Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny

Indiana Jones and the Buttdial of Destiny

Like I have genuine respect for George Lucas more so these days for what he attempted in the prequel trilogy, he wasn't trying to recreate the magic of the first Star wars trilogy, he was trying to do something else entirely different and it was an eminently respectable endeavor. And in retrospect definitely a pure expression than the very mercenary and empty storytelling of the sequels.

a) I agree with you against you on The Last Jedi, which is a proper example of a film maker saying "Yeah, this is all very cool, but I've got some thoughts".
b) It's possible to overstate the extent to which Lucas was just ploughing his own furrow, though - we've been watching through them and we went from Empire one week to Attack of the Clones the next, and AotC is full of stuff that reads like attempts to play to what people* think they remember shaped by the fan memory funnel of the intervening decades. So Yoda goes from a handful of backwards-syntax lines in Empire to pretty much every line in the prequels, and C3PO's fussy butler body horror and frustrated attempt to tell the heroes that oh shit there's Troopers here gets turned into bad slapstick and worse puns
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ou53FKku9kQ

To be clear, there are lots of exciting new Lucas-made bad ideas in the prequels, and the castings of Anakin kill a lot of what he might've been trying for. And Lucas is of course terrible at romantic dialogue - the guy who wrote the best line on that front in the original Star wars is... sadly present in body only in Dial of Destiny.

*people is possibly just Lucas here!

I recently learned that an acquaintance of mine from college made it to the final three for young adult Anakin!

wow!

I don’t know if it got posted in here, but RLM had a very nice conversation about Temple of Doom and why it differed from the other films. George Lucas getting divorced and Spielberg being _real_ distracted by his lead actress had a significant impact.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAPOojRLY2U

Jesus, I hate them so much

definitely saw it at the right time as a kid (literally got the VHS as part of a fast-food promotion iirc),

we all did

I cannot and will not watch the Red Letter Media dickheads

Why? I've never minded them.

Anyway, just saw this. Based on that snippet, Chaw woke up on the wrong side of the bed. That said Andrew's got some very good points here -- to echo one of them, Shaunette Renée Wilson gone done dirty by this film -- but it beats the hell out of Crystal Skull as a ending to the story-as-such, among many other points.

Last Crusade has a LOT of shoddy effects moments, BTW. (Rewatched all four films a few months back, in the case of LC and Crystal for the second time ever each in case I felt any differently about them...and I did not. And basically none of the sequels has the shoot-the-moon ease of the first film, it just can't be recaptured.)

so is this going to be about Atlantis or what. maybe they can do Spear of Destiny w the Boys From Brazil

― AdamVania (Adam Bruneau), Tuesday, March 15, 2016 11:14 AM (seven years ago)

A pretty close call there!

Doody was in RRR, it's Doodymentum!

No way, that movie killed Ray Stevenson's career

Doodissance

Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis wasn't bad. Would have made a pretty good movie.

So then, who wants to stan for The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles?

I was thinking about going back and checking some of those out again. And hey, Ford appears in one of them.

I think Carrie Fisher wrote an episode too - I recall an interview where she was complaining about Lucas simply ignoring everything.

As a bookend to the story of young Indy fightin' crime and likin' jazz with his friends Elliott Ness and Ernest Hemingway!

https://indianajones.fandom.com/wiki/Young_Indiana_Jones_and_the_Mystery_of_the_Blues

(xp)

i loved Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis

I did too. Every once in awhile I still wonder if squab is good to eat

"Ah hope ya like squab!"

https://i.imgur.com/1S2hUAB.jpg

The splendor of the meal adds to its enjoyment.

Be still my heart!

This was a good scene

https://www.dosdays.co.uk/media/games/indylc/sshot_5.jpg

CGI looks fake

Decided to do a Patreon writeup where I mostly thought about music in this one (and the other ones), but also some general thoughts about the whole cycle.

Today I learned that Crystal Skull is the highest grossing film in the series.

absurd, temple is clearly the grossest

Indiana Jones and the Dad Joke of Destiny.

You need to consider inflation when looking at film grosses. Temple of Doom made over $10 million in its first two days, which was fucking astronomical in 1984

Crystal Skull apparently made over $100 million its opening weekend.

$100 mill in 2008 is impressive, but still not as crazy as Batman ‘89 clearing $100 mill in 10 days

Agreed! But the Batman hype and marketing was historic.

I saw Last Crusade on opening night in 1989 and I can confirm that the #1 thing people were talking about after the movie was Batman trailer at the beginning. There was even a trailer for Star Trek V (which no one knew was bad yet), but even in a crowd of Star Trek fans everyone was "hfs that Batman trailer"

That Batman trailer is so poorly cut together, but it still created an unbelievable buzz

I don't even remember what the third trailer was, maybe The Abyss? Whole theaters losing their minds at the Batman trailer.

If you saw Last Crusade in 70mm, it might have been The Abyss

Confirm on 70mm, so yah - probably The Abyss.

That Batman trailer is so poorly cut together, but it still created an unbelievable buzz

Batman trailer was cut together by Jon Peters personally. Probably the best thing he ever did.

Saw this yesterday and...I wasn't completely disappointed? It's a 21st C Lucasfilm/Disney joint so fan service will rear its ugly head throughout but not in the sledgehammer-y ways the SW sequels tended to do. Captured some spirit of the old films at times and that was enough to keep me in my seat. As Ned mentions above John Williams put in * a lot* of work here. Ford does his thing well. Phoebe Fleabag is a headscratcher for me. She always comes across as goofily self-satisfied and unlikeable but she's in this thing throughout so if you're a fan you'll have a lot to love. I hope this is IT, though. Let it rest.

Oh, wait! It wasn't Ned mentioning JW doing more work than normal on this one. I conflated it with a non-ILX friend's comment. Never mind.

Talked to a friend who saw it, and he had a great time. But there was some sentimental handicapping, I suspect, since he and his kids saw a series of one-off theater screenings of the previous four leading up, which means not only was the whole nostalgia machine in full-effect, but that also means he'd seen "Crystal Skull" most recently, which sets the bar pretty low.

I dunno, there are several Star Wars movies/shows I just never bothered with, but I like Ford and Indiana Jones, so I'll eventually see this. On Disney+. It just feels so unnecessary, and maybe wouldn't if "Crystal Skull" didn't exist, and *this* was the actual big, belated send-off to a beloved character, and not just a re-do of same that its predecessor attempted yet didn't pull off.

If nothing else I was thoroughly amused by the fact that they went right ahead and Neidermeyered good ol' Mutt and then had to have Indy and Marion act as if this was a sad thing -- and all without specifically mentioning Vietnam once in the entire movie in any context.

"Hell No! We Won't Go!"

saw this last week and I thought it was a lot of fun, headlines like this: "Opinion: Indiana Jones passes his mantle to the queen of millennial side-eye"(https://www.cnn.com/2023/07/05/opinions/indiana-jones-harrison-ford-phoebe-waller-bridge-thomas/index.html) likely didn't help the box office since it makes it sound like she is taking up the role going forward which is not the case at all.

it would have been really funny if the last scene was a sentimental rendition of the theme accompanied by phoebe waller-bridge snatching the hat off the clothesline

the names Bond, Indiana Bond

It's weird because she plays a larger part than Mutt - without the father issues she has: interiority! a sidekick! a sidekick with interiority, for a bemusing 5 seconds! And when she's got stuff to work with, she's good, but the rest of the time she's just paid on a wry-smiles-per-minute basis.

i enjoyed this, but was bracing myself for the ending - all of the reviews i saw made it sound like things go completely off the deep end into ridiculous schlock. but i thought it fit fine in the context of the series? i mean its extremely fantastical, but for a series where Indy has previously met & conversed with a knight from the crusades, been subject to voodoo mind control, and had God literally come down from heaven and smite his enemies, this one didnt feel like some crazy departure.

Indy 3 has better lines ("Goose-stepping morons like yourself should try reading books instead of burning them!" and "I find that if I just sit down the problem resolves itself").

new one could have used a Stoppard pass.