Marion was good. Karen Allen is also a bit long in the tooth to be making action films (although still younger than Ford) but I would watch a miniseries of the Adventures of Young Marion. Plus it would cause further apoplexy in the anti-woke brigade.
IMHO there’s nothing wrong with taking a winning formula, improving on it, and making it into a sequel. If it’s done well, there’s nothing wrong with more of the same. In fact for a certain type of experience more of the same is my preference. And yes, I agree that this is what Last Crusade did, but they did it better the second time around.
With Indiana Jones we’re dealing with a campy adventure movie. It’s basically taking Han Solo, making him the star, and putting him up against Hitler’s storm troopers instead of Palpatine’s storm troopers. But it’s fun, and there’s nothing wrong with doing it twice, especially when the second go round emphasizes the fun parts.
Now in hindsight, i can see that Doom is not a great movie compared to Raiders and Crusade. BUT as a 15 year old watching it at the cinema in 1984, i thought it was amazing, dinner scene someone mentioned and lots of other fun. I guess i was just in the target audience for this sort of adventure at that age, so i wasnt aware that it was considered a bad movie. I thought it was magnificent fun!
Now, if i watch it today, when im 53, i really cant enjoy it - Spielbergs wife is really bad, and Shortround is just annoying. I do appreciate some of the set pieces still though!
Crusade is my favourite, with Raiders a close second. Crystal Skull is pretty boring.
The new Indy film “the Dial of Destiny” looks really good in the trailers, so i think i might enjoy it! It has the look of a real Indy movie. Lets keep our fingers crossed. Although its hard to watch Harrison Ford getting older and older. Hes 80+ now or what? I wonder if Karen Allen is still around for this one, shes fun.
Give me a simple, great adventure with no extra fuzz and ill be satisfied.
I rode my bike to the mall to see this movie when I was 11—which apparently is just the right age to think that this was the greatest movie ever made. I remember being dumbstruck when he cut that bridge.
I was obsessed with this movie for a long time.
I’m sure if I were older when I saw it, I’d see the validity to all of the criticisms above. But I’ll never not love this movie because it makes me feel like I’m 11 again.
I remember being dumbstruck at “Nice try, Lao Che.”
Yeah, it was nice seeing her, and she had a decent part. It’s a 2, not a 0.
I’m also the rare person who thought Shia LaBoeuf was okay, even if he was asked to say some really stupid dialogue. The chase scene in the university town was actually pretty well done.
The Temple of Doom is my favorite. They go like this:
1 - Temple of Doom
2 - Holy Grail. . . .What’s that one called? The 3rd one. Last Crusade.
3 - The Lost Arc
4 - The Crystal Skull
Just an aside, as far as I can tell, I was one of the more generous posters with regard to Skull (3/10) - in that it’s crap, but could have been something far more if they’d spent less time building up an heir. Is there anyone in this thread though that puts 4 above any of the others? I’m not saying # 1 (although I’m sure there’s some rando out there somewhere that would), but even in third place?
I didn’t care for it. Too much screaming (Short Round mentioned it), and rather racist. Specifically, ‘Foreign people eat gross stuff.’ I’ve always pictured Spielberg and Lucas sitting around giggling saying, ‘Hey, let’s have them eat eyeball soup!’ ‘Oh! How about a snake that’s filled with snakes!’ [In unison]: ‘Monkey brains!’
I found that scene stupid and offensive.
I thought the point was they ate gross stuff under the influence of Mola Ram. It was an indication to Jones that something was wrong.
That part was, IIRC, stated clearly in the novelization, but might not have been clear on screen. I think that Jones said that Hindus of this region are vegetarian and shouldn’t be eating meat of any sort, in the novelization.
I needed more lore behind the treasure. We all know of the covenant and the holy grail, but not so much about the three magic stones.
And I needed more at stake. Indy’s enemies are always traditionally the Nazis. Perfect. But this Indian gent who is flaunting child labor laws and performing unlicensed heart surgery didn’t do it for me.
flouting even
I would also add that the plot is so thin that it’s basically non-existent: there are some bad guys using child slaves and Indy tries to free them. Also something about magic stones. Now let’s get back to the non-stop action set pieces.
I rewatched it a year ago and I actually quite liked Ke Huy Quan, though; I thought he did a good job with the rather thin material he was given.
I want to give this part a thumbs up. It reminded me that often you can have skilled actors, even child actors, that have to play the role given them. I’m reminded of Natalie Portman in the Star Wars prequels, I know she has talent, but I don’t think anyone could have done much with the dialog and ‘development’ given to those characters, especially in Episode 2’s quote romance unquote.
So, to this and @hogarth’s other point, the flaws of Temple of Doom strongly fall upon those at the top - the thin plot, the characters as caricatures, the lack of context, the casting, and so forth. I shouldn’t blame the actors for the flaws of the movie (even if I hate the characters in question).
I’ve posted it on the Dope before: the entire first half of the movie has effectively nothing to do with any doom temple at all. It’s Harrison Ford and Kate Capshaw in a 50s-style oil and water romance adventure. It’s The African Queen, or maybe Taming of the Shrew in the jungle. There’s some foreshadowing, of course, but if you didn’t know better (from the title, trailers, and general pop culture awareness) the film takes a hard left turn, almost exactly at the halfway mark, when the two quarreling lovebirds are about to make their moves.
The pinball machine is good. Lots of stuff and quotes from the first three movies. (You call this Archeology???) It also has nothing from Skulls. Coincidence?