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Ali 
"Those aren't pillows."
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 Posted - 05/28/2008 : 15:20:20
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The nuke bit worked on a few levels - it was spectacular; it was the obliteration of the nuclear family by a nuclear bomb; it was about the annihiliation of the self like the ending of the third film; it was about modernity and how nothing can stand in its way - it dwarfs everything in its path, even such an iconic figure as Indy.
The same message was also made in the first shot when the prairie dog-hill was run over by a speeding car.
It is a rich and coherent film. It's also great fun.
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MisterBadIdea 
"PLZ GET MILK, KTHXBYE"
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Posted - 05/28/2008 : 15:55:19
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I liked the nuke.
Look, whatever complaints I have about Ford's age, or '50s Indy -- the point is, the romance doesn't work, the son thing doesn't work, the action sequences are okay and the wisecracks aren't funny. I did like the guy getting eaten by ants though. |
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Ali
"Those aren't pillows."
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Posted - 05/28/2008 : 18:00:02
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If anything, the son thing works the best. Indy becomes his father, just as his son becomes him - but not until the father is willing to pass the mantle.
Or, to quote Henry Jones Sr, to "let it go."
The more I think about it, the more I realise how richly layered the film is. Even though, as Indy says in a wonderfully meta-moment, "it's only a story, kid."
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demonic 
"Cinemaniac"
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Posted - 05/28/2008 : 20:37:56
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quote:
Originally posted by silly
quote:
Originally posted by benj clews
quote:
Originally posted by demonic
Yes, well they should have left the nuke/fridge episode in 1983 where it belongs.
This was the equivalent of Indy being crushed by the big boulder in Raiders and then peeling himself up off the floor afterwards.
He does that in the Lego Indiana Jones video game.
Ah, that explains it. They were doing a live action film inspired by the lego game. Glad we cleared that up. |
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silly 
"That rabbit's DYNAMITE."
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Posted - 05/28/2008 : 22:23:38
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I found Lego Star Wars, Episode I to be vastly more entertaining than the movie  <- that's no moon, it's a space station! |
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chazbo 
"Outta This Fuckin' Place"
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Posted - 05/29/2008 : 02:01:04
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I saw the film yesterday, and I guess I'm taking something of a middle ground compared to what's been said so far. It's not a terrible movie, but it's certainly not great.
I didn't mind the sci-fi/atomic-age elements of the plot. After all, if the thirties were all about Nazism, then the fifties were about the Red Scare, nuclear testing, and aliens. And any good adventure story exploits the time period in which it occurs.
I think Ali is right on with his comment about the atomic explosion as an icon of Indy's transition to a new era of modernity. I quite enjoyed the first half of the movie, with its allusions to Roswell, McCarthyism, and nefarious Soviet agents.
I began to lose interest once the Amazon jungle chase starts - it just got more and more ridiculous as it went along. As if Shia swinging through the trees wasn't enough (I'm not so sure Indy really is his father), the three waterfalls pushed it too far. Like Demonic, all I thought as I was watching it was dumb, dumb, dumb. Indy et al jumping from an airplane on an inflatable life raft in Temple of Doom was more believable.
I guess towards the end a kind of tiredness set in, and the ending might have been better if they had kept the aliens more unobtrusive. And the very end was just plain laughable.
All in all, it was entertaining for the most part. Maybe if Lucas had taken a back seat and Spielberg had put in a little more effort, it could have been much more.
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Edited by - chazbo on 05/29/2008 06:07:43 |
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Conan The Westy
"Father, Faithful Friend, Fwiffer"
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Posted - 05/29/2008 : 13:12:03
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quote:
Originally posted by Ali
The nuke bit worked on a few levels - it was spectacular; it was the obliteration of the nuclear family by a nuclear bomb...
Hence my recent review "Indy's nuclear family meltdown." |
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thefoxboy 
"Four your eyes only."
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Posted - 05/31/2008 : 12:28:03
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Saw this today, gets a 6 out of 10 from me.
Was ok, but hated the character of Cate.
Liked the start till the nuke bit, when downhill from there. |
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w22dheartlivie
"Kitty Lover"
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Posted - 05/31/2008 : 14:19:03
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| So... is everyone saying that Sean Connery made the right decision when he said he'd not do another Indiana Jones film? Or was that just because everyone knew they couldn't pull off a still kinda sexy 78 year old man being the father of a badly aging 66 year old Harrison Ford? |
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Mr Savoir Faire
"^ Click my name. "
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Posted - 05/31/2008 : 16:43:05
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3 out of 10
there's too many unanswered questions in this film.
Why are there people racing outside of area 51? I guess it's to beat it into our heads that it is the 50s.
Why does it take an archeologist to figure out Mutt is his son? this is painfully obvious from the first time we see him.
Why does no one call him Indiana in this film? They might as well call it "Henry Jones Jr and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull"
why can't aliens talk? The keepers of all human knowledge are unable to communicate effectively. Strange.
What made john Hurt go insane? Why did he turn back the first time?
What powers the living dead that protect the graves? This was never explained. Is it vampirism? Nuclear mutation? alien inter-dimensional powering? Please tell us!
What types of vines are not attached to the ground? You can't swing from them! Why did Indy not care he lost his son? He had no idea he was about to defy physics/biology/logic and catch up to him. maybe he left Mutt because he thought he was an unnecessary character in the film.
Since when can a fridge can sustain a nuclear blast and a 2 mile aerial trip threw the sky? This is the worst scene I have seen in any movie since the Transporter 2 (when Stathom does an aerial roll to unhook a bomb).
what made me the angriest though, the character who was a triple agent that they decided to trust, and, wait, what do you know! He betrays them again. the whole time I saw it coming. No, too obvious, I said. no way he's going to let the plot go there.
the ending was exactly like the first indiana Jones. I have a box of knowledge and opening it will kill me because I wasn't meant to have it.
Indiana Jones should not take his family on jungle expeditions. Indiana Jones should not have a family. He should be a depressed, single professor at a college who travels the world for excitement.
I can't believe this film is so well-reviewed. While a mayan setting with Soviet bad guys is not a bad set-up, this is horrible. If this had not been part of the Indy series, this would have gotten horrific reviews. Parts of this are just way too over the top. Swinging vines, falling off the cliff onto the tree, 3 drops, a sword fight on what look to be well-traversed roads in the middle of the jungle, 1 man defeating a whole battalion in a warehouse, et cetera. Indy Jones ended at part 3 as far as I'm concerned.
Indiana Jones and the Accruing Treasure of George Luca$: An adventure in revisionism.
Aliens, nukes, OTT, unnecessary characters, unexplained plot points. I say this is Mystery science Theatre 3000 deserving. |
Edited by - Mr Savoir Faire on 05/31/2008 16:53:51 |
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randall
"I like to watch."
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Posted - 06/01/2008 : 19:39:29
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Just like when I waited a month to see THE PHANTOM MENACE and my expectations were so low that the flick actually was a pleasant surprise, so with INDY 4. The buzz was SO bad that we had to say, "Yeah, sure, but they earned our money." And it was a real pleasure to see Karen Allen again. I thought Cate chewed her scenery appropriately. The alien ending was hogwash.
My LEAST favorite sequence was the ants. The underbelly of CGI. Not convincing in the slightest. Park the brain [I really don't try to catch gaffes in LFL productions, even after having worked on STAR WARS minutiae for five years], reach for the popcorn and enjoy. It was fun in a Forties-serial kind of way, though absent the grin-inducing joy of the first flick, by far the best in the series IMO. |
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silly
"That rabbit's DYNAMITE."
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Posted - 06/02/2008 : 01:17:50
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I've been thinking about this, and the ending is making even less sense to me now.
Okay, his friend resigns the school, he is let go, Red Scare stuff. He dissapears for a few days in the jungle. He comes back - with nothing but a story - and bang, everyone has their job back, Henry gets a promotion (I think), and presumably the FBI is no longer interested in him. There aren't even any Russian / triple agent bodies to show, these folks have just been disappeared.
I know, I'm expecting too much realism, but c'mon what a cheesy ending. He didn't even get a picture. |
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Demisemicenturian
"Four ever European"
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Posted - 06/04/2008 : 01:03:47
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Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
The biggest area of disagreement I have with most here is that the first films are so much more realistic than this one. What are you talking about?! One of them features a 900-year-old man!
A lot of the stupid things I found perfectly fine and entertaining, such as the nuclear-retardant fridge (what's not to love about that?) and the vine-swinging (good enough for Tarzan although Mr Stupid is right that it's not possible).
A few stupid things I didn't like were the ants being able to carry the body, the portal looking remarkably like a flying saucer (as demonic has mentioned), everyone calling him Henry all of a sudden, the people living in the soil and Indy bizarrely believing Mac's unsubstantiated assertion that he is a double agent (as all of which Mr Stupid has mentioned).
The three waterfalls are a bit much but I assumed that Ox or whatever his name is was quoting real poetry and that the script needed to accommodate that.
I found the choice of the name Mutt endearing and the lack of Connery a vast improvement. Indy's character works perfectly well in the 1950s. I probably wouldn't have gone with the aliens, but they fit the time too. |
Edited by - Demisemicenturian on 06/04/2008 01:08:26 |
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Mr Savoir Faire
"^ Click my name. "
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Posted - 06/05/2008 : 00:20:32
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quote:
Originally posted by Salopian
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
The biggest area of disagreement I have with most here is that the first films are so much more realistic than this one. What are you talking about?! One of them features a 900-year-old man!
This is true. also, one has a drop out of an airplne with an inflatable raft(I have no choice but to ignore this part of Temple of Doom). The 900 year-old man works though. The setting of Last Crusade has established rules regarding the supernatural in it.
Unlike other films with artifacts that have a clear power (i.e. healing and immortality of the Holy Grail), the crystal skull is a "magic key". Any problem the charectors run in to, the skull has a new power to help them. Sometimes it is magnetic, sometimes it is not. Sometimes it is magnetic but the magnetism can be blocked by a cloth. Sometimes it can drive people insane, sometimes it can help people remember.
I really liked the fridge part until he was blown two miles and happened to land on the Russians that were trying to kill him. It would have been a great scene if some scientists examining the wreckage discovered him in the fridge, where the house stood, and Indy was on the verge of death, and then they took him into questioning.
My favorite parts of the movie were the choice name of Mutt and the Greaser and Socs fight scene. Other than that, I don't think we should commend Lucas and Spielberg for what is mediocre work (at best). These are talented people who have done great films in the past. Now that they have unlimited budgets and access to more resources, the quality should at very least stay the same.
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Demisemicenturian
"Four ever European"
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Posted - 06/05/2008 : 00:55:27
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quote:
Originally posted by Mr Stupid
Unlike other films with artifacts that have a clear power (i.e. healing and immortality of the Holy Grail), the crystal skull is a "magic key". Any problem the charectors run in to, the skull has a new power to help them.
Ah yes, that's a good way of putting it. I'd rather the skull did not have magical powers or had only one very specific one. One should be surprised that it can reattach itself to the body and thus reanimate and combine all thirteen beings, but it's done so much by then that one doesn't bat an eyelid. Although it doesn't harm anyone that I can remember, it appears to be a good forcefield against otherwise fearless ants and the soil people who are presumably supposed to be guarding it in some way.
I also liked the fight scene you mention. The way in which the two groups gang together is a nice combination of being both stylised and realistic. |
Edited by - Demisemicenturian on 06/05/2008 00:55:47 |
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Indiana Jones IV (Spoilers)
