Game animals that have their heart cut off (internally) by a projectile don’t immediately die. Soon, but not immediately.
In order to enjoy any of the Indiana Jones movies, it requires a major suspension of belief from the get go, so nit-picking over details doesn’t make any sense to me. I enjoyed Crystal Skull just as much as the others. If it was crazier or over the top, isn’t the whole idea of Indiana Jones crazy and over the top to begin with?
I thought it was a very good movie. I liked it a lot. Very enjoyable.
I’ve read that both Lucas and Spielberg were going through painful relationship breakups and that it resulted in a darker film than “Raiders”. I didn’t care for it, but it had its entertaining moments. There was no excuse for “Crystal”, though.
IMO, it’s supposed to be a “little” over the top. Plausible excess, not physics denying. It’s not supposed to be “magic is real”. It’s not supposed to be fantasy.
Indy escaping a temple full of 100 year old traps that still work, right ahead of a giant perfectly spherical stone? OK. Indy using a life raft as a parachute, AND not having to walk 500 miles through the Himalayas (or wherever he was)? Nope.
I will admit that the console videogame was a favorite of mine. < whipcrack > < Aieeee! >
As for the film, it’s certainly not surprising to learn that the Indian government was not particularly keen on its portrayal of Indian culture, to put it mildly. To quote Wikipedia:
Well, yeah.
Personally I’d rate it as the third best IJ film, ahead of Crystal Skull, but that’s not saying much.
Huge, huge fan of Raiders back in 1981. It’s still my favorite Spielberg movie. (Not his best movie, that would be Schindler’s List, but my favorite and most enjoyable). Saw Temple of Doom opening night in 1984. First time a movie gave me headache, during the mine chase scene*. Disappointed would be putting it mildly. One of my friends finally said. “Too much. It was just too much”. While it had a few good scenes - the suspension bridge scene was well done - overall the film was just too obnoxious, especially Willie’s constant screaming, the dumb boob fondling joke, Short Round’s “Indy, I wuv you!”.
The analogy I came up with at the time was Raiders was a like a great orator whose voice rises and falls throughout a speech, rising to emphasize the stirring parts and soothing to get through the calm parts. Temple of Doom was like having a crazy person scream in your face for two hours non-stop.
Crystal Skull is definitely the stupidest IJ movie, but Temple of Doom was the most irritating and obnoxious.
For me, it’s Raiders - 10, Last Crusade - 8, Crystal Skull - 5, Temple of Doom - 2
*It was definitely the movie. Several years later, the UCLA film archives was presenting a celebration of Paramount’s 75th anniversary and screened a double feature of Raiders and Temple. My friend had never seen Temple, so I decided to stay and rewatch it to see if it was as bad as I remembered. Got another headache in the same scene.
I don’t think this makes a good point of comparing the need for suspension of disbelieve between Indy 1 and 2. Indy either having to break into a German submarine and hide there for weeks on a long sea journey or else travelling on the deck is worse than the raft scene. But these are things that mindless fun adventure movies do, and they can still be good.
I also don’t understand the criticism of the mine escape sequence. Yeah, a lot of it is physically impossible, but with that mindset you couldn’t watch any modern CGI-fest adventure movie, let alone any super hero movie.
Lego made games out of the Indy series (and Star Wars, Harry Potter, DC Villains, etc.). Many characters have a secondary power – Indy could use his whip to swing on things, for example.
Her special power in the game was to stand there and scream. It would break glass and damage enemies.
The Lego games are really well done, and I thought this was a pretty insightful take on their part.
It’s a bad scene, but not worse. I can accept they never submerge (one assumes the Ark is lashed to the deck, so they can’t submerge) and no one sees Indy on the deck. And that they really didn’t go that far. They never left the Med, right? Because otherwise the scene is too stupid to live (Indy can breathe underwater?) and I’d be forced to say there are no good Indy movies. 
I only speak for me: the mine cart runs and runs through tunnels and large caverns, and right behind Indy the entire way is a rushing wall of water. Where is all that water coming from? Why isn’t is filling all those caverns? Who makes a single mine track that runs up down and around like Mr Toad’s Wild Ride? They make mine cart tracks for mining, not fun. It’s empty suspense.
Superhero movies (usually) follow their own internal logic. Like any fantasy movie, internal consistency makes a lot believable.
The mine cart run scene seemed designed to be turned into a theme park ride.
I’m not a fan of Temple of Doom, but but I don’t hate the life raft scene. When mythbusters tested it, they concluded it wouldn’t work… BUT, they then tested a modern inflatable escape slide, and that DID work. Which, to me, along with landing on a slope so you’re not just stopping dead, gets it into “eh, close enough” land. Life rafts are puffy, so they absorb impact. And they’re big and floppy, so they provide air resistance.
But… obviously what one is and is not willing to suspend disbelief for is extremely personal and not really worth debating.
I’d go 10, 6, maybe 7. Upon rewatching Last Crusade I was surprised at how not great it was.
The fourth one was, at best, a two. Essentially nothing about it was good.
I might like to point out that WW2 submarines surface transited as they could not ‘make’ air like modern subs [I can ask mrAru to tell me how ‘the bomb’ works, but it is a pure chemical reaction that releases oxygen to replace that which was used, and another chemical reaction that removes the CO2 from the environment] and when in surface transit, there are crew topside watching for ships and aircraft … so they would definitely have noticed Indy clinging on to the conning tower.
I hated this movie, hate this movie, and expect to continue hating it until the heat death of the Universe. It was very mean-spirited and, like comedy, mean-spirited is something Spielberg does poorly. The best thing about this movie is my imaging Rosanne Barr thinking "yeah, the best way to a mans heart IS through his chest! and when the best thing about your movie is imagined Rosanne Barr joke origin stories, it’s just a shit film.
Campy and overdone, and I love it.
WWII subs could remain underwater without suffocating the crew for a surprisingly long time.
The reason they had to travel on the surface was the ENGINES. The diesel engines could not function underwater at all. Underwater they used batteries, which did not last long and didn’t make the sub move very quickly.
Even with modern CO2 scrubbers, diesel-electric subs are limited in underwater endurance because of their engines, while nuclear submarines hardly ever bother to surface at all.
It’s the weakest of the first three films, mostly because of the pacing. The action sequence at the end is too long and without a break and it becomes tedious to watch.
Trying to build up a bad movie against two good movies by comparing it to a very, very bad movie doesn’t do justice to eitherr the bad movie or the two good movies.
:peeks in furtively:
The Last Crusade is not very good. It’s actually bad and sadly mimics RotJ in that it essentially recycles the same plot, with a bit more wiz-bang to hide its flaws. Remove the cold opening (very good) and Sean Connery and you’re left with a biblical artifact chased by evil Nazis and Indy. Replace Connery with… Chris Plummer and think about how utterly empty it is.
It’s hard to see past the racism and Capshaw’s screaming in ToD. But Mola Ram is not only the best villain in the franchise, but one of the best villains in any film ever. For that, I’m willing to give it a reluctant pass and put it slightly behind RotLA.
The original was a breath of fresh air and was best seen in the context of the era. Socially realistic dramas about divorce, suicide, gender norms, Vietnam angst and so on and so fort. Sure, there was Star Wars, and to an extent Close Encounters (laced with social drama). And here came a swashbuckling Errol Flynn-ish Technicolor extravaganza which was nothing but friggin’ fun.
Mind you, I love those drama films of the 70’s, but after a long stretch of vegan raw food, no matter how well prepared, burger, fries and a shake is mighty yummy.