Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull?!?? We can do better than THAT!

like mad rong doggy

They made a really pretty two-hour serial. That's all I really wanted.

you are incorrect

-- gbx, Friday, June 6, 2008 12:57 AM (58 seconds ago) Bookmark Link

like mad rong doggy

-- gbx, Friday, June 6, 2008 12:57 AM (34 seconds ago) Bookmark Link

lol thanking u for translation into steendrivese

"Nuking the fridge" is the new "jumping the shark" according to some jokers on the Empire forums.

i can work with that

no way i loved that fridge nuking scene

it was fantastic and ridiculous and they are not mutually exclusive qualities.

and then she said "Roswell" and i went "OH SHI"

..."WENT THERE?"

talkin bout elongated skulls and i'm thinking 'they're not gonna....nahhh'

and then 'the crash site in roswell 10 years ago'

"YES"

good: cate blanchett was entertaining, and the action sequence in the middle with the trucks in the amazon was pretty well assembled

bad: everything else about this movie was sloppy as fuck, given that they supposedly worked on it for like 10 years. just for an example, like how lebouef's character is always seen playing with his switchblade, pulling it out, flipping it, etc. but then when he and indy are down in the tomb with the mummies, indy's all like "hey - do you have a knife?" HE'S BEEN HOLDING A KNIFE IN EVERY SINGLE SCENE HE'S BEEN IN BASICALLY, OF COURSE HE HAS A KNIFE. would be so easy to change to just like "hey give me your knife" but i guess no one gave a fuck? obviously this one thing isn't that big a deal but it's representative of most of the movie, totally slapdash and not well-thought-out

Those guys who popped out of nowhere with the blowpipes in the tomb bit weren't given one jot of explanation.

is one really necessary? they're ooga-booga defenders of the ancient temple stereotypes. nothing more nothing less.

oh you meant the tomb scene

i guess the same applies more or less.

Yeah, the ethnic villains in the temple bit made sense - they were some tribe who lived there and worshiped the aliens. The tomb was just in some crummy old cemetery of no apparent importance.

i thought about this some more.

yep. still a shit film.

movie should have ended with one of those fucking groundhogs winking at the camera a la caddyshack

harrison ford was, all things considered, too old for the role.

The "nuking the fridge" scene was likely the best, start to finish.

no way i loved that fridge nuking scene

Agreed. The life-raft out the airplane in Temple Of Doom is still my low point for idiotic ridiculousness.

I just watched the life-raft scene. It's like the template for the stupidity of the fridge scene.
Also discovered that Kate Capshaw is the template for Jar-Jar.

"Mee-sa hate the water!"

Sparkle takes fun-hating doctorate.

Perpetual screeching ain't fun.
I was surprised how much I didn't mind Short Round tho'.

Sparkle takes fun-hating doctorate

It's not fun-hating. Capshaw is plain terrible.

Yup. Role as written -- admittedly slight but still *maybe* workable with. As performed -- good god.

Soundtrack could have used upbeat Kenny Loggins number.

Actually, Bill Murray in the fat-guy turncoat role would have been fun.

first act bit about small scorpions being the bad ones fails to pay off in third act.

Bill Murray was busy doing a cameo in Get Smart

no^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

bill murray was busy smoking weed and beating his wife

Bill Murray was busy giving me a noogie.

so has anyone from the team acknowledged that they self-censored Indy's first-scene "Russians..." line? SOOOO sensitive.

ha iwas gonna ask about that after i saw yr comment on the other thread

"RUSSIANS......."

i was kinda relieved they did though cuz it was overly predictable

Just saw this, and I have to pretty much agree with the folks who said it was okay but not on the level of any of the previous three movies. The action scenes were well executed, but there was simply too much of running around and not enough room to breath. In the previous three films there was always this sense of wonder, a sense of reverie for the ancient mysteries they are going after, but that was mostly lacking in this movie. There was some of it up until the scene in the Conquistador's grave, but after that it was just a non-stop roller coaster ride up until the end. I think focusing on this non-stop action took away some of the enchantment the previous films had, the child-like enchantment from going after ancient mysteries of the world. And that was always a big part of the appeal for the Indy films, besides the clever banter and the thrilling action scenes.

It's a pity, because I think there would've been so much more potential in Indy meet The Chariots of Gods. I wish the whole "aliens being the gods of ancient tribes" idea borrowed from Däniken would've been given more exposition than the one short scene with the wall paintings. In the 1st and 3rd Indy the search for the Ark and the Holy Grail is given a huge historical weight, and that makes the search feel bigger and more wondrous than just going after some lost treasure, but that sense of wonder didn't work nearly as well in KotCS. I wish there would've been a scene where Indy & co talk with the Mayan people in El Dorado and they tell something about their history with the aliens/gods, instead of them just acting like stereotypical savages. I wish the scene inside the temple/spaceship would've told us more about the aliens and their visit to Earth instead of being mostly about the FX.

There where so many inconsistent and unexplained things in the story, that it felt like everything was sacrificed for the thrill of the ride, whereas in previous films the ride felt more meaningful because the historical backstory. Of course the previous films were ridiculous fantasy stories just like this one, but at least there was more internal logic to their fantasy. I think the fantasy becomes more interesting and thrilling when it has a point to it. Whereas in this film there were too many things left unexplained, and I think it would've been more interesting if they'd been given a little bit more explanation. For example:
* Who were the skull-masked Indians at the cemetery, and why were they protecting it?
* Why did Oxley return the crystal skull to the tomb?
* Why would a skull of an alien have psychic powers?
* Had the Mayan tribe lived at El Dorado all this time? What was their story?
* Why was the treasure room filled with artifacts from other cultures? Why had the aliens collected them?
* Why did returning the skull to it's proper place summon the alien, when the skull had presumably been in the same place for centuries before the Conquistador guy stole it?
* Why had the aliens set up such a system in the first place?

I thought KotCK worked fine as action film (the jeep ride in the jungle was quite well executed, for example), but a lot of the charm of the first three movies was missing. Whoever said the story was lacking the sort of comic foil Sallah and Marcus provided in the earlier films was totally right. In the beginning it looked like Mac could be one, but in the end the character was totally pointless and could've easily been removed from the script. Whoever played Indy's kid did a decent enough job, but the character lacked charisma, and it felt like he was there only to provide an identification point for kids among all these old people. The scenes between Indy and Marion were nice, but I wish they had been given a chance to stop and have a couple of proper scenes together instead of mostly shouting one-liners to each other amidst all the action. The biggest disappointment to me were the flying saucer and the alien in the end. All this build-up, and what do we get? The same silly X-Files alien we've already seen a kazillion times in popular culture for the last 15 years. I wish Spielberg could've at least come up with a different looking alien, or maybe just show the whole scene in glimpses and shadows. Now it felt like a total anticlimax.

i didn't understand if the alien was supposed to be evil or what? it seemed pretty evil at the end. was it punishing cate blanchett's character, or taking her with them as she wanted? why would they punish cate blanchett's character, when her goal was essentially the same as indy's?

In the 1st and 3rd Indy, when they find the artifact they're after at least it makes some sense what happens next. But in KotCS, because the whole alien skull story has been given so little explanation, the ending is mostly just wtf? Why did returning the skull to its place did what it did? Why did the alien appear? Did it form from the alien skeletons, or did they just summon it? Had it been there for all these millennia? What did it do to Cate Blanchett? For a movie that has been planned for over 10 years, the script felt very patchy.

why would they punish cate blanchett's character, when her goal was essentially the same as indy's?

She is a servant of GODLESS COMMUNISM... who can't keep from slipping into Australian vowels!

wow. dreadful film, pretty in places. script confused itself, and plot kinda seemed spliced together from three or four bad ideas.

i loved loved loved the opening scene of this flick anyone else?

I loved the opening sequence. Best part of the film. After the great "welcome to the nuclear age, Indy" mushroom cloud shot the film goes gradually downhill. Still, I did not hate the movie by any means.

CGI prairie dogs excepted.

My friend sent me a copy of Frank Darabont's script, the one he slaved over for a year with Spielberg before Lucas's people hacked it to pieces. Suffice to say that it is 1000x better than what showed up on the screen, even as it covers similar ground. It's much more nuanced and funny and suspenseful. It's by no means perfect, but oh what could have been.

prolly not hacky enough for lucas.

"Frank,

I can't use this draft, sorry. You left out the prairie dogs I asked for in the memo. WTF, dude? You realize that's the only fucking reason I wanted to do another Indy sequel. Stop pissing on my dream!"

"PS Here's your check and a storm trooper helmet full of Jar Jar pez dispensers. Good Luck on your next project, you rodent-leaving-out prick."

I still think it went downhill after the Indy + mushroom cloud shot (which was really awesome).

Ha ha "The Frank Darabont original was better" is like a now-legendary meme at the comment boards for The Onion AV Club.