MARION RAVENWOOD & THE THREAT OF INDY 5 - Page 4

I'd read somewhere also that a problem with the group of people in Crystal Skull is that they were all superfluous. Seeing him constantly bailing out the others in Last Crusade is what actually cemented their purpose in the storyline. You keep reinforcing how much of a badass he is, having to save people from tanks, and draw gunfire, and everything else. In Skull, they were trying to justify Marion's presence, and cement Shia as being the heir-apparent to the adventure legacy, taking off the focus from Indy time and time again.
 

It would have worked better if they just stuck to the Last Crusade formula of having him get sidetracked to bail out the others a few times, and keeping the action focus on him. Even though Connery, Elliott, and Davies were all getting in the way and mucking things about in Crusade, I never once considered them useless characters, because they served to keep the spotlight on Indy.

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Originally Posted by Richard Dickson 

 

It's no more ridiculous than falling out of an airplane in an inflatable raft.

I dunno. A Mythbusters ep busting the raft is justified. They would NEVER need to disprove the fridge bit.

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Originally Posted by FatherDude 

and one territory that seemed to get some traction was a 50s/60s Hammer horror film.

I like that vibe, with...

 

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Originally Posted by S.D. Bob Plissken 
A sort of Lovecraftian/Satanic evil object with unspeakable power, if you will.

Yep... Atlantis/R'lyeh or nothing.

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Originally Posted by Richard Dickson 

Yes, Raiders had a more visceral approach, but I hardly think it's the essential missing element here.

I'd argue that "visceral" is one of the key elements missing from KOTCS. Everything seemed so slight and fakey. You could probably blame most of that on green screen vs location, but it feels more pervasive than that.

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Originally Posted by S.D. Bob Plissken 

 

I've never gotten the hate for 3 either.  I believe the reasoning at the time had to do with them not being satisfied with that as a conclusion to the film and wanting to leave it open for a possible sequel.  Also, Spielberg admitted that he was a bit afraid that some kid would crawl into their family fridge attempting to time travel and die....though I don't think that was a core factor in abandoning the idea.  Obvious it stuck with him for decades.

My problem with BTTF 3 when I was a kid was the fact that 2 had so (maybe too much) time traveling  and antics that 3 seemed a major step back in its immobility and weird genre shift. I was wrong, but I was a kid.

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Originally Posted by FatherDude 
So they waited twenty years for that to happen, then signed off the first script that met those superficial requirements, leaving us with an ironically undercooked product.

Pretty much. :(

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Originally Posted by Swahili 

I'd read somewhere also that a problem with the group of people in Crystal Skull is that they were all superfluous. Seeing him constantly bailing out the others in Last Crusade is what actually cemented their purpose in the storyline. You keep reinforcing how much of a badass he is, having to save people from tanks, and draw gunfire, and everything else. In Skull, they were trying to justify Marion's presence, and cement Shia as being the heir-apparent to the adventure legacy, taking off the focus from Indy time and time again.
 

It would have worked better if they just stuck to the Last Crusade formula of having him get sidetracked to bail out the others a few times, and keeping the action focus on him. Even though Connery, Elliott, and Davies were all getting in the way and mucking things about in Crusade, I never once considered them useless characters, because they served to keep the spotlight on Indy.

Exactly!

FYI: The reason Spielberg didn't want Indy to have a spunky young daughter is because he felt like he'd already done that with gymnast chick in The Lost World.

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Originally Posted by zak chase 

FYI: The reason Spielberg didn't want Indy to have a spunky young daughter is because he felt like he'd already done that with gymnast chick in The Lost World.

I wouldn't have made her gymnast girl young, I'd have wanted Indy to have a 17-21 year old daughter, given the fact that it was 19 years since the last Indy film.

Whoa. Indy meets Lovecraft?

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Originally Posted by Richard Dickson 

Spielberg is the reason Crystal Skull is as watchable as it is.

Crystal Skull is watchable?

Yes.

(I could've been snarky, but... eh.)

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Originally Posted by DamnDirtyApe 

So, wasn't M.Night Shyamalan hired to write a script for Indy 4? And if so, did he actually write it or what happened there?

Night turned Spielberg's offer down, never had anything to do with Indy.  Although, a script by him probably wouldn't be any worse than the abortion we ended up with.

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Originally Posted by The Dark Shape 

Yes.

 

(I could've been snarky, but... eh.)

Crystal Skull is fucking terrible...it really is like the old guy who wont acknowledge the fact that he can't dance anymore.  And I'm not talking about Harrison Ford.

Actually, it's more like an old guy who not only wants to acknowledge that he can't dance, but wants to actively punish the crowd for demanding that he do so.
 

I should clarify...Spielberg is still more than capable of delivering thrilling action and set pieces, but the script is shitty, and there is a severe "going through the motions" feeling to the whole thing...much worse than Return Of The Jedi for instance, with some flat out terrible moments that makes Crusade look like Raiders.  I think it's unwatchable for Indy fans.

And Darabont's script was waaaay better.  Fuck Lucas and his Xanadu insanity. 

'Going through the motions' is the right phrase for the film. It all feels a bit tone-deaf and perfunctory, and clearly hell-bent on selling Mutt as the future franchise leading man. It also rather embarrassingly tries to chicken out of the whole alien angle (Which I've always believed could work with the right approach) with Hurt's awful 'space between spaces' line which was obviously thrown in at the last minute because after 500 years developing the bloody movie, someone clearly decided that they had the wrong McGuffin. Just lazy.  

Worky, this video says all you need to know...  Look at 3:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE7fzr6lQ-s

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Originally Posted by Freeman 

Worky, this video says all you need to know...  Look at 3:00

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE7fzr6lQ-s

This is why I don't think Spielberg deserves a pass.  After some perfunctory reservations he launches into a routine of Olympic level gymnastics trying to sell the legitimacy of this film.  Did he even bother to watch it?  And his, "Oh that George, he's so silly, but he makes great movies!" bit it some of the most insincere Gosh Gee Willikers BS I've seen outside of GW Bush.

George is just a deluded and complacent old hack who used to have a set of balls.  We've learned not to expect anything of quality from him anymore.  Spielberg, however, is a different story, and this is him at his most pandering, dishonest spinmastering.

I think what the existence of Crystal Skull proves is how deep Spielberg and Lucas' friendship really is.  It's quite touching in that sense.

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Originally Posted by Ambler 

I should clarify...Spielberg is still more than capable of delivering thrilling action and set pieces, but the script is shitty, and there is a severe "going through the motions" feeling to the whole thing...much worse than Return Of The Jedi for instance, with some flat out terrible moments that makes Crusade look like Raiders.  I think it's unwatchable for Indy fans.

I'm an Indy fan.  I watched it all the way through.

Hence, watchable.

People seeing a gulf of quality between CRYSTAL SKULL and, say, Sommers' MUMMY films are guilty of some serious curve-grading tendencies. Don't take that as a criticism or endorsement of one or the other - it's just the truth.
 

Devin Faraci said The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor is better than Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.

That's insane.

I honestly think SKULL's biggest problem is Kaminski. His garish palette makes everything look silly and fake, and punctures any kind of mood the film attempts to establish. The script is poor and it's not a very good film, but it's shoddy in a way that so many other summer movies are shoddy, rather than being some kind of unique cinematic war crime. It's certainly better than any of the prequels.
 

It's hardly the biggest problem, but it's a glaring and maddeningly avoidable one.  What's funny is that you look at the film and it's pretty clear that Spielberg and Kaminski did, in fact, take some pains to make the movie a throwback from a staging standpoint (there's a proclivity for wide angles and master shots even during the action sequences that is quite defiant to the modern style).  But these efforts are completely invalidated by the horrible, horrible bloom filtering and aggressive color timing that make the movie so bleached and shiny and processed-looking and out of line with its predecessors that I want to give Kaminiski a slap for not having more self-restraint and Spielberg a slap for signing off on it.

Yeah I'm increasingly growing to loathe that Kaminski glowy soft-focus look. The Thomas Kinkade of cinema!! (okay maybe that's going a bit far)

I'd take the prequels over Indy 4 any day though. Those movies are packed with new things and ideas, even if a lot of them are shit or don't work. There is stuff to engage with there. Indy 4 doesn't bring anything new to the table at all, it's just a big load of nothing. It's the movie equivalent of a classic band's limp reunion album.

Just compare this glowy, washed-out bullshit to the vibrancy of what an Indiana Jones movie is supposed to look like.  Spielberg insisted they were trying to approximate Slocombe; they get an F minus.

I've been bemoaning Kaminski's eye torture for years.  A.I. is where he really started getting my nerves.  Whatever Spielberg sees in that guy baffles me.  It very nearly ruins every film they've worked on together (besides Schindler and Ryan).  The shittiness reaches an apex on Indy 4...you really start to realize how terrible he is when he tries to mimic a master like Slocombe.

He was still capable of pulling back if he had any interest in respecting the series whose style he was supposed to be honoring.  The Lost World proved that he can lens a jungle movie that doesn't look like a diffusive nightmare.

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Originally Posted by FatherDude 

He was still capable of pulling back.  The Lost World proved that he can lens a jungle movie that doesn't look like a diffusive nightmare.

Yeah Lost World looks okay...but it still bothers my eyes.  It's another example of him going up against a superior DP's work with a sequel and failing...it just makes the other guy's work look better.

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Originally Posted by Andrew Merriweather 

I honestly think SKULL's biggest problem is Kaminski. His garish palette makes everything look silly and fake, and punctures any kind of mood the film attempts to establish. The script is poor and it's not a very good film, but it's shoddy in a way that so many other summer movies are shoddy, rather than being some kind of unique cinematic war crime. It's certainly better than any of the prequels.
 

Yep. If the movie wasn't so distractingly ugly then, I'd probably see it as a lesser entry for an older Indiana Jones. It would at least fit visually with the others. But even okay scenes, like the fight with the Russian in the Jungle are marred by this fake sound-stagey look. Almost every scene has this strange kind of look that reminds me more of Sky Captain than Indiana Jones.

Kaminski relies on a bag of tricks that work well for some movies - Munich, War of the Worlds, Private Ryan - and not well for others; the worst case being Crystal Skull.

I watched all the Indy movies again on Blu Ray, with an open mind...I wanted to like Crystal Skull, but it just wasn't happening. The worst thing about the movie is that there's a bumbling geriatric in the place where Indiana Jones should be. And it's not because Ford is older...he still looks pretty good and it seems like his heart is in it...it's more how he's written. Shia La Beouf has to remind him halfway through the movie that the Russians are the bad guys and he shouldn't be helping them out.

I've been eager for Spielberg to ditch Kaminski too, but I have to credit KOTCS's disparate photography for making it so easy to disassociate it from the trilogy.

What kills me about that jungle chase is that there's several shots in it you'd swear were CGI, but then on the new Blu you can see them shooting it practically. So why does it look like such shit? Is that color correction?