What can I say about this movie. Perhaps that I got my hopes up a little too much in such a way that no matter what I saw I would be disappointed. Maybe I should have realized that this isn't the 1980's anymore. Nor the 90's. No, no, this is the new millennium where action movies suck. Because CGI sucks. There is nothing good about it. It makes everything look bad. Why was the Cantina scene in Star Wars so great? Or the truck chase scene in Raiders? Or why was the scene from Temple of Doom where the bugs are everywhere so memorable. It's because it looked believable. They used REAL costumes, REAL cars, REAL animatronics. Physical things you could reach out and touch. These days directors would rather direct in front of a big blue wall rather than film on a location.
But that's not my biggest problem with this movie.
In fact, there isn't just one single problem, there are several.
The Story
I don't know what I didn't like about the story, it just didn't seem to be the same caliber as the previous 3. It seemed like they never went anywhere. And where ever it was they went none of it was memorable. Comparing to the old films again, the Well of Souls, the pit of lava room from Temple of Doom, the opening sequence in Raiders where he is getting the gold statue from the temple. I thought the big hanger in the beginning with all the boxes was probably the most memorable scene. And that was just a reused location from Raiders!! There's probably a lot more I could say about the story, George Lucas wrote it and he's done a good job of ruining all his great works in the past 10 years so no surprise here.
The Music
Something I noticed was the lack of good theme music. There was the main theme of course, but I felt like John Williams slacked off a bit with this one. The theme from Raiders of The Lost Ark was definitely the best and it was even in the movie when they first went into the hanger at the beginning. The Nazi's also had their own theme back in the old movies. This new one, not so much. There was no Russian theme and no other memorable music. Just some background fight music. That was disappointing.
The Bad Guys
The Russians were no match to the Nazis. That's about it.
The Crystal Skull
The whole alien thing I didn't like. I mean, the crystal skulls are real artifacts just like the others, but they changed it to where it was like an alien skull. I just wish it would have been a real artifact. Or maybe not, I don't know, I just don't think aliens and Indiana Jones go together. Not saying pseudoscience and Indiana Jones don't go together because the whole thing with the ark in the first movie and the voodoo, and the grail giving eternal life, as long as you don't cross the seal of course, those all worked for me. This somehow didn't. For the first time, it wasn't Indy trying to get an artifact because it belonged in a museum. I'm not exactly sure what he was doing it for. That's another problem with the story. Why was Indy doing all this. He had no motive. In the other ones, it was to get the Ark for the museum, or the Sankara stones for the village, or the grail because it was his father's obsession. In this one, it was just for seemingly no reason. I didn't get it. What would have happened had the Russians used it. They would have just ended up getting sucked into the portal anyhow.
Bottom line I didn't like it. It was worth seeing once. But sadly, unlike any of the other movies, I will probably never watch it again.
4 comments:
wow. thanks for killing the momentum i had for seeing it this weekend.
just kidding.
kind of.
i will still see it i am sure. i don't see cgi as the bane of all that is good in movies the way that you do, so maybe that won't stick out as much. it can be done well. it can be done poorly. we'll see.
i'll give you a proper response once i've something to judge.
later.
Aww, I figured you'd not read my post till after you had seen the movie since I titled it "Indiana Jones Review" sorry if I spoiled anything. There was lots that I left out of course. I left out lots of good things and lots of bad things. But the bottom line at the end remains the same.
And CGI can be done well. It just has no place in an Indiana Jones movie as far as I'm concerned. And this movie wayyy overused it. I understand some of the bigger effects that couldn't be done otherwise. But most of the animals, like the monkeys and prairie dogs, were CGI, they could have either used real ones. Or if that was too much trouble they could have just left them out entirely. They didn't aid the movie whatsoever! But you will see for yourself, soon enough.
well, jacob. i must say...
i did, in fact, enjoy the movie.
there were a couple parts that make me kind of cringe, most notably mutt swinging through the jungle like tarzan, but the more i think about it, that's just indiana jones. it's about adventure. it's about going over waterfalls. it's about tracing the flights of planes in red.
i think indy, as you note, has always had a tinge of sci-fi to it. they just removed the tinge and replaced it with a full-fledged sci-fi ANGLE. i didn't mind that. and i didn't mind that indy was being jerked around through blackmail the entire movie. that was OK with me too.
after four movies and twenty years, you didn't think they were going to scale it down, did you? surely not. and let's be honest. had all the cgi smoke and mirrors been available back "in the day", they would have been present in the first three movies too.
all in all, i'll give it a B+, and i'll give you that it didn't quite live up to my massive expectations, but i smiled through most of the movie, and i can't really ask for more than that.
by the way...the softball pictures are great!!!
so, what did you think of lost???
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