(but it really shouldn’t matter because you should save your $10)
Tonight the bf and I saw Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. He will be guest writing this post with me…
You know how the doctor tells you this shot is only going to hurt “a little” and deep down you know he’s full of shit? That was our experience watching this movie.
Not only was it an abomination on it’s own, but it singlehandedly tarnished and pissed all over the good name of Indiana Jones. As it turns out, Denholm Elliott‘s (Marcus Brody) untimely death was a good career move rather than appear in this latest installment of the Indiana Jones franchise.
The genius of the once-visionary George Lucas and Steven Spielberg, has soured and begun to fail with age (see Star Wars Episodes 1-3). We’re not commenting on the physical years of Lucas and Spielberg, but rather of their having given in to the creativity-sucking money machine. Apparently they thought that a public willing to elect George W. Bush into office twice would be gullible enough to hand over their money without much problem.
I fear that when both of us walk into our respective offices tomorrow morning, noses will raise from behind cubicle walls, wondering what the stench is. “I smell Indiana Jones 4!” Yes, quite like a skunk’s spray, this is a marking that will not easily be showered away.
You may be wondering why we thought it sucked so much. It might be shorter to tell you what we thought was good about it… but then this post would end.
For starters, the style was all wrong- it looked like it had been shot as a Soap Opera. The lighting was bad, the cinematography was predictable and the dialog was about as complicated as the comics in Bazooka bubble gum. The set looked like one and the Crystal Skull seemed made of plastic filled with that crinkly iridescent tissue paper. Come on, people. You can do better.
Oh, and lets not forget about the fact that they ditched the Nazis (a lesson they should have learned from in IJ2: Temple of Suck) for Soviets and… wait for it… ALIENS!!! WTF?! It’s like Spielberg was attempting not an homage to the IJ franchise but a sequel to that other alien movie.
What were they thinking, insulting IJ fans, and intelligent humans, by putting ALIENS as the whole gimmick to the movie? That’s the other problem, it wasn’t a movie with thought-out character development or respectful throwbacks to the good stuff that came before or even something with a coherent plot- the entire thing WAS a gimmick- a gimmick to romance money out of the hands of an unsuspecting public who willingly gave it up hoping that filmmakers are still visionaries and decent human beings who wouldn’t disgrace the icon that was Indiana Jones. Was.
I just hope that I will be able to watch Movies 1 & 3 without thinking of 4. I have no issue forgetting 2, but that may be because time has begun to heal those wounds.
It all just goes to show you that you too, for a mere $185,000,000 can make something that will destroy an icon, ruin childhoods around the world and still make you millions.
The bf, for one, would rather cover himself in chum and throw himself into shark infested waters than go anywhere near that movie again (he also mentions something about circumcision and a rusty spoon, but that’s probably more graphic than you need.)
While I still wouldn’t go the chum or rusty spoon route, my heart is broken. I was nervous when i heard about this movie being made that the story was all wrong- that Indiana Jones can’t have a son, no matter how old he gets, and that Cate Blanchett is just too modern for the story. I was right to be nervous but i was nervous for the wrong reasons. Cate didn’t seem *that* out of place compared to the presence of ALIENS! I didn’t notice too much that the once Womanizing, Government-hating Indy had been turned into a decorated war hero father and husband because i was blinded by the plastic-y goodness of bad ALIEN props! And I might have been mildly distracted from the “Insert Homage Here” formula because of the clear attention to ALIENS!
I’m sorry, the bf informs me there were no aliens in this movie.
I stand corrected; they were “Interdimensional Beings.”
Apparently Genius can die and someone can ruin a good thing. In this case, the good thing that used to be the Archeologist/Professor Everyone Wants And Wants To Be, dies a 2 hour long, painful, gut wrenching, eye gouging, death. Complete with Aliens. There comes a time in every man’s life when he has to admit he’s slid off the bell curve of his creative faculties and needs to roll over and give up for the sake of the rest of humanity. Lucas and Spielberg are way past their deadline.
As he rolls over to go to sleep, my bf asks, “Will the stench ever come off?”
“We have Top Men working on it.”
“Who,” he asks?
“Top Men.”
—
Other reviews:
– “Indiana Jones and the Savage Reviews,” Telegraph
– Listing of reviews from Movie Review Query Engine
– Rotten Tomatoes.com
– Reel Reviews
I agree completely! It completely left the Indiana Jones stories – I could understand a Mayan hunt but aliens/interdimensional beings!?!?! And what was that tarzan scene all about? I was most disappointed. A friend suggested that this was a completely different script that wouldn’t sell and so they decided to put Indiana Jones in it to make it sell. All in all, a bad decision.
Wow. That’s way harsh.
I’m not going too far out of my way to defend the film since it is flawed, but all the IJ movies are flawed. They are all about cheesy dialog, improbable plots and even more improbable chase scenes.
So why are interdimensional beings any more or less ridiculous than the religious mumbo-jumbo that permeates the first three? Given when the film is set, I found playing into the area51 mythology quite an interesting choice. IJ4 played off a lot of the alien movies of the 50s that were intimately tied to Cold War films.
I’m also glad that the character changed over the 20 years since the last film. Stuff happens. I was actually concerned that they were going to try and present him exactly the same as he was in the previous films and was quite relieved that they didn’t. Especially in a Cold War climate, one would have to temper (at least for the official record) ones attitudes toward the government.
Believe me, I’m the LAST person to defend Speilberg, but other than some disorienting cgi, the production was top notch. The print I saw had no issues with lighting. Not sure what you were expecting of the cinematography for the 4th film in a franchise.
And yes the Tarzan/monkey scene was one of the stupidest things I’ve seen in a long time.
It’s very possible that my final feelings about the movie would have been different had i gone to see it with someone other than the harshest of IJ critics I know.
Regardless, while I was enjoying myself, but finding it hard to totally suspend disbelief (being brought out of the movie trance i love so much by things like the plastic-y set and prop, the tarzan-foolery, and awkward cgi (I’m sorry but cgi will always look bad next to real people)) i was more in critic mode than moviegoer mode.
It didn’t start out well, either- the first few minutes of Ford’s dialog didn’t even sound like him! Not even an older him!
I do believe, however, that I am holding this movie up to a very high standard, regardless of what expectations i brought to the theatre. I grew up on Indy, but not in a “i saw it in theatres and it blew my mind” kind of way, but the “i was too young to see it in theatres but I have intimate knowledge of it’s legend and myth” kind of way.
Like the original 3 Star Wars’ 1 and 3 Indy films were upheld in my house as good, fun, movies but as mindblowing epics. Perhaps unrightly so, but there you have it.
As for the Aliens- as a person who believes anything is possible, and doesn’t subscribe to any “organized” belief system- i was still thrown by it. It seemed like a cheap thrill, an easy way out.
Yes, golden boxes housing the power of a supreme being, or cups that deliver the ultimate gift, are in “that realm” of belief of the non-tangible, but somehow, to me, seemed more possible to exist in myth and real life, than aliens do in the conversations of the world. Perhaps in a few generations, when Scientology has dropped it’s “oh my god, are you kidding” stigma, the possibility of aliens will seem less bad to me.
Another thing that did it for me- while I felt connected to the characters because we have a history together, but i never felt even for a second, any tension that made me think one or all of them might not make it.
I came with the movie, wherever it went, to see where it would go. but i have to tell you- as soon as i saw that standard-issue alien craft, I was done.
You make an interesting point about how old you were when you saw the original films. I did see them in the theaters, so they didn’t have the same reputation. My relationship with the original films sounds like it was different, and I had different expectations about the new one.
The $20 bucks I save on the movie (we were thinking of going this weekend) will now go towards the dry-cleaning of my new shirt–upon which I spit up coffee, laughing hysterically while reading this post. Bravissimo!
Always happy to cause laughter. :-)
Right when they hinted at aliens I knew I couldn’t fully enjoy this movie. When they showed the method of elongating human skulls to praise the gods I had a brief hope that they had finessed their way out of the situation, some back room deal had been made and aliens wouldn’t be involved, but even then I knew that hope was a stretch.
A lot of the movie, I enjoyed forcibly because I love Indy so much, and I must give credit where it’s due. I thought I was going to have problems liking the movie because Shai Lebeouf was Indy’s son. Turns out with the surrounding plotline Carrot Top could have been Indy’s son and I still would have had the same opinion on what destroyed the film.
George, Steve…Don’t cross the streams!!!
Aliens don’t belong in musty crypts any more than mummies belong roaming the Millennium Falcon.
Why didn’t you throw in super kung fu and and a ghost from the Grudge while you were at it? Maybe some stolen car street racing and a few radioactive super heroes? Freddy and Jason might still be available and they’re all just as important as pertaining to the Indiana Jones story integrity as aliens.
And not just any aliens. Greys! The hokiest, most cliche, mainstream dumbed down aliens of them all! The Nascar of aliens, if you will.
I think we all died a little inside when they even left in a flying saucer.
So in closing I’m glad someone feels the same about this undiluted steaming heap of a 4th installment as me.
Somehow Jet Li as a mummy seems highly probable now.
It was lucas’s fault and no one elses that IJ4 sucked. You can’t blame steven the man is an einstein and you can’t blame shia he acted his ass off.
ILM is becoming more and more of a problem. The biggest issue with ILM is somewhere over the past 10 years they lost their balls.
IJ4 for me wasn’t that bad. But it certainly wasn’t up to par with what I expected out of the “Next Indy film”.
All in all you can put this up their with some of the greatest blunders of the past 25 years right next to clinton getting caught and michael jackson getting the needle.