Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull [use spoiler tags, please]

[LSPoorEeyorick]

I'm sorry, gophers?

I haven't been reading the spoiler tags (or critic reaction or anything) so I am positively perplexed. But don't tell me any more about it!

[Gemini Cricket]

Spoiler:

I liked it less the second time around. And yes, groundhogs or gophers or whatever infest the beginning of this film... But there was a very funny dissolve between the Paramount Mountain and a gopher/groundhog hill at the top of the movie...

[Alex]

Spoiler:

As with many of the flaws in the movie I would have been completely fine with it as an exception but unfortunately it was not. The prairie dogs didn't bother me but the monkey during Mutt's Tarzan scene did, especially when Irina was fighting with them in her boat-jeep.

[innerSpaceman]

I don't know what about any of the Raiders sequels led anyone to expect anything more realistic than a Road Runner Cartoon.


Go to the film with expectations of live-action Wiley Coyote and ACME products, and you'll be fine.


If you want reasonably realistic, gritty and fantasticly conceived, performed, directed and realized Indiana Jones ... pop in Raiders of the Lost Ark. This new one is no more an equal to that classic movie milestone than either Temple of Doom or The Last Crusade, but it's also no worse than either of those widely-accepted Indiana Jones adventures.

Sheesh.




I can't be a wholehearted defender of Crystal Skull. It's got a laundry list of problems, and a plethora of charms.

[Alex]

I agree those things exist in the other sequels. I just think they are pervasive in this one in ways that they aren't in the others.

And I'm not sure I can buy into the idea that because the Indy series has previously done bad things, that their repetition makes them more acceptable.

[innerSpaceman]

It makes it more acceptable if you purchased a ticket to a revival of a 20-year-old franchise whose tennets, whether desireable or not, are long-ago established.


I'm not trying to make anyone "wrong" for their opinions. Opinions I happen to have shared 24 years ago when the first Raiders sequel was released.

I just want to suggest a frame of mind condusive to enjoying the film (many people here are going to see it for the first time tomorrow night), and to suggest that frame of mind is not out of keeping with what's been established in the Indiana Jones universe.


I'm the first one to decry the absurdity that's been established in the Indiana Jones universe ... but it's been established for decades and acceptance of it is pretty crucial to enjoying your two hours and fourteen dollars spent.

[Gemini Cricket]

$25,041,072 for Indiana Jones on Thursday.

[innerSpaceman]

One sixteenth of that was from me and Gemini Cricket alone!!

[Alex]

Amazingly that is underperforming expectations. But it is still going to make a metric bucketload of money.

[lashbear]

Greg & I have booked seats to see it this Sun (Sat your time) at Gold Class, with the recliner chairs, champagne and cheese-platter.

Now that's swank. Here's hoping we enjoy the movie.

I have a problem with CGI "Stunts" - from the trailers, it looks like the days of massive live-action sets are gone, and that's what used to give these type of movies the "Ooh, he's in danger" feeling... the actor (or stuntman) was dropping down inside a temple on a rope into a pit of (some very real) snakes, or facing being crushed between a truck and a dirt wall, or in a citadel with deadly flesh-eating rats about to be BBQed, and mostly, they were doing it for real, albeit safely, but for real. (Yes, I know there was a bit more CGI in Last Crusade, and I hated that CGI as well...)

Now, thanks to CGI, people can drive alongside the edge of cliffs, swing from massive heights etc, without the slightest risk of danger, and unfortunately, without the slightest hint of audience thrill either (cos we know it's all just CGI)

I'll see if I think different tomorrow afternoon.