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In other less pleasing news,
That was actually much, much worse than I had been led to believe. I loved the first two to little shredded pieces when I was wee: Indy has Doctor-level fondness booked into my brain for all eternity. And Harrison Ford is fine; the 'old man' thing isn't a problem. I still would. Plus motorbikes in libraries, and really absurdly lengthy car chases, and aaaaaaaaaaaants eating people aliiiiiiiiiiiiiiive. All these are good things.
But OH YE GODS the plot the plot. WTF were they thinking? It is an Indy film. I do not wish to hear the phrase 'No, they're interdimensional beings!'
And what was the point of the FBI people at the start, who then completely vanished? Or the nuclear bomb testing (followed by casual reference to Oppenheimer), which I kept thinking would be a huge part of the Sinister Plot, or at least receive some kind of 'ooer, nuclear bombs are worrying, aren't they kids?' - but no. They just felt like having Indy fly through the air in a fridge. Although I have learned that communists are Bad. It's not really clear whether they're more Bad than interdimensional beings (who might not be Bad, actually, because they like archaeology which is Good), but at least one of them was Bad because she had an evil haircut. She also sought 'knowledge', took bonkers risks to do so, and was such a despicable heathen when it comes to valuable artefacts that she just cut one open with a knife, ruining it forever! Indy would never do such a thing. Oh, hang on...
Magnificent end scene. Although I am disappointed that Chewbacca didn't get a medal too.
But OH YE GODS the plot the plot. WTF were they thinking? It is an Indy film. I do not wish to hear the phrase 'No, they're interdimensional beings!'
And what was the point of the FBI people at the start, who then completely vanished? Or the nuclear bomb testing (followed by casual reference to Oppenheimer), which I kept thinking would be a huge part of the Sinister Plot, or at least receive some kind of 'ooer, nuclear bombs are worrying, aren't they kids?' - but no. They just felt like having Indy fly through the air in a fridge. Although I have learned that communists are Bad. It's not really clear whether they're more Bad than interdimensional beings (who might not be Bad, actually, because they like archaeology which is Good), but at least one of them was Bad because she had an evil haircut. She also sought 'knowledge', took bonkers risks to do so, and was such a despicable heathen when it comes to valuable artefacts that she just cut one open with a knife, ruining it forever! Indy would never do such a thing. Oh, hang on...
Magnificent end scene. Although I am disappointed that Chewbacca didn't get a medal too.
Also: if it could stop pissing it down at some point this week, that would probably really improve my mood. :(
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Comments
Also, this movie proves the rule that even-numbered sequels usually blow.
Empire Strikes Back, Godfather II, blah blah statistics. :) (And I have an unholy fondness for Temple of Doom: my brain knows it's awful - and ten kinds of racist - but it makes me feel like a small child who might be invited along on a thrilling adventure. At least now there's definitely one crapper than that, phew.)
I quite like The Last Crusade, mostly because Sean Connery is fabulous in it.
I saw most of Last Crusade the other day, and was reminded what a lovely silly riot of fun it is. Unlike the new one. Jokes! I WANTED JOKES!
Fortunately, Indiana Jones only goes to countries filled with Foreign Johnnies, whose savagery means they won't mind. Or something. Oh, Spielborg, you're not allowed to do that anymore...
Though i guess it sort of stems from the UFO stuff that was happening around the time Indiana Jones is set in. Though that bit felt soo much like the bit in Raiders of the lost ark where the Nazi's open it and God burns them all to a crisp. Cept replace Nazi's with Soviets getting burned up/sucked away.
In regards to the rain, i think i timed my visit to WHSmiths to get DWM perfectly, it started raining just as i put my key in the front door.
I got bloody soaked, sat in the cinema feeling wet and cold, walked home getting more soaked...bugger.
Also, melty Nazis are awesome. It's one of my favorite movie moments.
The carnivorous ants were a nice throwback to the melty Nazis. But it's a sad day when my favourite scene involves a nameless evil dude being consumed by ants. FAIL.
As for Tom Cruise, i don't intend to see any more of his films if i can help it. I have great dislike for cults dressed up as bona fida religion. But that's a rant for another time.
As for the soaking, sounds like normal Oxford weather to me.
It looks nice out, you think "i don't need a coat, a jumper will do" and then 10-15 minutes later your soaked and miserable.
Sigh. I did like some aspects of it. Honest, as silly as the aliens were, I found "Indy survives a nuclear bomb in a fridge" far harder to believe.
For some reason the Grail keeping the dude alive for centuries seems quite plausible, and the aliens seem...not. Hmm. It's a bit like what David Renwick (writer of Jonathon Creek) says about the X-Files (bear with me): that if there's a story where EITHER some extraordinarily clever plot involving people being amazingly clever and foresighted and wow, OR aliens did it The End, then clearly the easy one to write is the aliens, and the interesting one is not. It's not an exact match, because obviously one has to allow a degree of the 'supernatural' or 'unreal' or 'spiritual' in to allow the Ark and the Grail to do what they do - but those have some grounding in something that wasn't made up by some people who got a bit pissed in the Nevada desert within the last 60 years. It just makes them look a bit thick, tbh.
Indy survives a nuclear bomb in a fridge FOR NO REASON WHATSOEVER. That's what bothers me. Fine, rewrite the script as you go along, but make sure it fits together again at the end?
I really wanted to like it, and I was entertained, but. Man. It's hard to do it that lame. I'm not even opposed to the aliens, but the ending should've been "Was it or wasn't it?" not "Indy stands there and watches a flying saucer rise from the ocean" or whatever. I mean, I sort of like the fact that that leads to all the alien sightings of the 50s, but you still could have explained that without Indy silohetted against a rising saucer. (Or against a mushroom cloud, wtf.)
At first, I thought, Indy always has a little mini-adventure in the first half of the movie, that doesn't really connect to the rest of the film. (The famous golden monkey idol and rolling stone, for instance, don't really connect to the Ark, etc.), so I figured the nuclear bomb thing was part of that. But at least the golden idol thingie INDY DOING ARCHEOLOGY. Surviving a nuclear holocaust in a fridge. Just. Sigh. What? why? Wasn't it enough to have the whole shoot out in the warehouse?
Oh well. I loved the 50s sets and costumes and period pieces, and the scene of Mutt and Indy in the cafe near the beginning was hilarious. Yay.
The mini-adventure at the start: I dunno. Nice to link up with the Ark warehouse, fine to try to establish some kind of relationship with Mac (though crap, both Winstone and John Hurt were so underwritten and I hope they got paid a lot), and yep, fine to start out that way. But it seemed like some of the script seemed to have been written with the idea that Indy had retired from adventuring (hence the FBI/being fired plotline which means he's got nothing better to do), whereas they seemed to not want to go with that after all. Messy. The mini-adventure is supposed to establish his mode of being and moral credentials, and instead we got some random shit about him being a decorated war hero. Mmmkay. And then it all tied in with later, except it didn't at all.
I did like some things. Indy's reaction to first seeing Marion was the goofy uncomfortable dork!Indy that I'd been waiting to see, and she was pretty awesome all round (though the jilted thing? eh). The quicksand explanation stuff was funny. It wasn't Phantom Menace-bad. But...oh, wasted opportunities, grrr.
The thing that baffles me the MOST is that. Like. We know Ford is on record being like, I WANTED IT TO BE THE PERFECT SCRIPT. Like. What? Did he think this was it? Or did it change that much in filming? Or were the rest really just THAT MUCH WORSE?
I can't believe they're shlepping round Cannes saying they might do another one.
Honestly, I wish they'd just gone with ALIENS because the interdimensional beings thing really comes across as ITS NOT ALIENS EVEN THOUGH IT TOTALLY IS.
It's aliens, except they aren't, because they were discovered by the Conquistadors, except there are these other ones that flew in around 1947 who were a different species and those ones were aliens, but these ones were gods, or archaeologists who collected stuff from every civilization ever, or created every civilization ever, or some kind of completely ill-defined South American guys made of crystal with a hive brain. THEY LOVED KNOWLEDGE. The end.
Who were the people in Peru in the graveyard who had masks on and tried to kill them with poison darts? Other than racial stereotypes, obviously?
How about the ones that jumped out of the walls and ceiling of that waterfall? Did they just. Live in there for all eternity, waiting for the day that SOMEDAY, SOMEONE might wander by? And did they pop out the first time Oxley visited? and if so, how did they rebuild those walls? and. and. and. At least Temple of Doom has their horrible stereotypes have dialogue and like. A mind-altering drug that made them a bit insane. Sigh.
I love how Ford calls Blanchets's character "Mid-30s" somewhere in there too, ha. Poor girl, DYING FOR KNOWLEDGE. BECAUSE KNOWLEDGE IS BAD.
If knowledge = aliens!, then yes, knowledge is bad. REMEMBER THAT, KIDS!
JUST A LITTLE RESEARCH, GUYS. I guess it all went into trying to replicate Brando's leather outfit for Mutt.
See, the thing with the aliens. I think a person can be any religion but still thing, yes, this at least has a vague basis in biblical canon. And like
Just...aliens?
If they'd broken into the temple and found the Myrka, that would have been AWESOME. Visual Rickroll.
Ever since I'd heard of it I had assumed it was going to be about like, ex-Nazis hiding out in South America, racing Indy to a super powerful prize, a la Raiders. Hell, we could have had a fun 'OMG! Look, it's Refugee Hitler! Catch Hitler, Indy!' reveal at some point.
Instead we get Indy versus the Baroness's Mom. Sigh. And they didn't even try to tie it in with any of the cool real-life stuff like the Mayan thingy from Palenque that looks a bit like a guy in a rocket.
It wasn't an entirely hideous viewing experience, but I might cry if someone makes me watch it again. Refugee Hitler would've been so much more fun!
It didn't work.
Plus while the Indiana Jones movies have always had somewhat insane levels of action in them (Hell, they practically define the genre!) it went over the top into cartoonish.
I was holding off buying the trilogy boxed set until they did the quartet, but I might go the trilogy now and pretend the fourth one doesn't exist. Much like I did with Sliders (My collection goes up to Arturo's death and no further! THE POO SEASONS DO NOT EXIST)
I have a trilogy box set. And that is how it will stay. :)
(Never really got into Sliders: was always shown at random times here.)
Last Crusade goes so close to over the top in so many scenes, but dammit, it's done in a good way. Like its predecessors, it made no bones whatsoever about what it was - a fantastical, over the top adventure story. Pure 1930's style, like Biggles on CRACK. I mean, shit. The plane in the tunnel during the car chase scene for example - completely over the top, but god DAMN it worked!
The latest one...it's lost that. It's less immersing you in the fantasy and more parading things about on the screen. You don't get any feel for the time period or the story at all. And the CGI was absolute dogshit - ILM have seriously gone down the crapper. Lucas has pretty much done to the indy trilogy what he did to the star wars trilogy. He seems to like crapping on his own successes of late..
Someone needs to edit some Ewoks into that car chase. Don't fail me now, internets!
Damn you, now I'm hungry!
But yes, the 50's are rather a dead period, perceptually at least. The world was recovering from the biggest damned conflict humans ever managed to inflict on each other, and the whole decade (apart from the rock and roll explosion) is rather reminiscent of a house the day after a huge party - everyone's being very conservative, very quiet, and hoping like hell no one remembers what it was they did with the lampshade and two balloons.
There's just not really any way to sex up the 50s. It's either Grease-style 'la la la everything is fine' or...actually, I think that's it. Or cultural misery like kitchen sink drama. Not where to put one's Indy, dammit.
Still reckon they shoulda called it Indiana Jones and the Ravages of Time
Indiana Jones and the Regrettable Waste of Talent?