Sequels that are better than the first ones.

one time I was on a road trip and someone in the car spent like an hour summarizing babe: pig in the city

Okay, here's what I got!

Wrath of Khan, and actually, every subsequent film in the franchise, isn't a Star Trek film at all. Only ST: The Motion Picture really captures the sort of sixties era Sci-Fi that the original series offered, and despite its interminable masturbatory drydock sequence, is the only ST with any sense of wonder. Also the best soundtrack, by far.

Generally agree, but including Exorcist 2 is an op of the most chall variety.

I think Kael is a fan too.

Agree ST:II is Moby Dick in space, but Star Trek IV is the Star Trekkiest (and is about saving literal whales rather than hunting metaphorical ones)!

Surprised nobody mentioned Romero's 'Dawn of the Dead'

They are all star treks tho any other position is extremely silly

Alfred, why do you think Temple of Doom is superior to Raiders? I'm genuinely interested why you'd think so.
(I certainly don't think it's a bad film but I would side with the general perception that Raiders & Last Crusade are the better movies.)

Some great superhero sequels:
Captain America: The Winter Soldier; Raimi's Spider-Man 2 and X2 are three of my favourite superhero movies/movies in general.
Third Cap (Civil War) is also up there.
And I'm also quite in awe of the second Avengers (Age of Ultron) & the (more divisive) third Iron Man.

Because it's vulgar and abhorred by the PCSJW crowd?

I like Temple, and it coincides right with Spielberg's Poltergeist/Gremlins mean streak, but the only case I could make for it being better than Raiders is that it's so loud and garish it stands out as a novelty. Musical intro is peak 'Berg, though.

I've never enjoyed Godfather 2 - flashback aside, it doesn't do much more than restate the last fifteen minutes of the first movie, with slightly more depressing totality. And the Lansky analogue is boring.

Iron Man 3 is much more fun the first two, how did it get to be divisive? Is it the Kingsley stuff?

the final sequence of killings in Godfather 2 very deliberately plays on the contrast with the first movie

I mean, how? He kills people who are closer to him, sure. But it feels like Michael changes a lot less over the course of 2 than 1 - in the first movie it's surprising, in the second movie it's predictable.

I don't deny it's a sad, beautiful movie! But I always feel like shrugging at the end.

I think in the first movie the killings are almost necessary or inevitable - we believe Michael believes he is doing this to protect the family, to begin a move towards legitimacy - that he has to kill or be killed. obviously this also marks the beginning of his corruption but there is a brutal nobility about it. by the end of 2 we're in no doubt that the darkness has swallowed him up, and that none of the killings are really justifiable, they're petty, they're acts of tyrannical vengeance.

Alfred, why do you think Temple of Doom is superior to Raiders? I'm genuinely interested why you'd think so.

I don't dislike Raiders. Temple is closer to the spirit of those Saturday afternoon specials that Spielberg loved as a kid.

Also, I may be the only human being who likes Kate Capshaw's idiot, and in some way Spielberg's treatment of her is more honest than Karen Allen's spunk in ROTLA; I mean, he turns Marion into another INDYYYY-yelling willow.

*than how he treated Karen Allen's, etc

So having Kate Capshaw a screaming idiot from the start is an improvement? That's one way to look at it.

in keeping with the times, man

she's a nightclub singer ffs

i suspect Alfred has seen 1.5 Star Trek TV episodes

Khan has a certain submarine-movie resemblance to "Balance of Terror" tho

I've seen 12.5 episodes, all in the last five years.

that's two and a half episodes a year, maths fans

Wrath of Khan, and actually, every subsequent film in the franchise, isn't a Star Trek film at all. Only ST: The Motion Picture really captures the sort of sixties era Sci-Fi that the original series offered, and despite its interminable masturbatory drydock sequence, is the only ST with any sense of wonder. Also the best soundtrack, by far.

This is wrong - as noted IV and VI are *very* much in the spirit of TOS: structure, characterization, themes everything.

even V -- just that it's a bad episode

but really all the films are sequels to the TV show

Well, the most recent ones remake ST as an action series.

even V -- just that it's a bad episode

lol sad but true

'Bad' is a very mild descriptor of V.

Only ST: The Motion Picture really captures the sort of sixties era Sci-Fi that the original series offered, and despite its interminable masturbatory drydock sequence, is the only ST with any sense of wonder.

You vastly overestimate a movie that's the equivalent of being stuck in a Best Buy electronics section staring at TVs for three hours.

Wrath of Khan actually has a good script with crackling dialogue and, uh, performances.

worked better on a big screen xp

also i hate to use "fan service" but ST:TMP engaged in it massively, being the first blockbuster-budget adap of a rinky-dink TV show

TMP is a really weird movie. It has it's charms and I am naturally forgiving of epic abstract space visuals on a big screen, but the pacing and the editing and the lack of story is really strange. I mean, there's the excessively gory transporter accident early on (for no apparent reason), there's all these shots of people looking at screens (just to remind you that the cast still exists, I suppose), the set/costume design is all in drab grays, etc. There were just a lot of bad filmmaking decisions involved.

I've never been able to stay awake through TMP.

Wrath of Khan is a great film and like Empire Strikes Back it being the sequel benefits from not having to do the required storytelling beats a first film must have to introduce the characters and world to an audience. the work can now deconstruct these themes, so we are seeing Obi Wan early in Empire as a ghost, a dead man, and watch the entire crew of the Enterprise die right at the start of Khan, itself a simulation. the filmmaking and formal presentation is expertly well done for both films. shot and pacing recalling classic naval battles, the casting of shadows across these ships. the type of movies made w b roll stock bought from military tests, etc. ie. that tracking shot when they are opening the torpedo bay is balletic. certainly the scenes of them dueling in space w the shit over the eerie backing were great callbacks to the old submarine naval films, updated for psychedelic space age. Spock's sacrifice is one of the most amazing acting scenes in all of pop film, it really brings the waterworks. with Spock they really pull off a space Jesus. then the space funeral with "Amazing Grace" to cap it off was really tasteful and classic-feeling. plus there is the whole horror villain stuff w Khan himself, the film god Riccardo Montalbahn, torturing the captured Trek crewmembers, commandeering his Diamond Dogs-style space pirates. these are the Hyper timelines for both series. both are able to take the original idea, the nuclear kernel of Star Trek/Wars and spin it to be the best pulp representation of the pre-established world ever. Darth Vader doesn't just choke a guy out, he kills him over a video screen. the film is a classic.

Temple OTOH is a piece of shock rock trash, v much in the mold of maybe Pulp Fiction or other grind-house worshipping. the brownface and stereotyping of "savagery" is pretty bad and a little too old school imo. it is the edgy Indiana Jones. i always find Raider more awesome, more confident in itself, more mysterious. that music when they are talking about Abner and the Ark, this occultist, and taking this real-world battle of right and wrong and literalizing it through the use of the Ark as maguffin and the whole OT ending. Temple was an archeology of a non-existent racist trope of what "Occidental" religion is like from back in the 19th century. i don't think this gives it nearly the gravity or sense of reality that Raiders does by using both a real world villain and a real world religious tradition to base it on.

Marion may have been a trope at times but she was also doing things like smacking Indy in the head w a full length mirror. that intro where she runs the bar in Nepal and is drinking a huge barfly under the table is incredible. then there are her scenes conning her way out of the nazi tent, getting French archeologist-turned-collaborator Belloq drunk and pulling a knife on him. not saying hers isn't a problematic role at times but i really like her portrayal and it's a pretty awesome multidimensionally iconic character. Willie felt one-note in comparison, just constantly screaming or whining, and was written that way, she never really has agency in anything she is doing. tbh it takes me out of the movie a bit, it feels like i am watching Scooby Doo. were they trying for a Valley Girl type here, cash in on that 80s trend? i like Marion. she is knocking people out with cookery, she is starting up airplanes, she is more self-actualized. she also isn't forced into reaching her hand into a squirming bug-filled wall. Temple is mean spirited to its characters, it makes it harder to watch.

Marion starts the airplane inadvertently and yells INDY

oh wait i meant Temple is a "Orientalist" trope. the intellectual stages of colonialism and imperialism, a lot of archaeology was done w these biases, there is a tendency to exoticize, to do fake anthopology. there is something to be said for archaeology's dual history with entertainment. in medieval times kings and the wealthy would hired people to go explore, plunder, report back wonderful stories to hear, so embellishing the truth was in vogue.

Marion starts the airplane inadvertently and yells INDY

well yeah this is a b movie after all she is going to spend half the movie doing this.

I think Capshaw finds variants in her one-dimensional character (I like Marion but like I wrote earlier she gets too much credit).

the film god Riccardo Montalbahn, torturing the captured Trek crewmembers, commandeering his Diamond Dogs-style space pirates.

lol @ Diamond Dogs

Indy is plundering his hemisphere's religious past in the 1st and 3rd movies. he's a cultural tourist for the others.

I like Montalban's explanation but he softsoaps Khan by attributing his obsession to the death of his wife. Khan hates Kirk, period, and he loves it, it gives his life meaning and purpose.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yxxSzt49cYw

it is crazy that they are never onscreen at the same time, the whole thing is done by them talking over video screens. it really befits their the OTT performances. maybe this adds a layer of menace to it all...?

and Kirk is so unworthy of the hate, in the same way a man or woman we used to love now looks...pathetic.

it should be added that it's also a very, very good idea for a movie. i can't think of a better tie-in to a previous storyline, the way it picks up the thread.

it also reminds how bereft of ideas Star Trek: Into Darkness is.

meaning a storyline that has been seemingly long-discarded and forgotten, it's just such a clever device albeit very simple on the surface.

TOS is littered with those kinds of potential plot threads

so many episodes where they come down and fuck up a planet and then are like "gee, who knows what this place will be like 100 years from now?" or similar

and Kirk is so unworthy of the hate

the cast of TOS might disagree

lol

I think Raiders is the better movie, but in many ways Temple of Doom feels like the movie that Spielberg and Lucas didn't have the nerve to make the first time around. It's a direct homage to the B serials they're sending up, with all of the racism and tastelessness in tact. I mean, Spielberg ends Raiders with a Citizen Kane homage, fer Christ's sakes!