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watching Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

Started by madhair60, July 03, 2020, 09:26:29 PM

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madhair60

Enjoying the fuck out of it to be honest, I knew before I went in that it was gonna be another example of disingenuous critical reception as it's obviously "pretty good" at worst. Nurrrr but he gets in a fridge, oh yeah no the grail that causes immortality and the melting faces and the heart bit in Doom were fine but you can't suspend disbelief for that bit. Sure.

Honestly I'd go so far as to say if you don't like Crystal Skull you're guilty of paedophilia.

SavageHedgehog

I guess I was guilty in 2008 but not 2018. Not sure what that means legally.

popcorn

I've bleated on about it here before but I fucking love the fridge scene. It's funny and stupid in the best way, and the concluding shot, with the mushroom cloud, is a great statement of intent - welcome to the nuclear age. I remember me and my mate in the cinema laughing shitloads, what a brilliant scene, and then afterwards going online and discovering everyone hated it and being really astonished.

I really like the basic premise, too - Indy in the 1950s, UFOs, Russians. The execution is just a bit dodgy. Yes the CG animals are crap and it's got lots of other problems but it's far from the prequel trilogy-like disaster people say it is. And I like it more than Raiders which is a bit boring actualleeee whoops there goes my credibility.

popcorn

Watching the fridge scene again, I'm still delighted by the way one moment leads to the next, the rapidly escalating stakes - the lack of water in the tap,  it just cracks me up.

Then again I seem to be basically delighted by any scene that combines explosives and home appliances, because I responded similarly to the bit in Malcolm in the Middle where the brothers find a live hand grenade and the pin falls out and then they have seconds to decide what to do with it, and the bit in Grosse Point Blank where John Cusack realises there's a bomb in the microwave, and the bit where Bart puts Homer's beers in the paint shaker and then he opens one and the house explodes. That high-stakes-holy-shit-domestic-situation is just a recipe for success for me I suppose.

The thing that really strikes me as naff about the fridge scene now is the hyper-dayglo orange-and-teal colour correction. I know people have been moaning about orange and teal for ages but this really does strike me as unnatural now and I guess this will be the sort of thing that dates movies of this period in the future.

PlanktonSideburns

yep, its definatley on par with all the others. daft laugh

PlanktonSideburns

nuke scene is great

tho, why did they have to cgi a fridge?

could they not just lob a fridge in the air, and film it?

pretty sure I have the budget to film that

'no mate, its gotta be CG. theres just no way we could get a fridge in the air like that'

BlodwynPig

Quote from: popcorn on July 03, 2020, 09:54:12 PM
Watching the fridge scene again, I'm still delighted by the way one moment leads to the next, the rapidly escalating stakes - the lack of water in the tap,  it just cracks me up.

Then again I seem to be basically delighted by any scene that combines explosives and home appliances, because I responded similarly to the bit in Malcolm in the Middle where the brothers find a live hand grenade and the pin falls out and then they have seconds to decide what to do with it, and the bit in Grosse Point Blank where John Cusack realises there's a bomb in the microwave, and the bit where Bart puts Homer's beers in the paint shaker and then he opens one and the house explodes. That high-stakes-holy-shit-domestic-situation is just a recipe for success for me I suppose.

The thing that really strikes me as naff about the fridge scene now is the hyper-dayglo orange-and-teal colour correction. I know people have been moaning about orange and teal for ages but this really does strike me as unnatural now and I guess this will be the sort of thing that dates movies of this period in the future.

*batman on pier with bomb gif*

greenman

Quote from: popcorn on July 03, 2020, 09:47:22 PM
I've bleated on about it here before but I fucking love the fridge scene. It's funny and stupid in the best way, and the concluding shot, with the mushroom cloud, is a great statement of intent - welcome to the nuclear age. I remember me and my mate in the cinema laughing shitloads, what a brilliant scene, and then afterwards going online and discovering everyone hated it and being really astonished.

I really like the basic premise, too - Indy in the 1950s, UFOs, Russians. The execution is just a bit dodgy. Yes the CG animals are crap and it's got lots of other problems but it's far from the prequel trilogy-like disaster people say it is. And I like it more than Raiders which is a bit boring actualleeee whoops there goes my credibility.

The whole first half in the US is I think generally pretty good, maybe the first section in Peru as well dispite the "part time" but after that it falls to pieces totally for me, a mess of bad CGI, bad acting and boredom.

chveik


Kelvin

The fridge scene is fine. It's the second half of the film that is ugly, noisy garbage.

Mister Six

Fridge scene aside - fuck off, it's shit - the film is all right until the bike chase ends. Then it just falls apart into a mess of bad CGI, naff scenes with poison Incans and temple puzzles that fuck with the 60s sci-fi trappings, and a barely-there plot.

It's further dragged down by shit acting from Marion, Shia LeBeouf being horribly miscast, and a stupidly bloated supporting cast (Indy basically becomes a passenger in his own film once John Hurt is solving puzzles and Shia LeBeouf and Ray Winstone are duffing up Nazis Commies). Oh and then the main baddie's death is just a shit mash-up of Raiders and Crusade.

Shame, because a nuclear-era-set "Indiana Jones Versus The Saucer Men" could have been ace.

Ferris

Lads, I liked it.

Watched em all in a row (not literally, over a week or two) a few years back and the 4th one was just as silly and fun as the others. Anyone who thinks it's shit takes themselves (and the Indiana Jones franchise) way too seriously.

Shaky

Yeah, it's just a shoddily made film. It got poor reviews at the time because it's simply not very good - largely nothing to do with disingenuous edgelords. A handful of decent bits in the first half and Ford is still good value, but the rest is poorly paced, scripted, acted and has zero sense of danger. Spielberg and friends managed to fuck-up the unfuck-upable. The group gets too big as Mister Six points out, and Mac and Oxley are no substitute for Sallah and Marcus Brody. The stair trap is laughably shit, where all fucking 15 of them or whatever are initially desperate to get to the bottom but then just ineffectually fall in the water anyway. Basically sums up the film with a big resigned sigh.

Waking Life

I remember I did quite enjoy it in the cinema despite my reservations, but I binged on the four of them a few years back too (after going through Uncharted), and there is a noticeable drop in quality. The first three aren't without their flaws obviously, but the constant call backs stick out a lot more when watching with the others, to the point it feels more like parody than homage. Agree with the comments above about the pacing, number of characters and the last act falling to pieces. Arguably it has been criticised a lot because it is sub-par Indy, but if it hadn't been an Indy film it would have even less goodwill, as it's inferior to the uneven National Treasure films. More on a par with Tomb Raider (films not games).

Despite all that, I did still enjoy it on the big screen originally, but I often get caught up with big screen spectacle (one of the reasons I love cinema). The other ones hold up to repeat viewings and I don't think I'll ever watch this again in my lifetime.

SavageHedgehog

Quote from: Shaky on July 04, 2020, 04:02:29 AM
Yeah, it's just a shoddily made film. It got poor reviews at the time because it's simply not very good - largely nothing to do with disingenuous edgelords..

It was fairly well reviewed by critics; 78% from our red plump overlords. It was mostly an audience and online response that created its reputation, as I suppose it should be.

Shaky

Quote from: SavageHedgehog on July 04, 2020, 09:21:56 AM
It was fairly well reviewed by critics; 78% from our red plump overlords. It was mostly an audience and online response that created its reputation, as I suppose it should be.

Really? Fair enough. I remember reading the initial reviews from Cannes with a sinking feeling - the Star Wars prequels getting some mention - so maybe I avoided some of the "better" write-ups.

madhair60


Custard

Haven't seen it in years, but I didn't hate it. It just felt more like a parody, as others have pointed out, rather than what felt like a genuine sequel to sit alongside the others

Shia was poor, Marion was poor, Ford looked a bit bored, and Ray Winstone was dreadful. Cate Blanchett was alright, but her character was underwritten and boring

The overuse of CGI was annoying, though I did quite like the red ant scene. It was more them swinging through the trees with CGI monkeys that looked fucking shit

With the talent involved, obviously Spielberg included, it should have been much, much better.

It's interesting that Spielberg has dropped out of the next one. Maybe he just doesn't care anymore, and doesn't fancy giving two years of his life to it

machotrouts

I'm okay with Indiana Jones not holding up to Mythbusters scrutiny, but I don't think hiding from a nuclear bomb in a lead-lined fridge even really has an intuitive cartoon logic to it. When I was watching, I thought "Oh no – Indiana Jones is at the epicenter of a nuclear explosion! He's gonna get blown to fuck!", not "Oh no – Indiana Jones is at the epicenter of a nuclear explosion! He's gonna die slowly of radiation poisoning!".

Don't really give a fuck either way because I don't like Indiana Jones, it's just a thing stepdads force children to watch, like Star Wars. I liked the Russian lass whose eyes exploded. Bye

Ferris

Quote from: machotrouts on July 04, 2020, 12:41:54 PM
I'm okay with Indiana Jones not holding up to Mythbusters scrutiny, but I don't think hiding from a nuclear bomb in a lead-lined fridge even really has an intuitive cartoon logic to it. When I was watching, I thought "Oh no – Indiana Jones is at the epicenter of a nuclear explosion! He's gonna get blown to fuck!", not "Oh no – Indiana Jones is at the epicenter of a nuclear explosion! He's gonna die slowly of radiation poisoning!".

Don't really give a fuck either way because I don't like Indiana Jones, it's just a thing stepdads force children to watch, like Star Wars. I liked the Russian lass whose eyes exploded. Bye

Fridges in the '50s famously* didn't have latch releases on the insides, so they are incredibly dangerous once dumped and stupid kids get stuck and die in them (to the point where they have been illegal to produce with locking latches since the early '80s). It's why they're magnets.

By dodging the nuclear blast poor old Indie had sadly doomed himself to suffocate in a lead lined coffin (albeit one that would protect him from radiation).

*i say "famously", I'd never heard of this until a few years ago

Custard

The story goes that Spielberg had wanted to put the fridge scene in a film for many years, and this finally gave him a chance

beanheadmcginty

Would've been better if Indy climbed inside the fridge and ended up in Zuul. Then had to deal with that.

greenman

Quote from: Shameless Custard on July 04, 2020, 11:14:27 AM
Haven't seen it in years, but I didn't hate it. It just felt more like a parody, as others have pointed out, rather than what felt like a genuine sequel to sit alongside the others

Shia was poor, Marion was poor, Ford looked a bit bored, and Ray Winstone was dreadful. Cate Blanchett was alright, but her character was underwritten and boring

The overuse of CGI was annoying, though I did quite like the red ant scene. It was more them swinging through the trees with CGI monkeys that looked fucking shit

With the talent involved, obviously Spielberg included, it should have been much, much better.

It's interesting that Spielberg has dropped out of the next one. Maybe he just doesn't care anymore, and doesn't fancy giving two years of his life to it

Motivation rather than simply CGI seems more likely to me as I felt both Tintin and Ready Player One were far better despite being mostly/entirely CGI.

Keebleman

Quote from: Shameless Custard on July 04, 2020, 01:14:45 PM
The story goes that Spielberg had wanted to put the fridge scene in a film for many years, and this finally gave him a chance

Yeah, the little girl with the red coat in Schindler's List was initially going to try to evade the Nazis by this method.  An SS guy would have mopped his brow and said, "Whew!  Zis Jew hunting ist thirsty verk, eh Hans?" then opened the fridge looking for a beer and found her.

Custard

Yep, Tintin is a cracking film. Could be a better Indiana Jones film than Crystal Skull

Someone do one of them DeepFakes

Ant Farm Keyboard

On this film, Lucas relied once again on his worst instincts for the script, Spielberg wasn't very happy but went along with it, then Lucas let Spielberg do some stuff that didn't work either.
It's not as if they had collaborated as much closely as on the original trilogy. It's more like old friends who have grown apart. They don't want to have a feud, so they split duties instead rather than addressing the many elephants in the room.

The second half is indeed very disappointing. You have all the characters, including the villains, who unite into one large group and who all have the same motivation, apart from the final scenes. That doesn't set up an interesting conflict between characters. Besides, Soviets never had much of an interest in the occult and mysticism. Spielberg vetoed the idea of using Nazis again (he doesn't want to trivialize them because of what he learnt from Schindler's List), but they would have made much stronger and natural opponents.

Custard

This film was set in 1957 though, so there would only have been a handful of Nazis. And even they had had their weapons taken off them for being naughty

Kelvin

Quote from: Mister Six on July 04, 2020, 01:36:11 AM
Shame, because a nuclear-era-set "Indiana Jones Versus The Saucer Men" could have been ace.

That's the thing. They just weren't willing to commit to the best idea they had - apparently because Spielberg didn't want to tackle aliens again- so the whole thing is a mess conceptually, as well as visually. If you stripped back the CGI, and led with the B-Movie alien tech, the whole thing would at least hang together a lot better.   

Mister Six

Can't believe how ropey the CGI was. Surely they could afford more than a couple of PS3s taped together?

Also how shit the soundstages looked. Christ, and that big rubber snake. Look how lush the other Indy films are, with their polystyrene rocks and matte paintings! And yet you give us this shit 25 years later?

Ant Farm Keyboard

Quote from: Shameless Custard on July 04, 2020, 03:18:04 PM
This film was set in 1957 though, so there would only have been a handful of Nazis. And even they had had their weapons taken off them for being naughty

They still had the mad men from Mandoras at their disposal. It wouldn't have been a jarring idea to have Nazis in South America searching for some way to bring a fourth Reich.