Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny

much virtue in if

yes totally

Tracer that feels much closer to my understanding of what the Method is than the extreme examples that are celebrated by fans of lads behaving badly

I always cringe when I hear about stuff like Jared Leto's method approach to the Joker of all things...every performer needs to find the approach that works for them, which makes sense simply because every individual is going to be different emotionally and psychologically with very different life experiences, but unfortunately the inherent nature of method acting makes any misguided practice of it especially appalling.

Even with the best practitioners, it's pretty unsettling to me. I remember years ago Philip Seymour Hoffman mentioned on a talk show (probably Charlie Rose) that acting to him was "pretending to have feelings that aren't really there," and I have a vague recollection that he framed it as an explanation as to why acting to him was not only difficult but risky or potentially damaging. It wasn't something he wanted to elaborate, and I remember it being a quick, rushed answer, but it was a disturbing concept. I never forgot it, and when he died years later, it was hard not to think about it - I think the New Yorker even did a profile that seemed to link his craft with the turmoil he had gone through over the years.

It's even possible he said "create" or "imagine" feelings rather than just "pretend" which would be more disturbing...it's been so long and I only saw it once, so my memory of it may have changed. Wish I had a copy so I can get it right.

I imagine the pressure to perform is harder as a screen actor because if you are doing a stage production and one day think to yourself "fuck, I'm in over my head here", yeah, you could get savaged in the press, and yeah, some vids might show up on Youtube, but in a movie, your shit performance is preserved in amber for everyone to see and clown endlessly. not to mention some of the punishing circumstances people are put into on set.

so I can see perhaps doing everything possible to give yourself an edge there, including pushing yourself over the edge mentally speaking.

Also, all Leto's method acting stuff leads to incredibly irritating and unconvincing performances. In BR 2049, for example, he kills the film dead every time he appears.

i'm probably a "but that's the point!" guy more often than is tolerable but BR2049 really does test this to its limit: no no that's the point of course the impotent scion of a corporate god would be callow and pretentious! this callow and pretentious tho?

(i guess jeremy strong is what this looks like when it rly is the point)

If it hadn't been written about ad nauseam, I wouldn't have guessed that Strong was method acting. He's so good and unforced! Leto is the opposite: big effort, totally unconvincing.

If it hadn't been written about ad nauseam, I wouldn't have guessed that Strong was method acting.

same applies to leto tho-- if variety told me "his process is peculiar: he insists on not knowing anything about the role until five minutes before camera, when he receives his lines and invents a funny voice on the spot" i'd be like "makes sense"

https://www.cnet.com/a/img/resize/f276f287ca657d3a26444d14161e25149a951718/hub/2021/07/30/1052ee5d-bc80-4994-b23f-8da620eb7e43/screen-shot-2021-07-30-at-11-04-39-am-copy.png

https://i.ibb.co/jbyGfK4/bof.jpg

same applies to leto tho-- if variety told me "his process is peculiar: he insists on not knowing anything about the role until five minutes before camera, when he receives his lines and invents a funny voice on the spot" i'd be like "makes sense"

Tom Hardy's process, no?

Frantic and the Fugitive obv great vehicles for Ford's acting; I also remember loving the Mosquito Coast, which I haven't rewatched in probably 25 years.

It was bizarre watching Dial of Destiny (shit title) now refracted through the 40 years of action-adventure culture - the anonymous National Treasures and Mummy movies, Myst-like puzzle games and their progeny, etc. - and just how far removed we are from the original idea: taking a cheap Republic b-movie serial plot and going at it with all the forces of Big Hollywood. Not altogether different from Die Hard's original blueprint of a taking a basic heist film and making everything about it, no matter how small, as awesome as possible.

Also like the Die Hard movies, none of the subsequent Indiana Jones sequels ever got it just quite right like the first one, each one less memorable than the previous, until you get to movie #4 when the movies themselves are abstracted into only one identifiable part: it's the one with Shia LaBeouf; it's the one with Kevin Smith. By movie #5, Jones and McClane are, glum, angry, and never in charge of themselves - only reacting to whatever the plot is doing at that moment. Kinda like these final sequels themselves... who would even be excited to work on this? Just shove it out and make sure those checks clear before the strike.

I felt sorry for Indy. He never would have been able to publish anything related to his government work in archeology for national security reasons. His major finds are warehoused away and forgotten (is Hangar 18 an accredited museum?). Undergrads were flirting with him in the first movie, now they openly mock him. All those years of fighting Nazis and now they're throwing a ticker tape parade for the men who flew to the moon on Nazi rockets. I suppose if Indy had cooperated better he could have retired to a nice place out in Long Island, but knowing him he probably said "that belongs in a museum" to a Rockefeller or some benefactor that could ensure he'd never ever get tenure.

Good post, especially last paragraph - though I maintain that this film is much better than #4, and also FWIW better than #2. I think that age and pathos ('I feel sorry for Indy') can contribute something of value rather than just detracting.

Watched #2 again over the weekend and, while the Short Round/Indy relationship is fun and endearing and the first sacrifice scene is all-time the rest of the flick, I felt like I was watching some other adventure film and not Indian Jones. Plus most of the thing takes place *in a cave*. And then, a lifetime later, we're out on some cliffs.

*Indiana Jones

Finally saw this today & don’t know why I bothered.

Phoebe v enjoyable, Ford fine, some of the early Nazi quips were good. the end.

The Antikythera device? rmde Look. i agree that much like the ~idea~ of crystal skulls it has an interesting actual history
but the heavy lifting required to turn this into a plot device is really stupid.
keep it in the woo-woo supernatural/occult realm, do NOT start explaining at length how this shit works for all of our sakes

unlike the ark or the grail there is never a concise handwavey “ok got it” explanation of what it is or does or what the stakes are

so we’re nowhere as soon as it’s revealed.

and then it levels up into a timetravel device? wait ok but ~not really~ because it jpoints to possible time fissures … uuughhhh YOU GUYS JFC
li’m already bored
whaaaaat are we doing

OH but we’ll make it pay off because we are ~fully~ going back to Chekhovs siege of syracuse by flying a fucking plane through a time tunnel

we’re shooting roman centurions
indy wants to … stay … here with archimedes
yep nbd we’re hanging out in 212 BC Sicily chatting to archimedes in ancient greek

what the actual fuck are we doing here please

am I watching motherfucking Bill and Ted
PLEASE STOP THIS AT ONCE

spielberg’s absence as a director was noticeable in that this shit was dull as hell and then levelled up into pure stupid absolute liquid shit

oh and we’ll end with indy in a shitty ny apartment with nothing except some perfunctory makeup sex w his ex wife & maybe cry abt their dead son afterwards

great job everyone clap clap

a truly lifeless movie
zero fun, no stars

what about wet Banderas

loved!

old indy: ah, old wet banderas, my old friend!
...
old indy: stop having fun! my old friend, wet banderas, is dead!

He didn't seem that broken up about his colleagues being murdered though...

banderas was great, i was relieved when he showed up, like oh he’ll be a good companion but then no

indiana jones and the dull of density morelike amirite

Yeah I totally agree about the Antikythera stuff

Was Indy meant to be an explicit villain in this? He pries the dial from a mentally disturbed friend promising to destroy it but catalogs it in the stacks instead and forgets about it and also about checking up on his supposed goddaughter. I guess the series as a whole has an implicit undercurrent of Indy being a graverobbing cad but there's a distinct lack of heroic tone in this movie.

It is very funny to me how they de-aged Harrison Ford’s face but not his voice or his body movements

I wanted to see this but Veg's comments have stopped me

(Literally - I thought "uh oh" and I've been put off ever since)

if i can give back in some small way

It looks absolutely sensational - the colours and the editing and the camerawork are all just ridiculously satisfying. The henchmen are extremely A+ henchmen. One laconic, drawling hothead, bursting out of his too-tight shirt, and one mountain of a man who I think never speaks, just hurls scenery around. Phoebe Waller-Bridge does her thing, and it’s great. A lot of the pieces are there. But none of it really adds up, and Ford is just a nullity. Would have been better as a Tin Tin movie imo

Oh and the script is super hacky. Stuff you’d cringe at even in an Uncharted cut scene. At one point Indy grabs the contested artifact and yells “to the victor go the spoils!”

That said the Tangier bit was very good I thought

One laconic, drawling hothead, bursting out of his too-tight shirt

That's Boyd Holbrook, who's great as Lackey #1 in Logan too.

Also very good as DEA Agent Steve Murphy in first couple of seasons of Narcos