I’m glad to read this far into the thread and find someone willing to say this, and people already willing to agree with him. If I did hate the aliens, it was because their appearance at the end was like God or Vishnu walking into scene in the last three Indy’s.
hey, I said it before he did!
I didn’t mind the aliens. Of course, I didn’t think the film was as bad as most everyone else did either.
I thought it was a fun little romp. Nothing great. But certainly not terrible.
It was fine for me as well. I accept that I’m older now and Indie isn’t quite as cool as he seemed when I was younger. The movie was good for what it was.
How was it not terrible?
I’m a sucker for any movie with a nuclear explosion, so I may be biased.
That wasn’t nuclear. That was nukular, aka nuclear on epic stupid porportions.
It’s basically a terrible movie but there were some really good scenes. Indy finding himself in the nuclear test neighborhood was awesome - if it was in a better movie it would be regarded as a classic sequence, using the shotgun pellets to locate the alien body was great … there were quite a lot of cool things like that. But for every cool little thing there were two unbelievably retarded things. Vine swinging with the monkeys crotch-whacking plants etc. etc. And like somebody said, we saw way, way too much of the aliens. Should have been more mysterious. It’s not anywhere near as bad as the Star Wars prequels and isn’t really any worse than Temple of Doom.
Actually as I reflected more on it after seeing it, I found I disliked it more than any of the Star Wars prequels. In the end I concluded that, to my surprise, Indiana Jones meant more to me than Star Wars when it came to preserving integrity. I can live with the prequels. I truly, fervently wish Indy 4 had never been made.
Well fine, I understand your disappointment - but it’s not as bad as the Star Wars prequels. It’s a much better movie. That’s not saying anything, but it’s true.
Can’t really agree. It’s coinflips all the way for me.
I wish you were kidding about wishing you were kidding. Tintin has a chance at being great that Indy 4 never had. It’s still just a chance, but as a kid I even struggled through the stack of original French ones that my mom had by pretending it was really broken Spanish and filling in the blanks myself.
FWIW, I liked Munich for all its flaws, and found it a fundamentally more interesting dramatic film than Schindler or Saving Private Ryan (although I love the set pieces…it’s like the Modern Warfare of movies).
Yep. Comparing the two clearly illustrates the difference between having the magic in hand and applying it rather clumsily, and desperately trying in vain to resuscitate it. Skull also suffers from a horribly-miscast Shia LeBouf. RIP, River Phoenix, thou art the only man (not) alive who could do Indy (and in all likelihood, his son) as well as Ford.
Every time I see the trailer for that film I think it’s a network made-for-TV movie.
I think what KrazyKrok, Bill, and MattKeil are all saying is this:
HE’S TOO FUCKING OLD.
I mean, seriously. They drag Harrison Ford from a truck in the first movie, without any of that candy-ass CGI. What the hell were they expecting when they waited twenty years for Ford to get osteoporosis? The first three movies made a point of being gritty, goddamit. How gritty can you get with someone that old?
Ford’s age is part of it, but he’s not the only one.
Indy’s age could have been a great conflict in and of itself, but no genre movie has had the balls to confront that issue head-on since Star Trek II.
The original treatment did address the age issue, but Lucas had it almost entirely removed.
Lucas shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near a movie set anymore.
Fixed.
The direction of the Star Wars prequels was abysmal. The man’s lost touch with the art of moviemaking. He doesn’t just butcher scripts, he sucks the life out of films by his mere proximity.