Unless you enjoy watching Lucas defile the memory of yet another great American film series, skip it.
Choice moments: an Ow, My Balls! joke that went on for what felt like half an hour. Cate Blanchett, the psychic heavy with the kaleidoscopic emotional palette of Oddjob, does two “psychic” things. She tries and fails to read Harrison Ford’s mind, then she opens a door while a bunch of burly guys with crowbars stand by and watch. A special forces squad of Russian WWII vets repeatedly fail to hit a slow-moving target fifteen feet away with automatic weapons. The American government tries to get Ford with a near-point-bank nuclear blast (unintentionally, it appears) and he escapes by hiding in a refrigerator. The Maguffin basketball game (it’s a skull. made of crystal.) that takes up 2/3 of the film might as well have court markings and a ref. The ending’s point was stolen from a better Jones film and CGI was borrowed from a second-tier SciFi original movie about giant snakes. Do we shoot Indy, or do we need him alive? Who knows? It seemed to change by the minute.
At least the Spielbergian gratuitous second ending only went on for four years eight months and three days a week and a half five or six minutes.
Honestly, I can make a better Jones film by closing my eyes and reconstructing the better parts of Temple of Doom from ten-year-old memories. There was the part where he’s about to shoot the two sword guys and realizes that he has no gun…and then the bugs scene…I think there was a shower scene with Marion, or I might be remembering that wrong. There was definitely something kind of funny that involved riding an elephant backwards. Short version, I just had more fun and it didn’t cost a cent.
Stimpy
Agreed. It was a disaster. There were some parts that were amusing, but for the most part it had the unmistakable stink of Lucas on it.
** Spoiler Alert **
I think the worst part for me was the ants. I mean, really? The story required ants capable of devouring a grown man in two minutes? There was no other possible way to shoot an action scene to make it interesting and exciting? I have a suggestion for the director, take a look at, oh I don’t know, maybe INDIANNA JONES I and III MAYBE?
I kept waiting for Jar Jar to show up. Now that would have been fun.
Drew J Jones
Why’s any of that surprise you? Lucas seems to go out of his way to shit on the idea of plots and consistency. He’s the Hillary Clinton of the movie business.
And he just gets worse and worse.
Phoenix Woman
Lucas allegedly freaked out when he turned over the authorial reins to Lawrence Kasdan and Leigh Brackett for Empire Strikes Back and they got critical raves. From then on, he’s insisted on ruining his own franchise. (Funnily enough, the movie tie-in novels for Menace, Clones, and Syphillis are apparently better, dialogue-wise, than what Lucas actually had thrown up on screen. But I can’t be arsed to find out.)
Zifnab
Wow. Yeah, I admit it definitely wasn’t my favorite Indie movie by a long, long, long shot. But I think you need to revisit the original three before you completely rag on the “hit in the ball” jokes, mook weapon accuracy, and catch-the-skull pick up games. This wasn’t so far off the original Indie movies that I’d call it hacktacular.
That said, the entire adventure basically had all the characters along for the ride. No one seemed seriously compelled to dodge bullets and flee from angry natives and solve random puzzles unless we subscribe to the theory that Jones is such a die-hard archaeologist that he’ll drop his life to go and kinda-fight / kinda-help a bunch of Communist infiltrators he only met last week.
It was like Indiana Jones, not Harrison Ford, was the one who got handed a few million dollars to go through the motions one more time.
And the end – crappy special effects not withstanding – was just horrible. I was bitterly disappointed that this was the best dramatic conclusion the guy who gave us “Scrambling for the Holy Grail after his Nazi Girlfriend falls to her death and his estranged father tries to save him over a lifelong goal” could come up with. It really was just a rip-off of the ending to Lost Ark, except… you know… less exciting.
:( All-in-all, Spielberg and Lucas seem to have gotten out of the business of making movies and into the business of printing money. Had this not had the name “Indiana Jones” stamped on it, I’d have given it a B- for engaging action with no meaningful plot. As these guys did just sucker me into a theater long enough to rape happy childhood memories of sharing an amazing movie with my own father, I’ll forgo the rating and cry myself to sleep.
I just don’t understand what would compel anyone to piss over his own legacies like this. Just keep him the hell away from “Back to the Future” please.
matt
I was willing to go into this not expecting the most amazing film in the world….
I was just hoping for classic Indy stuff… But this was totally missing the air of previous Indy films…. the academic/symbolic messages usually found through wonderful storytelling in the first 3 films were rushed through, and the Skull beings…. well, while I thought they were kinda cool, they had no business in an Indy film….
really, it seemed more like “Raiders of the Lost Stargate: Deep Space What-the-Fuck”
[for the record, I love Star Trek and Stargate the film…. ]
SamFromUtah
I dunno, I had a good time with it. I must just be tasteless.
rachel
Please tell me Lucas had nothing to do with the dialogue. The man has a tin ear for language and no idea how real people talk.
mapaghimagsik
It was Indiana and the Close Encounters.
But, I was entertained. I went in wearing the Philistine hat. I didn’t like the ants. I thought they weren’t done very well, and I thought the gophers and the monkeys were useless.
The SO cursed, *cursed* the name of Lucas.
Tim C.
My reaction:
Aliens. Really? Aliens. 19 years between sequels, and you give us fucking aliens. ooooohhhhhh Excuse me, their “interdimentional” aliens, so they do whatever the fuck they want without any regard to any fucking internal consistency whatsoever.
Aliens. Really.
Warren Terra
There is something deeply, disturbingly wrong with George Lucas. I haven’t seen this new film; I’ll wait for the Netflix, and probably regret it even then (even having heard all the rumors, I was flabbergasted at the Suck of the last Star Wars film).
Speaking of which, it really is amazing that something as redolent of Epic Fail as this gets distributed … I blame you lot who still get suckered into seeing this crap in theaters.
Bey
Eh, don’t be such an elitist.
“Hold me like you did at the lake on Naboo.” Poetry, I tells ya. Pure poetry.
Re Indy – I heard it was pretty good. But then I do not require more than the most rudimentary plot from Indy – just lots of rollicking action, a fedora, and a bullwhip.
Rawr.
Incertus
My reaction on leaving the theater was that 1) the scariest baddies in the film were the FBI agents and 2) Indy surviving an H-Bomb test by hiding in a lead-lined refrigerator was probably the most believable moment in the whole fucking thing.
Delia
Damn. I was hoping for something fun to distract me from the Attack of the Clintonistas and now you all tell me I’m better off watching reruns of Stargate SG-1?
And to top it off, my daughter’s visiting, and she’s busy reading phenomenology and Frankfurt School, and won’t even watch scifi with me, although she will occasionally discuss the horribleness of the Clinton gang. But that gets old.
Darkness
Oh, thank god, I thought I was going to have to see a movie. Thanks for the review that lets me avoid that.
On the other hand, has anyone seen OSS 117? As a Syrah-sucking elitist, I WAS thinking of seeing that.
Bey
Incertus, my ex father in law was at one of the nuclear test on Bikini Atoll while he was in the Navy.
They handed out sunglasses for protection.
Warren Terra
Darkness raises a good point: why not a thread of things to actually go and see, either in theaters or at home? I realize it is one of the few (and perhaps even then arguable) strengths of us commenters, but must every thread here be about snark?
Mwangangi
I laughed all the way through the movie. Not the bitter type of hopeless laughter I use when I see Terry on TV running the goalposts back another 30 yards, but the real carefree laughter of seeing your friend doing karaoke. I had a good time at the movie, perhaps I didn’t have the original films up on a holy plinth.
I’m also not the first person on the internet to notice that ‘siafu’ is a name for ants used in East Africa (yes my name is Kenyan, but that didn’t require local knowledge, you could find that out on the Science Channel [or other Discovery network]).
At least the script blames aliens (even if they are trans-dimensional) for another culture’s architecture; then again AVP was there first.
I’ll know we’ve reached watered down revisionist archaeological parity when they blame Roman architecture on aliens also…
Incertus
Yeah, but did you see the scene? He’d have been pulped inside that fridge the way it was tossed around.
clone12
To be fair, it’s not as if the first three Indiana Jones movies paid much attention to laws of physics or anything. Jumping out of an airplane on a rubber life raft?
Bey
I haven’t seen it yet, but I can just imagine. Unless they’re truly awful though, I can usually just la-la-la my way through stupid movie physics.
I draw the line at banking spacecraft however.
Desert Rat
Phoenix Woman wrote:
“(Funnily enough, the movie tie-in novels for Menace, Clones, and Syphillis are apparently better, dialogue-wise, than what Lucas actually had thrown up on screen. But I can’t be arsed to find out.)”
Actually, the movie adaptation of Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, is considered to be the best Star Wars novel ever written. Considering that throws it up against things like Timothy Zahn’s Thrawn Trilogy, that’s not faint praise. The novel is much, much better than the film.
Truthfully, though, the Phantom Menace novel was even more tedious than the film…so it can be worse.
(/geek)
From what I’ve heard, the storyline for Crystal Skull was actually dialed down from the weirdness of Lucas’ original story idea. Pretty scary to think about, that.
Warren Terra
There’s no law of physics that would stop you from jumping out of an airplane on a rubber life raft.
Surviving the experience, on the other hand …
Darkness
Lack of adherence to physics was one of the things that doomed comic books when kids started becoming science-savvy. Movies have been suffering financially too, and honestly, the cartoon level survival of real-life characters is one of the things that really irks me. A little exaggeration is fine, but it’s like they think the audience is made up of 9-year-olds or something. I see cage fighting and rodeos, I know that the human body will withstand. There is a lot of artistic room within the realm of the possible.
Funny, but the Harry Potter movies, with all the “magic” which is obviously not real and the thing that bugged me the most was the tree swinging the kids around at a speed that would have broken their necks. Oh, gods, and don’t even get me started on movie-makers’ complete lack of computing and networking comprehension. UGH.
You, know I think I just figured out why the movies that succeed are the ones that clearly aren’t taking themselves seriously. Hollywood is too messed up to produce something entertaining that isn’t supposed to be stupid too. Because stupid comes along by default, so they better take advantage of it or it just doesn’t click.
Gemina13
Indiana Jones And Who The F*ck Let George Lucas In The Room With The Script?
Sounds like the last four or ten movies made by George Lucas.
Thanks, but I’ll be over here in the corner, curled up with Raiders of the Lost Ark and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, murmuring, “Don’t worry, babies. We won’t let the bad man with the evil ’70s hair hurt you any more.”
Joshua Norton
The M&M commercials are pretty cute, though. Maybe the folks at the ad agency should have written script for the movie.
tom.a
I wouldn’t say it’s that so much that as the ones who understand the fine line between realism and dramatization. I’m watching Big Trouble in Little China right now, and Patrick Swayze, in a wheel chair teetering at about a 90 degree angle on the edge of falling into a pit just pulled himself up by sheer strength (the mullet probably helped too). This film rules, simple because it knows it HAS to cross the line of reality in order to be entertaining. The first Indy movie did a great job, went right up to the line but stayed “real”. The next 2 failed in my view, particularly the 3rd though I did find that more entertaining that Temple of Doom. This latest fiasco obviously has Lucas’ hand in the writing, he’s absolutely horrible and I’m surprised Spielberg didn’t have more input in what aspects of his crappy writing to keep as Spielberg has a much better sense than Lucas about where that line between reality and non-reality is.
YellowJournalism
You don’t need the “with the script” part.
Chuck Butcher
Movie physics? C’mon now, for years you’ve watched gunshot wounds toss people across rooms and not laughed your ass off. Newton’s Third Law repealed…
Ned R.
I love your taste in movies but…surely you mean the man of whom Patrick Swayze is but a dirty dancin’ photocopy, the one and only Kurt Russell.
As for this new Indy film which I just saw tonight. Er.
Ned R.
Mind you, I am now tickled by the thought of Kurt Russell as Snake in Ghost.
mere mortal
I must have missed those parts of Temple of Doom. That movie was, um, not Scottish.
But yes, Crystal Skull was very much a Lucas script, a pedestrian run through the motions sort of movie that officially fulfilled its obligation to the property, but wasn’t at all impressive.
Especially with Iron Man running at the same time. Much as Revenge et. al. were running against LotR, the difference in quality and passion were impossible to dismiss.
tom.a
Apologies, I did mean Kurt Russell. I just read an article on Swayze, hence the mix up.
Justin
It was great.
Honestly, are interdimensional thingees really less believable than a ~3500 year old box that melts faces, a dude that single -handedly rips beating hearts out, or a 900 year old knight guarding a bunch of cups, all of which except one make your face melt?
Quality scripts were never what made the Indiana Jones films delightful.
Warren Terra
People are writing articles on Swayze?
TenguPhule
So we can scratch one movie off for this summer.
How was Iron Man and Prince Caspian?
Phoenician in a time of Romans
I tell you, I’m sick to death of Hollywood using “alien” to mean “any magical shit we pull out of our asses”. When was the last time you saw a believable alien movie?
Okay, okay, so Alien vs Predator was just stupid, not magic dressed up.
I want The Mote In God’s Eye.
Incertus
He’s got pancreatic cancer and might not live out the year, so he’s been in the news a little lately.
Warren Terra
I didn’t know about Swayze being ill. Tragic for him and his loved ones, though I’m still not sure it’s anyone else’s business.
It’s a fun yarn, with less of Pournelle’s absurd politics than some of his other work, although it keeps the flat characters and stereotyped villains, but The Mote In God’s Eye is decidedly not hard science fiction.
Sirkowski
Those fucking CGI prairie dogs…
Michael D.
Geeeez. Give a guy a PhD……..
Thepanzer
It officially jumped the shark for me during the tarzan vine sequence and was topped off when the monkeys attacked the reds in their car. Not only did Shia catch up to a moving convoy tarzan style but the monkeys help him attack the bad guys??? WTF? I actually liked the cheese in Temple of Doom but this crosses the line into Wiley Coyote territory. Anyone remember the bit with the amphibious boat landing in the tree which dips them into the river and then snaps back to hit the reds? Or maybe the falling down 3 waterfalls bit? Gah.
George Lucas is again demonstrating the “Michael Jackson” effect of what happens when you have 1) tons of money 2) hermit yourself from the rest of the world in a protective bubble and 3) only listen to people who tell you how great you are. He’s lost all perspective for film making.
cleek
CSI Miami & VB
wvng
Yep, Michale D., Tim F. is now officially an expert on everything. Like the Scarecrow.
My daughter just got a B.S. in Anthropology. She was worried that the film would be bad, because every kid she knew in Anthro got interested due to the Indie films. She hated it, particularly the aliens.
spoosmith
I saw it on the weekend and by the time we were an hour into it I counted about half a dozen incidents where, in real life, Indy would have broken a hip. I found it very distracting.
dbrown
Speaking of a possible movie – what about John Carter of Mars? That would be fun.
As for the lastest Indie movie- not as bad as Temple but rather slow (for this type of movie, that is damning.)Tim hit all the bad parts (much of the film.)
jake
All I needed to see was “George Lucas” and “Script.”
The man is to creativity what black holes are to light.
Too bad, I like H. Ford.
kind of an off white
Wow, people actually like Last Crusade? Never could figure out exactly what turns me off about it so much; the elements are fine on paper but something about the way the whole thing comes together just leaves me cold. Temple was crap but it committed to its crapdom.
I’m not sure Lucas is entirely to blame here–Speilberg’s the guy with the hard-on for aliens. He really goes in for that Chariots of the Gods stuff. One of his current projects is a website for alien abductees, because, y’know, those people need reinforcement. I remember a great bit from one of the producers on the miniseries “Taken,” who was talking about his surprise at how seriously Speilberg took the subject matter. Totally paraphrasing, but they had something like the following conversation:
Producer: So wait, you actually believe this stuff?
Speilberg: If these people haven’t really been abducted by aliens, then how is it possible that they always give the same physical description?
Producer: Gee, I don’t know, Steve, maybe someone made a movie about little aliens with big heads in the late 70s that made an enormous impact on the cultural consciousness?
donnah
We saw a double bill at the drive in over the weekend. First movie was Indiana Jones/Crystal Skull and the second movie was Ironman. After sitting through the torture that was Indiana Jones, Ironman was a revelation. The first five minutes of Ironman were better than the entire Indiana Jones movie.
I was sad to see Harrison Ford playing Indiana Geriatric Jones. The highlight of this sad, sad movie was seeing Karen Allen again, but to be honest, her acting skills weren’t even tapped. Poor old John Hurt was a shadow of a character and the jeep-jumping swordfight (where were the Ewoks?) was a huge waste of time.
Go see Ironman, forget Indiana Jones.
Tom
I liked it. A lot, actually. Saw it yesterday, so had my expectations lowered by the lukewarm reviews, but I can’t see how someone would hate this movie.
If you go in knowing you won’t be getting Raiders of the Lost Ark — that film was made nearly 30 years ago by different people — then, I think, you’ll have a good time.
Indiana Jones has always been about revisiting the serials of the 30s, and in that context, this film works. It’s probably the most light-hearted film of the series, but the action is great. Ending doesn’t come together as well as it could have, but that didn’t bother me as much as I had feared.
I had no problem with Shia or his character. This is a good film, make no mistake about it. I enjoyed it more than Last Crusade and would might rank it ahead of that one if I was forced to rank the films by gunpoint.
Honestly, I can make a better Jones film by closing my eyes and reconstructing the better parts of Temple of Doom from ten-year-old memories.
Um, no you can’t. Not even close. Not even in your wildest day dreams.
jake
Point of order (since the S.O. likes to scare the shit out of himself by reading about this stuff):
Spielberg’s aliens are based on descriptions given by some alleged abductees. Of course, there’s no way to tell if those matching descriptions are all based on something all of those people heard or read at some point. So file it under harmless quirks. As delusions go it beats the hell out of “God told me to open fire in a McDonalds.”
Tim F.
What are you talking about? Having a blog already makes me an expert on everything. The PhD just opens some new doors for my day job.
kind of an off white
Jake–we’re both right! Speilberg was doing a big-budget riff on the Barney and Betty Hill case, and he used their description for the aliens.
Thing is, though, before Close Encounters, there was no standardized alien form. People saw all sorts of stuff; straight-up humanoids, lizard people, robots, interstellar Bigfoots, etc. Post-Close Encounters, all you get is the iconic “Communion” type. Kinda like how round UFOs weren’t the norm until someone coined the phrase “flying saucer.”
Not trying to pooh-pooh the whole thing–I think alien abduction’s a pretty interesting phenomenon. I just don’t think anyone’s really being abducted by aliens.
Lee
FWIW, my 8 year old girl loved the last Indy movie.
I think you are looking back at the other Indy movies with some rose colored glasses on. We just got thru watching the last 3 prior to watching this one. They all had their moments where they were no longer believable and you just had to be go with the entertainment.
donnah,
Would that drive-in happen to be in Ennis Texas?
Nicole
I always thought one could trace the backlash against the women’s lib movement in the 1980’s through the Indiana Jones films:
Raiders: woman as equal- can drink men under table, brash, tough
Temple: woman is kind of useless- screams a lot, upset about damage done to fingernail, man is really kind of a jerk to her but she still wants him bad
Crusade: woman is evil- Nazi, greedy, and sleeps with both son and father, but gets her just desserts in end, even though man tries to save her from herself
I thought the new one was kind of meh, but it brought Marion back. For that, I can forgive a lot of anthropomorphized monkeys.
Nicole
I always thought one could trace the backlash in the 1980’s against the women’s lib movement through the Indiana Jones films:
Raiders: woman as equal- can drink men under table, brash, tough
Temple: woman is kind of useless- screams a lot, upset about damage done to fingernail, man is really kind of a jerk to her but she still wants him bad
Crusade: woman is evil- Nazi, greedy, and sleeps with both son and father, but gets her just desserts in end, even though man tries to save her from herself
I thought the new one was kind of meh, but it brought Marion back. For that, I can forgive a lot of anthropomorphized monkeys.
Nicole
Sorry for the double post- I went back to fix grammar too late. Oh, my kingdom (of crystal skulls) for an edit function…
b. hussein canuckistani
Iron Man has stolen all the movie fu for this summer. See it. Best comic book movie ever. Yeah, a physicist might quibble with it, but it’s a comic book for f’s sake.
Narnia was pretty lame, it suffers from the Lord of the Rings problem of sucking out all the plot in order to have more big battle scenes.
I guess I’ll see the new Indiana Jones when it comes out on video, mostly for Karen Allen, whom I thought was awesome in the first one.
Steve
I thought the Indy movie was ok, certainly no worse than any of the other dozens of Indy I wannabe’s that have been made over the years. My biggest problem is that the special effects have gotten out of control and made all these movie boring.
The jeep chase scene doesn’t hold my interest because there is nothing scary about it. You look at the background effects and say feh! its all fake.
But the motorcycle chase scene at the beginning is great, with real stunt men doing real stunts. That is exciting film making, too bad they couldn’t hold that level of action.
That is also what made Tarrentino’s part of “Grindhouse” interesting (after all the talking was finished)>
Andrew
As a computer graphicist, allow me to propose a 5 year moratorium on CG in movies.
Bob In Pacifica
Girlfriend didn’t want to see it. I might sneak off to a matinee this week or just wait for it on Netflix. My stomach had serious problems last night, don’t know the cause, and I need to wait a few days before I risk a tub of popcorn, a package of red whips and a large coke.
marjowil
well, I enjoyed it, but didn’t question it too much. Did have a Stargate thought near the end, though. What I liked most was 1) I thought Harrison was having fun, 2) Karen Allen looked like a real woman, i.e., her face wasn’t made of plastic, and 3) they were real light-handed about the romantic/family angle, didn’t spend a lot of time on “playing hard to get” but just went into the romance easily without a lot of pretend angst. And 4) I always liked the idea of Indy as Oxford professor. So… I’m not hard to please. True, the gophers were stupid.
Zifnab
Prince Caspian was ok. They dove straight into the “action” and didn’t give the necessary amount of love to character development and plot. You never really get to relate with Caspian himself, which is a shame.
That said, the action scenes are good, the acting is solid, and the Lion is still Jesus.
Iron Man was fucking awesometastic. See it twice.
marjowil
that said, though, Iron Man totally rocked.
tBone
This.
Indiana Jones and the Annoyingly Long Title certainly wasn’t as good as Raiders, but then, what is? It fits very comfortably with Temple of Doom and Last Crusade, though.
Then again, I never understood the huge backlash against the Star Wars prequels, either (except for Jar Jar).
Tom in Texas
I’ve been to that drive in. It’s one of the only ones I’ve ever seen, and I think the only one that was still functioning.
I think your point about rose colored glasses is extremely valid. Star Wars, for instance, was incredibly woodenly acted, with a trite predictable script and unbelievable plot scenarios. In the end, you were 8 and enjoyed it. At 40, you still enjoy it because every time you watch it you feel 8 again. A new Star Wars or Indy doesn’t have that same emotional connection and feels fake.
Tom
As a computer graphicist, allow me to propose a 5 year moratorium on CG in movies.
MINOR SPOILER
But you have to admit (if you’ve seen the film), the shot if Indy looking at the CG nuclear blast was pretty freaking cool.
4tehlulz
It also doesn’t have George Lucas putting in pure fail like Jar Jar Binks.
Jar Jar made me embarrassed to be in the theater.
SnarkyShark
Iron Man frickin ruled! RDJ just chewed up the role of Tony Stark. Usually when they break out the Swarthy middle eastern terroirst types I cringe, but for some reason it worked.
CGI?-the best yet.
Dennis - SGMM
I wouldn’t go that far but, CG seems to have a reverse neutron bomb effect on some movies; the actors are left standing while plot, dialog, character arc, and believability are all left dead on the ground.
crack
I saw Harold and Kumar II sunday night and Indy monday morning. I wouldn’t have thought a movie could have made Harold and Kumar seem plausible.
tom.a
Iron Man was fantastic (if you haven’t already figured that out from the numerous posts above). If you’re not sure what to see go see that.
SamFromUtah
If you go in knowing you won’t be getting Raiders of the Lost Ark—that film was made nearly 30 years ago by different people—then, I think, you’ll have a good time.
Agreed – and if you go in not determined to sneer at it, you have an even better chance of having a good time.
Are people really going to an Indiana Jones movie and expecting “believable”?
Tim F.
People need to stop thinking that my biggest issue is believability. It’s not. My beef is that the movie wasn’t very entertaining. The dialogue was sophomoric, each new character was less interesting than the last and half of the gags were cringe-inducingly dumb.
donnah
“Would that drive-in happen to be in Ennis Texas?” -Lee
Nope, it’s the Melody 49 drive-in theater outside Dayton, Ohio. It’s a great drive-in with screens at both ends of the large lot. On the larger screen last weekend we had Indiana Jones and Ironman, and on the smaller screen, they were showing Prince Caspian and the new National Treasure.
Not the same as the acoustics of an indoor theater, but hey, drive-ins are fun!
MBunge
“Star Wars, for instance, was incredibly woodenly acted, with a trite predictable script and unbelievable plot scenarios. In the end, you were 8 and enjoyed it.”
Uh, no. Star Wars is actually a great movie that was enjoyed by a heck of a lot more folks than just 8 year olds when it first came out.
Look, does Star Wars have the depth or complexity of something like The Godfather or, I don’t know, The Deer Hunter or something? No. But it’s not supposed to! Star Wars is a melodrama and an extraordinarily well done one. I think one of the reasons the new Indy flick sucks so much is that it buys into the modern attitude that melodrams can’t and don’t have to be any good.
Mike
SamFromUtah
She tries and fails to read Harrison Ford’s mind, then she opens a door while a bunch of burly guys with crowbars stand by and watch. A special forces squad of Russian WWII vets repeatedly fail to hit a slow-moving target fifteen feet away with automatic weapons. The American government tries to get Ford with a near-point-bank nuclear blast (unintentionally, it appears) and he escapes by hiding in a refrigerator.
…and it was sophomoric dialogue, uninteresting characters, and cringe-inducingly dumb gags – not believability issues – that made these a problem.
Sorry I didn’t pick up on that.
CFisher
Meh. I didn’t think it was that bad. Though, admittedly, I probably would have raked it over the coals if it didn’t have two of my favorite movie characters in it.
My biggest complaint would be the CGI. It just looked bad. I was hoping Spielberg could have slammed the brakes on the Lucas-CGI love affair, but maybe they’ll save that for the sequel: Indiana Jones and the Search for the CGI-Less movie.
My other complaint would have been that Indy wasn’t quite as involved in puzzle solving, trap dodging, and the like, but given Ford’s age, I’ll cut the guy a little slack.
I’d probably score it as maybe a smidge above ToD, but beneath Raiders and Last Crusade.
stickler
I dunno. I echo the comments above about how crappy the previous three Indiana Jones flicks actually were. Our kids hadn’t seen them, so I bought the three-pack at Costco and we watched them last week, then we went to Crystal Skull in the theater.
The first movie, of course, was pretty damned good. The other two, well, less so. Seeing Crystal Skull after those sort of put it in perspective. Was it great moviemaking? Har. Did it have stuff blowing up real great? Hell yeah. Oh, and big-ass ants, and a nuclear bomb, and a good motorcycle chase at the beginning. (Why hire Cate Blanchett, though, and put her in dumpy overalls for the whole movie? WTF?)
Overall, about what you would expect from Spielberg, Lucas, and Harrison Ford. Not high art, but my 8 year old loved it.
Tim C.
It wasn’t the lack of believability, it was the lack of any internal consistency with the other movies. Indy was always about religious themes not just a random episode of Stargate. Maybe as a sci-fi nerd, I’ve been over this ground so many times that it was no longer interesting to me. Besides Indy has always been about gods (and usually God). Not freaking “interdimentional” (meaning that way we have to spend no effort what so ever explaining their motivations and actions) aliens. Hinduism and Christianity have rich detailed back-stories that the previous movies could draw from. The Roswell/Alien/Danken stuff is pretty thin gruel by comparison.
Zifnab
Ironic that a game by the same name ends up in so many movie theaters.
There, at least, I disagree with you. Harrison Ford continued to maintain his respectable level of awesomeness. The script wasn’t stellar, but it wasn’t bad. I was even able to appreciate how Shia LeBeouf even managed to pull of greaser motorcycle jockey drop-out without making me gag.
The premise of the movie was dull and uninspiring. The action scenes and the mystery scenes failed to contemplate one-another. The story arc was poorly written. You never really understood why **SPOILER** Ox put the skull back the first time **SPOILER OVER** for instance. And the dramatic conclusion was a giant flop.
But the acting was good.
bostondreams
Part of that has to do with the setting. Nazi=mystical power, Soviets=scientific power. Lucas and Spielberg talked about this transition, actually, though I don’t have the link now.
Personally, I loved it, but maybe because I am a fanboy. Loved the little references to the tv show and the other films, from the cameo of the Ark to dialouge lifted from Crusade, between father and son.
SamFromUtah
Harrison Ford continued to maintain his respectable level of awesomeness. … The premise of the movie was dull and uninspiring. The action scenes and the mystery scenes failed to contemplate one-another. The story arc was poorly written. … And the dramatic conclusion was a giant flop.
OK, I’ll agree with all that. Still fun, though.
The Other Steve
We watched Raiders of the Lost Ark last night. My girlfriend has seen none of these movies, so I’m forcing her to watch the first three before we go to see this.
I think you need to put things in perspective. Raiders was a BAD movie. It was fun, entertaining and such, but it was really quite bad.
It’s great if you are 12 years old, however.
slag
From a distance, it looks to me like a not-good rehash of Raiders. Interestingly, the previews made it seem like Spielberg’s cartoonishly ham-fisted direction was more the problem. Lucas script with Spielberg direction does not a good combination make.
Both Temple and Last Crusade sucked badly.
Tom
I think you need to put things in perspective. Raiders was a BAD movie. It was fun, entertaining and such, but it was really quite bad.
Uh, there’s no way by any logical measure that you can say Raiders of the Lost Ark is a bad movie. It may be the most perfect adventure movie ever made. It’s an incredible movie.
Maybe as a sci-fi nerd, I’ve been over this ground so many times that it was no longer interesting to me. Besides Indy has always been about gods (and usually God).
It’s not pushed very hard, but it is an implication that the aliens are the gods of all ancient people.
Andrew
Raiders is a GREAT movie. From the amazing set piece opener, to the fantastic settings, truly scary Gestapo villain, great stunt action, Ford’s charm and humor, to, well, almost everything else. Okay, the face melting was a little silly, but it was fantastic and it stands up well today.
Andrew
Similarly, Star Wars was a GREAT movie. Certainly, some people think the acting is a little wooden (I think Hammill is fairly believable as a punky kid), but the amazing settings and art direction, the innovative special effects, Ford’s humor (again), excellent pacing, epic villans, etc. add up to an amazing film. Throw in feeling like a kid again and it’s no surprise that it’s one of the most popular films of all time.
There were plenty of space ship movies in the 1970s but none of them had the ingredients of Star Wars.
mitch
i was afraid of that…
Martin
Having a swarthy middle eastern good guy helped that a lot. The bad guys were still walking bags of evil for no purpose to some degree, though at least they were given *some* purpose, which was also an improvement from the usual ‘kill the capitalist infidels’ that we are subjected to.
I still don’t know why the CEO of a company goes into a war zone for a product pitch. Never heard of Nevada?
But Iron Man rocked. And RDJ was why. Perfect casting.
El Cid
It was enjoyable enough, but I just don’t get why they have to choose to make big stunts which are purposefully impossible instead of taking 30 more seconds to say to oneself, okay, how likely will most of the audience perceive you surviving an atom bomb from a mile away by stepping into a fridge?
Unrealistic, fine, but is it now too anal retentive for the big director types to want to even have “suspension” of belief over “permanent expulsion” of belief?
If not, why does Indiana Jones have to run from people shooting at him? Why doesn’t he just stand there and let people shoot him and have all the bullets inexplicably bounce off his buttons and glasses, and then he kills all the bad guys by snapping his fingers so loud their heads all explode?
Dennis - SGMM
“Indiana Jones and the Temple of Dung”
tBone
I’ve seen a lot of complaints about the fridge scene. Personally I don’t think it was much more unrealistic than a guy being dragged underneath a moving vehicle, crawling down the undercarriage and popping out the other side and then being dragged behind it by a whip, all to no noticeable ill effect.
Vlad
Argh! Vlad smash!
I just wrote a big long post, and it didn’t take becuase the stupid adserver made the connection idle.
El Cid
tBone: Maybe, but we’ve all probably encountered people who survived odd car accidents & whatnot, but not too many who survived atom bombs from a mile away.
Either that, or I missed all those downtown Hiroshima / Nagasaki fridge and freezer survival tales.
SnarkyShark
Plus the fact that they were all in the bag for Jeff Bridges. No stupid ideology bullshit, just good old fashion greed.
So it wasn’t some commentary on the current real situation, other than wealthy arms-merchants are assholes. No stretch of the imagination there.
But tell me, “What did you do about the icing problem?”
That’ll be a classic!
MNPundit
Yes, well. Lucas is a man-child when it comes to movies so I’m not a fan but some are. I can live with that, I was never a Star Wars nerd anyhow and long since grew out of Star Trek (though I occasionally enjoy an episode still) but I’ve hated Spielberg for a long time. He has no desire (dare I say ability?) to direct an intelligent movie. Even Schindler’s List was all emotion and no brain.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
Agree with everyone else that IJatCS totally sucked in a laugh and point and laugh some more way, except for one part which was almost worth the price of admission (OK, I went to a mantinee with my kids, so it was only $6.75).
The nuclear test – refrigerator scene.
Yeah, I know, he never would have survived. But there was something about that scenario, the stumbling into a fake town full of mannikins, knowing that the whole place was about to get Gamma-Rayed, roasted and blasted to kingdom come, and frantically running around looking for something like a blast shelter to hide in with only seconds remaining before YOU ARE GONNA DIE that really got under my skin in a creepy, atavistic back to the Cold War sort of way. That scene was unforgetable.
It almost made the whole big ball of suck and stupid that was the rest of the movie worth it.
Josh
a package of red whips and a
large cokeMr Pibb.Fixed
Sorry, couldn’t help it.
rawshark
I laughed when Ford used the line that appeared in every Star Wars movie. ‘I have a bad feeling about this.’
Did Karen Allen do any acting?
I hate being bludgeoned with foreshadowing. Once Mutt mentioned he learned fencing I saw a pointless sword fight in his future. I also thought his hair was going to get an acting credit along with the motorcycle. Did people really comb Coca Cola through their hair in the 50’s?
Can you pull someone from (not) quicksand using a snake as a rope? Won’t this greatly piss off the snake?
tBone
Sorry, but I have to laugh when people bitch about the implausibility of any of the events in the new movie. It’s Indiana Jones, for Chrissakes.
El Cid
ThatLeftTurnInABQ: Do you know how easy it would have been to have him find a bomb shelter just in the nick of time?
Or you know what would have been cool?
If he’d grabbed a couple of surfboards and threw them under the Chevy in the driveway and then hopped in the car just as the nuclear blast wave hit the town and then he surfed the car on the blast wave out of town, coming to rest 8 miles away right into a McDonalds where a perky young female waiter says something about how the car looks all beat up and Indy says something funny back.
That would have been awesome, and twice as realistic as George Lucas prefers.
MBunge
“Sorry, but I have to laugh when people bitch about the implausibility of any of the events in the new movie.”
There is a distinct difference between unbelievably improbable and utterly impossible.
Take the nuke scene in Crystal Skull. I agree with ThatLeftTurnInABQ that it really works, right up until the fridge gets catapulted through the sky and smashes back to Earth. If the bomb had gone off and Indy had opened up the fridge to see that everything around him was destroyed, you could accept that somehow the appliance managed to survive the blast. But to show the fridge flying through the air and repeatedly smashing into the ground and THEN have Indy tumble out of it leaves us with no explanation for how he survived. It’s the same sort of logic you see in a Road Runner cartoon.
Mike
dbrown
So in Iron Man the joker was wearing a protective vest (but only over his chest)and when a bomb explodes NEXT to him, bits of metal hit him ONLY in his chest and this only threatens (not injuries)his heart ? STUPID.
kind of an off white
Allow me. 1) That’s what the Jedi were like? They weren’t even REMOTELY cool? 2) Why would a slave-boy on a desert planet build a protocol droid? 3) Boy, these CGI aliens suck a billion times worse than the Muppets in RotJ. They look crappy and they’ve got even less humanity than the human characters, which is saying something. 4) Okay, this Darth Maul guy’s pretty awesome. I can’t wait to see what they do with his charac… oh, he’s been halved. 5) You call this a climactic battle? This is a fucking CUT SCENE. 6) Jesus Christ, there are two simultaneous battles taking place–one planetside, one in space–and the outcome, in both cases, hinges on a character screwing something up and winning the fight by accident.
I’ll stop there. I’m far less forgiving toward the second one.
I don’t know how I missed the point the first few times, but Raiders was on TV a couple weeks ago, and I finally realized how totally hard-core that ending was. The resolution comes down to “God exists, and He’s a fucking monster.”
Joshua Norton
I never thought about it before, but you’re SO right.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
I had the same reaction, even if the fridge itself hadn’t been turned into a pile of molten slag, the shock of being bounced around like that would have pulverised anything inside.
Didn’t matter – it was the part of that scene before the blast that counted – those last few seconds of “OMG OMG what am I gonna do, where can I hide? There’s nowhere to hide Oh shite Oh shite”, the total panic, was just pitch perfect if you’re someone like me old enough the remember the late 60s civil defense drills and the creepiness of that era.
It was the only part of the movie where the part of my brain where I know that Indiana Jones is the hero of the movie so of course he is going to survive no matter what happens, where that thought just sort of turned off for a moment, and for just a few seconds I’m thinking – OK, a whip is not going to get you out of this fix, Dr. Jones, you are toast. That really worked for me because in an action movie you have to preserve some small and vaugely plausible sense that the hero is at risk, or the action just becomes comic.
The scenes with the evil Russkies were the exact opposite – there was no sense of risk at all, for any of the main characters. Those scenes were so formulaic and so obviously staged that honestly all it would have needed is a better soundtrack to turn them into a musical number, with singing and high kicks and a chorus line – a sort of Mamma-Mia with guns and fake bullets and fake Russian accents.
rawshark
Let’s hear it. I love a Star Wars prequel beatdown.
If Jedi’s can stop a droid without contact why bother with light saber fights? Just wave at them and shut them off.
r€nato
I know there is a certain measure of ‘suspension of disbelief’ required for most blockbuster summer films, but Indy IV includes the following totally-fucking-ridiculous-and-not-at-all-believable action sequences:
1) Indy hiding in a lead-lined fridge – gee, how fortunate there happened to be a lead-lined Frigidaire in a mock town which was destined to be nuked, when it was much more likely they would have used any crappy broken-down fridge found abandoned in a gov’t surplus yard – from the nuke blast, doesn’t get melted by the heat conducted by all that metal even though all the mannequins are shown melting, and goes flying in the air, lands on the ground, tumbles many times over… and just gets out of it with nothing more than a few rips in his clothes. In real life, as noted above, he would have been pulped… after he was turned into a puddle of melted goo by the heat blast.
2) Killer ants capable of carting a man off down their ant hill? Intelligent enough to form an ant pyramid in order to get at the Commie? I know ants are strong, but ferchrissakes…
3) Indy’s band of intrepid adventurers descends not one, not two, but THREE FRICKIN’ WATERFALLS in an amphibious vehicle… the last waterfall of Niagara dimensions… and not only are they not smashed into bits or drowned even once, every time they surface right next to the vehicle.
4) The unbelievably poor aim of the Soviet soldiers with automatic weapons. They couldn’t even score a flesh wound at a distance of 20 yards? Not even once?
5) Not once but twice, Indy and his crew are accosted by natives hiding out in Mayan ruins. What, do these people spend all their spare time laying in wait for unlucky adventurers to come by?
I’ll leave out that whole business at the beginning with the highly magnetized alien corpse strongly attracting gunpowder and shotgun pellets, that was the least of the sins against physics.
And I’m not even getting into the enormous plot holes, like why the hell did they go to the trouble of flying the motorcycle to Peru, when it sure didn’t seem like they used it after getting there?
A cardboard cutout could have acted better than Cate Blanchett, and would have had more dimensions to its performance to boot.
I would rather have seen National Treasure again, than this steaming pile of crap. At least with NT I would have expected impossible-to-believe propositions like these.
r€nato
Hell, Itchy and Scratchy cartoons have more believable action sequences than Indy IV.
r€nato
Oh yeah I forgot to add… how did a motorcycle-riding hood, having never before in his life played with any sharp object larger than a switchblade, learn how to swordfight with an expert and WIN?
r€nato
he did??? I missed that.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
They did have him mention earlier in the movie that he’d studied fencing in school before he dropped out. Not that it would help much, since in the real world fencing is more than half footwork (obviously impossible in that situation) rather than just arm movements, but the whole scene was ridiculous anyway, so whatdoyawantanyhow?
Blue Raven
Shee. Sounds like I was better off catching up on Forbidden Kingdom than seeing Indy III. I had fun watching FK. Jet Li and Jackie Chan were a sweet pair to watch. Jet Li being able to do the silly stuff while still kicking ass was extra-special.
tBone
I think I’m going to bail on this argument before it turns into a full-on AICN-style sweaty nerdfest.
wvng
I think it would be quite cool if Tim F. changed his handle to “Tim F., Ph.D.”
How classy that would be! Dress this place up a bit.
Darkness
TV show?
Eh, nevermind, the TV is full of teh stupid, so I almost never turn it on. It has a little sign hanging over it: Abandon hope all ye…
norbizness
I haven’t seen it and probably never will.
Minor quibbles with Iron Man, which I saw yesterday: (a) climactic scene ripped off from Robocop 2 [really, I’m not shitting you]; (b) the Short Circuit-y fire extinguisher robot; (c) doesn’t Obadiah have any underbosses?
Otherwise, Marvel (apart from needlessly rebooting the Hulk) appears to be on a winning streak, with the next Iron Man movie getting into the Avengers.
Darkness
Absolutely and probable a fluid notion based on universe and genre. A particular fictional world’s rules and limits are what make it seem coherent and believable. Those limits can be anything, but they still have to be there. I understand that Indy is a spaghetti sci fi something or other, and that’s why ancient cultures could believably leave behind functioning booby-traps like giant rolling balls. But Dr. Jones is still homo sapien, and while he can potentially withstand the friction of dragging under a car, his brain-stem can’t withstand the G force of a drop in a lead-lined refrigerator.
ToD suffered for me because its stretching disrespected the audience. I can accept stretching the rules of a universe in service of entertainment, but often it doesn’t come off that way. And the comments above confirm what I suspected after suffering (oh, the humanity) through sw episode 1: Lucas makes movies for the 8-10 year old crowd, which is fine, they need the distraction. Just so I know to not waste my time.
r€nato
Yeah, I forgot about the Tarzan bit (did Mutt study how to swing from vine to vine at 40mph while he was studying fencing, as well?), and the landing-in-the-tree bit.
Even for a film whose standard is the Saturday action films of the 40s and 50s… this was just friggin’ ridiculous.
The sad part is, George Lucas will laugh all the way to the bank.
kind of an off white
Norbizness, the climax was weak on muchos levelos (I wouldn’t care if it had ended after the “icing problem” bit), but do not diss Xtinguishor. That sequence alone had more personality and resonance than both Fantastic Fours combined.
Thanks for reminding me about the hole in my DVD collection, though. Robocop 2 is criminally underrated.
Rawshark, you really want to hear me go off about a movie so devoid of purpose that its supposed payoff is a fake war with no objective, fought by clones and droids just to make sure the stakes can’t get any lower? No, I don’t think you do. The people I went with sure didn’t.
rawshark
Did you miss Marion yelling at him to Riposte!?
Yes I do! :)
Andrew
I think a lot of that has to do with the fact that there was actually a guy being dragged underneath a moving vehicle, crawling down the undercarriage and popping out the other side and then being dragged behind it by a whip, all to no noticeable ill effect.
PaulB
“Live Free or Die Hard,” anyone? Oh, man, the errors in that one were hilariously awful, not to mention innumerable. If you can manage to turn your brain off, though, and just enjoy it as the comic book schlock that it is, it’s not bad. That’s what I’ve heard about the latest Indy installment, as well.
Elli Mayhem
You could almost see the invisible banner Harrison Ford was holding up saying “Steven, George, Look… We’re getting too old for this shit.”
Here’s to Industrial Light & Magic… may they always be tragically over the top.
kind of an off white
Funny you brought up the last Die Hard, because I’ve heard similar complaints about that and Indy IV–namely, that both movies took a character whose whole appeal rested on being an average guy (or at least a non-superhero) who could win out over extraordinary obstacles with smarts, common sense, and more than a little luck, and turned him into the superhero he was never meant to be. I’m not sure if it’s true of Indy but I know it’s true of LFoDH, even though I forgot pretty much everything about it as soon as the credits rolled.
Okay, Mr. Shark, you asked for it:
1) Dude, your Alec Guiness impression works just fine without a visual, and the beard makes your head look fucking enormous. 2) Okay, everybody just stop talking. I know you can all act–I’VE SEEN YOU ACT WITH MY OWN EYES–but I’m really going to need you to just pantomime from here on out lest I start going at my timpanic membranes with a ballpoint pen. 3) So the assassin’s a shapeshifter? Gee, that talent would come in handy if, say, the target KNEW WHO THE FUCK THE ASSASSIN WAS. 4) Considering how these legendary guardians of the realm do nothing but sit around on their asses all day enumerating reasons to not do things, it’s impressive that the Rebublic lasted as long as it did. Also, when they retconned the Jedi garb, why did they use Luke’s streetclothes from Tatooine as their pattern? Y’know, as opposed to his JEDI OUTFIT? 5) So wait, you’re saying my mom was kidnapped by Tusken Raiders and you just wrote her off? They fight with fucking clubs, people. Borrow somebody’s blaster or some shit. Or a REALLY LONG club, that’d work too. 6) Oh, sweet, he’s gonna go psycho and totally go on a killing spree! I can’t wait to see… offscreen? OFFSCREEN? Yeah, IMPLY the massacre, George, let my imagination fill in THAT blank, but spare me NOT ONE MOMENT of Palpatine’s political machinations and the Jedi Council’s dithering. JESUS CHRIST. 7) Oh, good, Li’l Darth’s going to explain the wicked killfest I didn’t get to see… oh, wow, this might be the worst acting I’ve ever seen in my life, and I was in an open-call college production of a Brecht play. No, wait, Natalie Portman just proved me wrong about the whole worst acting thing. 8) The Rancor scene wasn’t any great shakes, but this tricked-out version with 3 monsters manages to be exactly 1/3 as engaging. 9) 2 Jedi facing off=cool. Many Jedi=kinda silly. All together like that, they look like a rave. 10) As a child, Boba Fett saw his beloved father felled by a Jedi. So THAT’S why he grew up to be an amoral mercenary with no particular bone to pick as long as he gets paid! 11) Oh, no wonder Obi-Wan doesn’t recognize R2D2 in Episode IV. The little white and blue droid HE fought alongside in the Clone Wars could FLY. 12) Okay, the Yoda backwards-talking thing? REALLY sounding forced, guys. 13) Damn it, I’m so starved for something to like about this that I’ll just go ahead and put the Yoda vs. Dracula lightsaber duel in the plus column, even though it ended in a FUCKING DRAW. GOD that’s deflating.
See, Rawshark? Don’t say I didn’t warn you.
kind of an off white
Well, of COURSE the number eight next to a close-parenthesis makes a smiley face with shades. Why wouldn’t it?
Keith
Was there some reason why he coulnd’t have revolved the story around the Fountain of Youth, the Great Pyramid et al, Garden of Babylon, or something else with a backhistory more ingrained in our cultural realm of knowledge? IMO that’s a big reason why Raiders and LC are so good – Ark of the Covenant and the Holy Grail.
rawshark
Loved it. What did you think of the third movie? 8)
I think they get away with this one because he says I don’t recall ever OWNING a droid. Still you’d think Vader would suggest designing defenses that couldn’t be so easily beaten by his old droid just plugging in and sweet talking the computer like he did on their old adventures together.
Why couldn’t Lucas have done the first prequel as the origin story (maybe in flashback form so we aren’t taken on a point by boring ass point narrative) and then spend the next two with Vader (as actually Vader) and the Emperor cementing their rule?
Darkness
Okay, you made me do it, kind of an off white:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4MMAoOPa0Pg
Must say, star wars parodies make the franchise (as sad as it has become) worth it.
kind of an off white
Oh, I get it. Rawshark’s egging me on for the same reason I leave comments at the Left Coaster.
Honestly, after being pummeled by suck for 6 hours, the third one kinda works for me. Not as a Star Wars movie, but it’s watchable. I mean, when you’re sitting in the theater taking note of the impressive sound design, there’s a pretty good chance the movie’s lacking, but again, the first two lowered the bar to the earth’s core. I will say this: the Jedi extermination sequence is pretty damn excellent. The pacing’s perfect, there’s some serious visual lyricism, and it manages to have some emotional heft even though the conclusion’s preordained. Totally hints at what Lucas could’ve done if he hadn’t spent the last few decades crawling up his own butt.
Because that would be awesome. Lucas took a hardline anti-awesomeness stance when he decided to change the Wookies to Ewoks, and he’s held firm ever since.
Darkness–thank you. As soon as I saw your link I said to myself “Oh, please let that be ‘Troops.'” I haven’t seen that in ages.
Magnus
Senator Palpatine, sir?
Yes, Anakin, what is it now?
Um… Well, you see, I was wondering, if, kinda, you, maybe…
Yeeees?
Knew a way to make me less …whiny?
*Silence*
*Crickets*
Oh my… Anakin, my boy… That’s… That’s a tall order there.
Oh.
But I …think I know a way to help.
Really?!!!
Yes. Firstly, go jump in that lava-lake.
Magnus
Bugger. I think I ordered the wrong kind of crickets.
grumpy realist
(god I love this thread…)
*ahem*
My list of SF/action/fantasy Movies That Do Not Suck:
Dark Star
Chris
Having seen Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull thought it very poor stuff, interesting only as an obvious commercial for John McCain – the grumpy older man, the hero getting on a bit who can still show the younger folk who think they know it all a thing or two, confronted by castrating communist bitch Hilary. Obama is I suppose the La Beef boy, at the end trying to put on the hat but reminded that no, this is not your time, perhaps next election.
For me the biggest implausibility in the mushroom cloud scene was the US Government building its national scary things repository next to a test site. Wouldn’t that piss off the Ark?
Trying to get into the spirit of it all I bought a a party supplies shop what I registered as an Indy hat;only some while later did a more accurate perception kick in when I realised it was in fact a Freddy Krueger hat, a switch in semiotics across the entire width of the spectrum.
b. hussein canuckistani
My one Iron Man nit to pick (and it may be a spoiler):
Why does the power go off when the suit ices up? It’s not like a few extra pounds of ice will slow down a suit that travels at Mach 3, and it’s not like aerodynamics are going to be a problem.
Okay, 2 nits. Did his captors never do an on-site inspection and notice a battlesuit under construction?
That having been said, nitpicking movies is part of the nerd way, and in spite of the little nits, I still thought it was awesome. I’m glad to see RDJ get a big payoff after all the shit he’s gone through.
D-Chance.
Hey, the edit worked. Thanks, ImJohnGalt! B-J is now, once again, “John Cole’s Balloon Juice”.
Birdzilla
What would a wookie do to someone if they cuaght them cheating at holigram chess?
curtadams
I haven’t seen the new Indy movie, but in defense of the bomb scene about 75% of people from 0.6 to 1.6 miles from the Hiroshima bomb survived, and 40% did so without serious injury. So surviving a small nuke a mile away inside a fridge seems very possible. Admittedly, if the fridge gets hurled through the air that’s a different ball game.