before Indy was. A man who is knowingly trading in smuggled antiquities isn’t a moron who gets lost in his own museum.
I must rise to the defense of the Invisible Bridge, because I think it was the coolest movie effect EVER. The narrow angle of view was the only possible point of view–Indy is standing in a doorway of a sheer cliff with no ledge. From that vantage, you can’t go right or left only forward or back. When the camera reveals the trick, it has to hover in space to get the necessary angle.
I agree with you, and there was also the pesky fact that a plane they needed to abandon because all its combustible fuel leaked out…EXPLODED when it hit the mountainside!
Here’s the IMDB Trivia page for the fourth Indiana Jones movie:
While the rumored commitment to live FX is encouraging, there are at least 5 other items in there that make me cringe.
A little more poking around tells me that the story is by apparent cheesmeister Jeff Nathanson (Speed 2, Rush Hour 2, Catch Me If You Can, The Terminal), and the screenplay by the very uneven David Koepp (Death Becomes Her, Jurassic Park, Carlito’s Way, The Paper, The Shadow, Mission Impossible, Panic Room, Spiderman, Hack, War of the Worlds). Doesn’t look promising.
Many, maybe most men always feel inferior to their fathers, and the third movie got that perfect - even Indy. And you can believe that with Connery playing the dad. I think one of my favorite moments in any of the movies is when Indy finds that his Dad slept with the girl also - the look on his face was perfect.
Count me in for another “The Temple of Doom, while not great, was better than The Last Crusade.” The Last Crusade, for me, just didn’t deliver as much as I was expecting. The Nazi chick was weak as a female “interest” and the whole film seemed to be, oh, I don’t know, trying too hard or something. Too much wink, wink, nudge, nudge. And the points made above about Marcus are spot on.
At least TTOD had bugs and hearts being plucked out and such.
Of course, for a true Indy fix, we all go to Raiders, right?
Last Crusade is my favorite.
**Raiders ** is good, while I’m watching it, but hard to remember (except for Karen Allen) afterwards. **Temple of Doom ** is (save for the opening in the nightclub) too frenetic (and somewhat racist). Last Crusade has:[ul]
[li]Sean Connery at the top of his game[/li][li]A zeppelin! (Who doesn’t love zeppelins?)[/li][li]The Holy Grail[/li][li]“He chose…poorly.”[/li][li]The ride into the sunset[/li][li]“You were named for the dog?”[/li][/ul]
Thank you. I was starting to feel alone in my opinion of that was probably one of the most clever optical illusions used in a movie.
The “Invisible Bridge” was also in keeping with one of the “rules” of the three Indiana Jones films: there can be nothing blatantly supernatural or hocus-pocus shown as the cause of something until the very end. In Raiders, the first in-your-face hint there was something otherworldly at work was when we saw the swastika on the crate containing the ark get burned off. Then, of course, there’s the whole wrath-of-God unleashed when the ark gets opened (and even that deceptively starts as a potential letdown when the ark is initially shown as having nothing in it but sand). While Temple of Doom did have the earlier scene with the guy still living after his heart was yanked out and the magic jewel getting activated at the end, it overall probably had the fewest obvious supernatural elements. The end of Last Crusade, however, made up for it by having the 800-year old guardian knight, the “he chose … poorly” scene, and earth opening up when they tried to take the cup out.
I would be dissapointed if they never tried to develop Indy into more than a one dimensional figure, a 1930’s James Bond, if you will.