Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

[Danno]

[zekend01]

[Elliot Gay]

[August]

[kpa]

[lhb412]

[RapZiLLa54]

[RapZiLLa54]

[Shonokin]

[DannyBeane]

I'm going to see it tonight and I am pumped! By the way Temple of Doom is my favorite Indiana Jones Movie...

[Elliot Gay]

[canofhumdingers]

Saw it last night. i thought it was pretty disappointing. It had a few decent moments & was much better than the prequels in terms of acting, but there were just too many things that had no place in an IJ movie to me. Honestly, most of the things i hated were quite obviously Lucas's influence.

I think that had he been banned from touching this thing once the basic storyline (which i actually didn't have a problem with) was planned out, it actually would have been a pretty good movie.

Spoilers ahead....





The things that really ruined it for me were things like the stupid hot rod race at the beginning... what was that? it served no purpose but to look cool. ok, that happens sometimes in adventure films, but usually the "looking cool" sequences at least involve key characters or have SOME sort of relation to the story at large. This HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH ANYTHING ELSE IN THE MOVIE. It was just there b/c Lucas likes hotrod racing.

The gophers.... Oh my gosh, what the heck?!? Once again, totally pointless & out of place in the context of the movie itself, & definately in the context of the series.

The way the gunpowder traveled in a perfectly level to the floor path that winded around the crates. This was just bizarre. The exact same thing could have been done in a much more beleiveable manner to the same (well, better) effect.

The very inconsistent magnetic attraction of said crate. It pulls some guys' guns, but not the guns on the backs of the guys carrying the crate??? This, again was not a bad idea, just executed poorly & sloppily.

THE MONKEY SWINGING MUTT! UGH!! that was pure Lucas garbage at its worst.

The monkeys themselves. Why did they need to be CGI? THEY DIDN'T. That little bit actually could have been ok if they used live monkeys for as much of the sequence as PETA would allow. & even the mutt swinging from the trees might've been ok if it were done with real stunt work, action set peices, etc like the stunts coreographed for the first three films.

Same goes for the sword fight. It was lame, but it didn't have to be. It could have been pretty cool & exciting if it wasn't blatantly blue screen CGI. Seriously, would the whole drug underneath the truck & crawling all over it, running from the boulder, fighting on the tank, fighting on the rope bridge, sequences have been half as exciting if they were'nt ACTUALLY happening, but filmed in a nice safe sound stage green screen & cgi'ed together?? NO. So why couldn't we get that kind of stuff in this one??

The wedding. Not terrible, just doesn't really fit the Jones character very well imo.

The crystal skull's power was never explained in a way that we really understood why anybody wanted it so bad. a small bit of dialogue could've easily fixed this & made the adventure resonate a little more.

I was a little disappointed that Marion & Indy's relationship felt flat & a bit forced. Not on the level of Anakin & Padme (thank goodness!!), but they just didn't have that great chemistry from Raiders. I wasn't surprised, as it's been a long time, but i was a little disappointed none the less.

The nuclear explosion fridge survival was just too over the top. I might have bought it if the fridge didn't go flying hundreds of feet through the air. Indy is escapist adventure & he survives things no man really should, but that one was a bit extreme even for him.

The death of Spalko. Felt very anticlimactic & uninspired. The commander guy's ant death was WAY cooler. Spalko was the big baddie & she should have had a gruesome, shocking death that we didn't see coming. Not the bland Raiders imitation we got.

CGI CGI CGI!!!!! ARRRGGHHH !!!! I remember Speilberg saying they were going to use lots of big action sets, on location shooting, stunt work, etc like the old films & that would have been GREAT. I don't hate CGI, i just hate its overuse & this was a major example of over use. It's also a perfect example for those of us who believe that CGI DOES make filmakers lazy & uncreative. Instead of doing it the hard way of building big action sets, coordination dangerous stunts on location, & actually having to creativley solve the problems of bringing things that couldn't actually happen into realization on a live set, they just take the easy way out & use green screen & cgi. BLEH!!

All that being said, there were parts i liked. Harrison did a decent job over all. Not his strongest performance by any means, but good enough.

To my surprise, i didn't hate Mutt. He made for a decent sidekick. Although, i absolutely do NOT want to see the series continue with him.

the cemetary exploration sequence was pretty awesome.

the parts of the jungle chase that weren't a blatant over the top cgi crapfest were pretty fun. the waterfall part wasn't bad either, though i think three times was a bit much. I guess they just had to out do TOD...

THE ANTS!! THAT was cool. got a little too cgi-ish in a couple of parts but over all they were great. The guy getting taken into the ant hill as they eat his face off was classic gruesome indy death scene.

The chase through the campus. Felt about on par with some of the chases in TLC. I enjoyed it.

The way Indy & Mutt initially get away from the KGB in the diner. Indy getting mutt to start a fight between the greasers & the jocks made me laugh. Classic Indy using his wits to get out of something on the fly.

The Akator sequences up until it turns into a CGI cartoon towards the end.

Over all, i think there was a good film in there somewhere. Unfortunately, George's heavy hand really killed it for me. Had they kept him away from it once the story was laid out & then had a gutsier editor who would stand his ground & cut out the crap like the gophers, it could have been pretty fun. As it is, the bad just outweighed the good too heavily for me to be able to really like it. Jones will stay just a trilogy for me

[gojira_fan]

[kiryugoji04]

[planetxleader]

Just saw it tonight. Liked it, lots a fun. The only Indy movie I've seen extensively before was Temple of Doom, so I honestly was only semi-excited for this. Ford's still got it, but in the very first scene I thought, "damn, he's old." His voice didn't even sound the same at first, but after that it felt like same ol' Indy.

Some yucky CGI-overuse does crop up (the monkeys and vine-swinging, most of the jungle chase), but I can't say I wasn't expecting that; this is Hollywood, afterall. Despite that it was an awesome adventure.

And oh yah, [semi-spoiler]Indy should have gotten radiation poisoning!

[DannyBeane]

Basically I agree with canofhumdingers almost word for word. It had some solid redeeming parts but overall was a dissappointment. THe movie just struck me as Indiana Jones ripping off movies (The Mummy, The Mummy Returns, Nation Treasure) that ripped off Indiana Jones. At the end of the day it just makes me feel depressed. I figured this movie couldn't fail considering they had the dream team in it. Oh well.

[MouthForWar]

Wow.... What the hell did I just watch?

I was never a huge Indy fan (I don't think I've even watched any of them all the way through in at least 8 years) and even I was let down TONS by this... thing. Honestly for about the first half of the movie, I was glued to it, but then it all fell apart pretty bad... not War of the Worlds bad, but it still fell to pieces.

This movie just kept getting dumber and weirder by the second. How do I start?

SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS

-The whole movie just doesn't feel like an Indy movie. It feels like some odd sci fi/adventure that just happens to have Indiana Jones IN it instead of being a true Indy picture,

-Indy himself didn't even seem right. He seemed kind of like a parody of himself- like if they did an Indiana Jones parody on SNL. This movie also portrayed him as an idiot, not being able to figure out obvious things and telling the bad guys EVERYTHING. I remembered Indy as being much more clever and bad ass than that.

-It looked bad... it was just bad to look at. So much CGI and green screen that it didn't look anything like an Indiana Jones movie. To me this series has always been about being super old school and with this modern day polish, it was just an eyesore. It was especially disappointing after hearing Spielberg say they were gonna do so much of it without those things.

-There are some great things established in the first half, like Indy's relationship with the FBI, the Red Scare, and how the FBI are looking for him... then they don't do anything with it.

-The addition of Marion is pretty useless. Poor Karen Allen serves nothing to the plot other than "THATS YOUR SON," another plot point that serves no purpose. She almost looks like she's about to burst out into laughter because she realizes how retarded the movie is... she looked high the whole time. Its just a feeble attempt by Lucas and Spielberg to make this seem like a REAL Indy movie, but they fail.

-The whole 2nd half is just BAD. The movie is a self parody of what made Indiana Jones great. Once it got to TERRIBLE scenes like the sword fight/monkey/car chase scene and the part where they drive off a tree and it swings up and hits the bad guys, I was just waiting for this movie to end. The whole second half was like "LETS SEE HOW MUCH WACKY STUFF WE CAN CRAM INTO 45 MINUTES" and not only was it a jarring shift from the first half of the movie, but it didn't even provide for any amusement on the most simple level. The situations are so stupid, over the top, self parodying and wacky that the characters are never ONCE in any real danger.

-The whole part at the end where the skeletons form into an alien that lights Cate Blanchett on fire, then they go up in a spaceship... WTF?

-The scene during the opening credits made no sense.

-CGI monkeys, gophers and ants. WTF

-He survived a nuclear blast by hiding in a refrigerator?

-The characters of Mac and Oxley... here are 2 brand new characters to the series, but from the get go, the movie just pretends like we know them already. They just made up these characters and kinda pretended they were there all along, and we don't know anything about them or why they are in the story... Mac's death was also unintentionally hilarious. All he had to do was GET UP.

-The natives that live in the walls and burst out and do kung fu. Huh?

-Shia Labouf- Unfortunately he didn't die in the first five minutes of the movie and we had to deal with him playing himself again.

-The wedding scene at the end. This could have been a touching scene (even though Indy getting married to begin with is an odd thought), but instead it was just dumb... and why was his hat even there?

-"They're going to the space between spaces"- WHAT?! :goofy:

END SPOILERS.

That said, I really was loving it for the first half. I even liked the gophers! Once they got to John Hurt's character it just kept going downhill and getting dumber and weirder.

All in all, this movie was a mess. They should have let Spielberg direct that awesome Frank Darabont script instead... you know, the one he wanted to do? But of course they insisted on getting a hack screen writer to write a crappy movie.

Seriously, this movie was so average and lame that you just KNOW that Spielberg and Lucas could have done SOOOOOOO much better. A new Indy movie was something that only should have been done if they could make it perfect. It should be a major event in film history, but this movie was so mediocre you have to wonder why anybody even bothered.

Oh well.. We knew it would end up like this. I wouldn't say its as bad as the Star Wars prequels or War of the Worlds, but it was pretty bad. Its probably a notch higher than Revenge of the Sith. Again, just like after War of the Worlds, I can only find myself asking "Steven Spielberg made this?!" And I don't know how this movie got a standing ovation at Cannes. Out of pity?

I could have told you years ago that Lucas should retire, but I'm honestly thinking Spielberg should hang it up too. I guess that's just what hanging out with George Lucas and Michael Bay does to you.

[Legion]

[Gkiller]

[kiryugoji04]

[Gkiller]

[canofhumdingers]

[lhb412]

I thought it was fantastic. When Indiana Jones is in the fifties of course he fights commies, survives an a-bomb test, and meets aliens. What the hell else would he do?!

[Gwangi]

That beginning scene, I believe is to reflect the time period this movie takes place, and the fact that I saw it as a little homage from Lucas' own "American Graffiti" which of course also had Harrison Ford.

Some of the likes and dislikes, however, I think are valid. Of the four, I would place this at number 3, behind "Raiders" and "Last Crusade". Still, it had enough for me to give it my thumbs up (took my nine year old nephew, and he loved it!). As a movie fan, I like the references they put forth from past films which ranged from "Tarzan" to "The Naked Jungle" and even "Star Wars".

[canofhumdingers]