From a certain shot in the trailer, I guess I’m going to have to prepare myself for the inevitable ‘Hey, Indy!’ comments when I wear my fedora.
When does the film take place? IIRC, Indy was born in 1899 right?
I had that very joke in mind as I made my post, in fact. But I figured I didn’t need to mention it, as I believed readers would realize my post’s point is not to claim that self-referential humor is somehow new to the series.
There’s also the joke in the second movie referring back to the scene from the first movie where he takes out the scary sword wielding guy with a quick gunshot.
My point wasn’t that self-referential humor is bad or new to the series. Rather, my point was that the jokes I mentioned from the trailer are lame.
In fact, the self-referential bit I quoted isn’t even a joke. It’s just a passing comment. Its pointless. Its reminding me of something I don’t need to be reminded of, for no purpose other than to remind me of that thing. No joke, no nothing.
-FrL-
The film takes place in 1957. Which would make him 58 in the movie.
Ah, I didn’t get that. But then, I also really enjoyed the “I thought that was closer” line.
De gustibus et cetera e pluribus and so on but…
Why? Did you not already know that he thought it was closer? Couldn’t you tell from the situation and the look on his face? Weren’t those funny enough already? Did you have to have the joke explained to you?
That’s what I don’t like about lines like that. They’re explaining the joke. You know what they say about a joke that has to be explained…
-FrL-
That argument strikes me as a bit similar to people who complain about poor grammar in characters’ dialogue. It’s the character, and they’re probably supposed to talk that way. Likewise, expecting Indy to follow perfect rules of humor is out of place. He’s the kind of person to make comments like we see in the trailer.
Personally, I’d wait until a full trailer is released before we start nitpicking it. Compressing an entire movie down to the length of a teaser to get people interested can be tough. I’ve seen many teasers that made me simply say “meh,” but after watching a theatrical trailer for the same movie I was instantly hooked. So, don’t judge too harshly just yet.
I don’t think this is what’s happening:
Writer: Let’s have Indy crack a joke here. What kind of joke would Indy make? What sort of sense of humor does he have?
Rather, it’s
Writer: Let’s crack a joke here by having Indy say such-and-such.
I’m not complaining about Indy’s sense of humor. He’s not cracking a joke at all. He’s just exclaiming something in alarm. We’re not laughing with him–we’re laughing (sympathetically) at him.
So for the joke to be well crafted, it doesn’t have to conform to the kind of joke I expect Indy to crack. Rather, it must be in character for Indy as an unhumorously intended comment and it must also be funny that he says it. (It’s not funny what he says, it’s funny that he says it.)*
I’ll not debate whether it’s an in-character comment for Indy (you think it is, I’m not so sure). And my claim is not that what he said is not funny. (It’s not, but it’s not supposed to be, and I don’t expect it to be.) My claim is that it is not funny that he says it. That’s what makes it a lame joke. To me, it does not (and if I were into being argumentative about matters of taste, which I am, then I would say it should not, to anyone) add one whit of humor to the situation that Indy says something expressing the suprise that is already evident on his face and can be inferred from understanding the situation. For the writers to have Indy make such a comment is for the writers to explain the joke, which is lame at best, condescending at worst. If you think it is compatible with Indy’s character that he say it, that’s fine, but certainly you don’t think Indy is such that he would have to say that line.
-FrL-
*I can’t think of a good illustrative example, but the idea is that, for example, a “straight man” says things that are not funny, but it’s funny that he says them. The character has no humorous intent, but the writer does.
I think you missed it. Indy’s not explaining the joke to us, he’s saying it to the two guys in the truck with the WTF look on their faces. It’s a bit like in Raiders during the truck chase scene when some random guy falls on the window, Indy heh’s then punches the other guy in the truck. Here Indy says “I thought it was closer” to take the other two out of the moment so he can punch them. Indy likes to use misdirection and to me that’s what he’s doing in the trailer.
I specifically said this already. I said Indy has no mental relation to the joke. It’s the writers who I accused of explaining the joke.
That makes sense. I thought he was just talking to himself.
-FrL-
This is a good contrast between what was (IMHO) right about Raiders and wrong about this film (at least as presented in brief in the teaser). In Raiders the joke (i.e. one of the workers) is splayed comically across the windshield and then falls off. Indy and the driver look at each other in surprise for a split second, then Indy punches him. In the trailer, Indy decides to crack a joke, or at least make a spurious comment, right after he’s been flung backward through the cab of a truck. Beyond the fact that he’d probably be winded, it’s just an obvious prodding by the screenwriters at the audience; “Hey guys, it’s time to laugh now!” Raiders had its share of physical slapstick humor, but it was quick moving gags in which the audience never had to be led around by the nose. The trailer shows scenes in which the gags are being thrust out as evidence that this is really an Indiana Jones film. It’s just not (to me) all that funny.
I also thought that the line in Last Crusade regarding the pictoral of the Ark was unnecessary and corny. It’s like James Bond making reference to how many times he’s saved the world; if he actually recognizes that his job consists of improbably foiling the increasingly absurd plans of megalomaniacs, he becomes too self-aware and then has to fall into the kind of self-characture that marked the Roger Moore and Pierce Brosnan eras. Referential jokes that are unconscious on the part of Jones–like reaching for his pistol to dispatch a swordsman only to find it not holstere–work, but jokes where he essentially says, “I’ve been here before,” (analogous to the endless stream of complaints in Die Hard 2 by Bruce Willis as to why he spends every Christmas climbing through ductwork) are dumb pokes at the Laugh button.
Maybe the film will be better than this, and maybe the clip editors just selected the most exaggerated examples of this for the teaser, but I’m dubious. Also, if they are having this chase scene/shootout in the same warehouse where the Ark is stored, I’m kind of peeved, because the ending of Raiders–the Ark disappearing into an anonymous crate in a goverment warehouse, never to be seen–is both classic and thematic of the whole futility of the adventure; that if Jones had never gone on this globe-spanning expedition to find the Ark, nothing would really have changed. Tampering with that, especially for a quick gag, is just poor writing.
Stranger
That’s kind of what I was suggesting in my previous post. The visual gag in Raiders isn’t easily transferred to a teaser; it requires too much setup for the full impact. The new Indy movie may be chock full of that sort of thing, but it’s hard to cram that into a 1:50 minute trailer, where you want to show hints of as many aspects of the movie as you can without giving much away. Like I said, try not to fixate on that gag too much until more is released. Wait until the full trailer at least before you let it get to you.