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Early Review Calls New Indiana Jones Film Dreadful
bowman9991 writes "Hope this one isn't true! An early negative review calls the upcoming "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull" movie predictable, lacking in tension, and a fan's worst nightmare. SFFMedia believes this new Indiana Jones movie could create a similar reaction a lot of people experienced after watching the first of the last three Star Wars movies, 'The Phantom Menace': you wait for years and years, the anticipation building, and then it's so awful it taints your view of the original movies. Of course George Lucas was involved with Star Wars too." The SFFMedia piece refers to this review on Ain't it Cool News. The trailer I saw (before Iron Man) actually looked great to me, so I'm taking this with a grain of salt.
The trailer I saw (before Iron Man) actually looked great to me, so I'm taking this with a grain of salt.
Unfortunately, trailers have little to do with movies anymore. Trailer designers and technicians have made an art out of what they do: making the most boring movies look exciting and fun. Honestly, they're good at what they do! By just changing transition graphics, music score, sound clips, and some of the shots, they can make an action movie look like a: comedy, drama, or documentary.
Critics are morons. Every movie I've ever done to see and checked Yahoo Movies for, the critic and users ratings have been opposite. IMDB is the same way if you consider the ratings before it actually comes out. Epic movie had an 8.6 by opening day! And a 2.3 a week later. Yahoo critics rated Epic movie like a B- or something and users gave it a D-. And they had the balls to give other movies I and other really liked really low ratings. They watch too many movies and they're douchebags so people should really stop listening to critics.
Google's Super Secret Search Algorithm: SELECT @search_results FROM internet WHERE @search_results = 'good'
Well, this fits two patterns with the previous movies:
(1) Odd numbers good, even numbers bad
(2) PG good, PG-13 bad
So I suppose now the question is -- how does Crystal Skull compare with the Temple of Doom?
Tweet, tweet.
Any new media can never compare to the beloved originals. Stuff from the past grows mythical in its goodness inside our aging minds, and the current stuff doesn't have a chance.
Business decisions do not good art make....
If it makes money, the studio will do it. This movie will make money. If you want this nonsense to stop, we need to get people to stop going to see them. I pretty much flat out refuse to see anything with less than a 50% on the tomato meter (in the theater, I'll probably watch it when it comes on TNT).
The reason these films are so bad is because people hype them up in their minds for years. Granted, The Phantom Menace was pretty poor, but it's largely to do with the excessive expectations of people and their over-hyped ideals.
Who listens to critics, anyway?
ilovegeorgebush
I must be the only one who didn't think the first prequel star-wars movie was awful. I thought it was well put together and entertaining. I suppose those who did were expecting something genre defining and ground-breaking. You can't do that twice. The same goes for the Indiana movies.
The original three are "dreadful" by critics' standards. They're ALL predictable. Predictable is what made them funny, imho. They're supposed to be SERIALS, for Pete's sake.
The second one is dreadful by MY standards.
Stating on Slashdot that I like cheese since 1997.
Don't buy the media echo-chamber effect, especially when the thing being echoed is a fanboy "review" off AICN. Almost everyone who reads /. already knows if they are going to see the new Indy Jones movie or not (I am), so why bother?
But then again, my favourite Matrix movie was the second one, so what do I know... For what it's worth, Ebert agrees with me.
"The deep-fried Mars bar is a symptom of a wider crisis." -- Nutritionist Ann Ralph, on the Scottish diet
temple of doom was too over the top but Raiders of the Lost Ark was a damn good movie. the grail one wasn't terrible either.
I had this strange idea that this was one of the greatest movies of all time. Unfortunately, I completely ruined my memory of it by watching it again 15+ years after the original viewing. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0085811/
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
I stopped listening to movie critics a long time ago. I prefer to make up my own mind. And if I have ny doubt whatsoever about a film, I'll just wait for it to come out on DVD and see it for free (basically) by exchanging it at Blockbuster for one of the ones I get in the mail from my eclectic-but-steady movie list (takes time to go through 350 movies...)
The twitter monologues. Click on my homepage and be amazed.
In the special edition Indy will whip first.
Seriously though, anyone with high expectations of this movie hasn't seen a movie made by George Lucas in the past 20 years. It'll make a ton of cash, regardless -- that's the really tragic thing.
For all the money spent on this movie you could fast-track the careers of at least one thousand, really talented, new filmmakers.
Of course it does, because if an early review didn't generate controversy, it wouldn't get as much press and instead people would want to avoid the spoilers.
Not for me. I'm going to enjoy it.
I saw temple of doom, hoping it would be as good, if not better, than raiders. It didn't even come close. But it didn't "suck", it wasn't heartbreaking, it just wasn't as good as Raiders. How exactly could it have been? Raiders, and Star Wars (yes, just Star Wars. that was what was on the theater marquee when I sat through it 6 times on the weekend it came out), are Masterpieces; expecting a sequel to even be a tenth as good would be silly.
Taken by itself, if Raiders or Star Wars had never been made, what do you think the worlds reaction to Temple of Doom would have been? or the Phantom Menace? they surely are not in the same league as the prior 2, but they are still great movies.
So, I'll watch Indy at the theater on May 22nd, my Birthday, and I really, really, really doubt it will be as good as Raiders. or even Last Crusade. if it's as good as Temple of Doom, I'll consider myself lucky.
Why, yes, I AM a Pagan Libertarian.
Okay, it's probably going to suck.
George Lucas has given up creativity in order to wring every possible cent out of his franchises. Star Wars had begun to take a beating due to poor product quality and overexposure so he is switching horses.
The new Indy flick will probably make a mega-shit-ton of money. I will probably watch it (on DVD), I am just hoping that if I tell myself it is going to suck, then when I see it I might be able to walk away from it and say "It was better than my expectations".
(/local/home/curiosity)-#who -u|grep thecat|cut -c 44-49|xargs kill -9
does anyone pretend that the critics matter?
Anyone who takes any critic's word for it deserves what he gets.
As for me, I can't really nail down my decision criteria for what movies I want to see, but I can assure you that the words "critic review" don't enter into it in the slightest.
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
I back this poster, as cowardice as he/she is...Spielberg has hardly ever made a film that was just completely awful...A.I. was kind of weird, but it was pretty good. Anyhow, I can't think of a single Spielberg film I didn't get some enjoyment from, so I doubt Indiana Jones 4 will be any different
No movie can live up to what your brain remembers as one of the best movies ever made. If you go into the movie expecting it to be no less than the best of the first movie, then guess what, you will say it sucked. If you have realistic expectations though and are hoping it to be a decent movie without destroying the franchise then you at least are giving the movie a fair chance. It takes a lot of guts to revisit old and successful franchises such as Star Wars and Indiana Jones because you can't satisfy peoples nostalgia, even if the movie is one of the best ever made.
Nothing can match the feeling of seeing the movie with friends and family who may be gone now, or remembering a time in your life when things were better, we tend to forget the bad and remember the good, anything current simply can't compete with your memories all else being equal.
they are only made to make a lot of money and for that it only has to be (mildly) appealing to the masses.
All those 'fans' will see it anyhow and chances are 90% of them will hate it regardless how 'good' others think it is.
Big Money means:
- the movie is made so a 6 year old can watch it with his parents, nothing too brutal & funny scenes for kids (remember jar jar binks?)
- nothing complicated, keep good and evil clearly separated, you have to know whos evil when you see them, otherwise the kids get confused
- don't take any chances, avoid anything controversial, use the known formula (happy ending, nobody likable gets killed)
- it doesn't have to be good as long as it has a well known name (sequel sequel sequel & why Bush got elected after all)
- a mediocre movie made for the masses makes more money then a excellent movie for insiders
So with that in mind, i expect it to be watchable but nothing special.I had the same experience. Went to a midnight showing, was pretty pumped, trailers looked good. And less than halfway through I was thinking, "What a pile of shet this is". On the way out I gave a tepid "It was ok" to someone waiting in the next line who asked if it was good. I didn't want to take a dump on their anticipation in case they had some perverse personality and would like it.
There was a pall in the theater you could sense. Everyone knew it was crap, but there was still light applause at the end. Why? Because we hoped we hadn't seen what we'd just seen. And because for some reason the franchise got credit for having been good once.
That doesn't make it Episode 1 into anything other than it was, however. A big, stupid, pointless special effects debacle.
JarJar would have said... "theesa movie suuuuucks ballce!"
In 2007, as Harper's points out, most of the top 10 movies were not only sequels, but sequels where "version > 2". Since Hollywood management does fads, we have to expect a run of more such sequels. Hence Indy #4.
As I've remarked before, Hollywood has a major idea shortage. History has been mined out. Comic book resources have been drained; the big franchises are done, and productions are digging deep into obscure comics for material. Hollywood is now down to recycling 1960s TV shows. Are there any up and coming directors with new ideas? Who's the next Spielberg?
Incidentally, the trailer for "Clone Wars" looks like a video game ad for a bad video game, one with a low poly and keyframe budget.
Entertainment may be a depletable resource. When everything ever made is easily available, anything new has to be better than anything done before. Everybody has already seen the best of everything. This makes it hard to excel. Consider music. Nobody has done a major new symphony for decades. Rock music peaked decades ago. House music is stuck. Rap doesn't shock anybody any more. No wonder the RIAA is in trouble.
Film got a "midlife kicker" - computer graphics. At last, you could film anything you could imagine. After about a decade, most of the backlog of things directors always wanted to do, but couldn't afford, have been done. Big shots of alien or historical cities, nonhuman actors, and massive war scenes, have all been competently put on the big screen. Viewers are no longer impressed.
Desperate hacks, like playing with color saturation, have been tried. There's the under-saturated look ("Sky Captain") and the over-saturated look ("Speed Racer"). There's the high-contrast black and white look ("Sin City"). There's the high-contrast black and white look with a bit of color ("The Shadow"). OK, been there, done that.
Finally, there's the trick the movie industry tried the last time things got really desperate, back in the 1950s - stereoscopic 3D. It didn't work last time.
If you look at movies like Back to the Future, they did a very convincing job of making Christopher Lloyd appear as different ages.
Say what? They made several tongue-in-cheek references on how Doc ("thank god I've still got my hair") and Strickland ("didn't that guy ever have hair") looked exactly the same. Especially in the 2nd movie where Doc shows Marty that he had plastic surgery...except he looks exactly the same.
Studio: "Next!"
Doesn't Lucas bankroll his own stuff? It was going to get made irrespective of what the whole of fandom thought. Phantom Menace was the movie Lucas wanted to make, and he made it because he was paying for it. The End.
Make love, not reality television.
If you consider Temple of Doom to be the first movie, Indiana Jones is playing more of the mercenary lifestyle, digging up treasure for a Shanghai mobster. After the events of Temple occurs Raiders and Crusade - both of which are similar in style and formula (globetrotting adventure).
After Indy's experience in India and becoming a believer of Hinduism, he goes back to the states and alternates between teaching and rescuing artifacts for the museum (which happens in Raiders, which proves Judaism, and Crusade, which proves Christianity).
It doesn't make Temple a better movie, but for me, it made it fit better in the grand scheme.
Or the longer a country fights a war (and the more people die) the longer they must continue to fight that war so that the dead will not have "died in vain".
My Answer: YOU'RE ALL TOO OLD!!!! Sorry guys, but I'm a medical student in pediatrics, and I can tell youI see kids everyday, and every boy (and a lot of girls too, let's not discriminate) LOOOOOOVES Star Wars. And guess what? They LOOOOVE Jar Jar too. They get Jar Jar bookbags, folder, binders, etc. Star Wars is cool to them. And you know what? Being born in 1979, I notice a huge difference between the people who were 5 when ROTJ came out and the people who were 25. The difference? My friends and I love the Ewoks. Kids love the Ewoks. Star Wars is a movie made FOR KIDS! Or... at least, people with the imagination of a kid. I read some of these complaints, and some are valid (even if I disagree). Don't like Hayden? Fine (I did). Don't like Jar Jar? OK, big deal. But holy moly... you people are complaining about "Landing a Star Cruiser on a landing strip! Lame!" You people are just way too old (in your mind I guess) to enjoy these movies. Not to say not liking them is illogical or stupid, but most of the complaints here to me are disproven by those points being exactly what kids love about them.
M. Night Shyamalan
The kiss of death. I still haven't forgiven him for having aliens that are allergic to water attempt to invade a planet whose surface is 70% water.
Unfortunately, it was also a movie nobody else wanted him to have made, after they saw it.
The great Sci-Fi and Action movies of the late 70s and early 80s are an era gone by. Those of us who remember the first offerings of Star Wars, ET, and Raiders were completely dazzled by a new breed of cinema. Lucas, Spielberg, and the like were young up-and-comers who were shaking up the industry.
Now, those guys ARE the establishment. They are offering pretty much the same production values they originally brought to us but we, as the audience, are, dare I say, bored with their filmmaking. If not bored, we have very high expectations because of the impression the original movies left on us.
It's kind of like going back to a place you haven't been to since you were a kid and it's much smaller and less interesting than you had it in your mind.
This isn't to say that these guys are terrible filmmakers or that their craft is not up to par. I'm saying that the hype created by the media in ourselves only makes one feel disappointed when the movie is just that--another movie.
I think the industry itself is in a pretty bad place right now. Movies are made that really shouldn't have been made so the overall quality from the corporate movie studios is just abysmal.
Story is king. Unfortunately, visual effects and spectacle have become the story supported by the script. They keep trying to make blockbusters instead of focusing on the craft of filmmaking. The indie films are doing so well because they have to have good scripts--there's no budget for Michael Bay/Brett Ratner/Roland Emerich epically expensive multi-million dollar set pieces.
Unfortunately, like all corporations, the studios are most interested in delivering profits to shareholders. The just don't understand that if you "build it, they will come"--a good movie with good special and visual effects that serve the story will do well. They just want to make gimmicky pieces that will turn into money makers.
So, don't be surprised if Raiders is disappointing. It's just a cog in the wheel of the dark machine that is Hollywood.
I might know what I'm talkin' about, but then again, this is Slashdot...
Would he have been able to bankroll it without the original Star Wars pedigree?
Simple. People get successful and it goes to their heads. When they start out, they have to break their backs, to fight, to compromise, to take criticism... and then they get successful, and they take away the wrong less from that. Instead of crediting hard work, compromise, and criticism, they say, "I'm just brilliant, and everyone who ever criticized me doesn't get that, and if people would let me do whatever I wanted, my work would be even better".
They forget that quality doesn't come from being brilliant so much as hard work, taking criticism, and compromising with people who may know more than you about certain issues, and working with others. Because they are successful and powerful, they have the power to ignore or silence your critics, instead of listening to legitimate criticism. They can take shortcuts, instead of doing hard work, and people will let them get away with it. They can surround yourself with sycophants, yes-men, and hangers-on who just tell them how wonderful you are, instead of telling them the truth. They can get away with half-assed work. It takes discipline and humility to survive being a success and to still produce good work.
I disagree. I mean, come on, Indy got Hilter to sign his book last time. What's next? The trope would be overused (and given Spielberg's history, the Nazis are overused).
"Too bad the Hovitos don't know you the way I do, Belloq" - That's right, Indy and Belloq used to be fellow travelers, then after the events of Temple, they developed a "difference of opinion". Belloq is Indy five years before.
This also ties in the Crusade teaser, in a broader sense. See Indy the idealist in full force, living the first experience that will turn him cynical. Then back to Raiders, look at the way Marion receives him, with a sucker punch to the mouth - Indiana the cynical bastard we see at the beginning of Temple getting a taste of his just desserts.
As for personal taste, I found the action in Temple to be more than passable, while I found myself grimacing during several points in Crusade, a wholly unsatisfactory experience, as compared to the monumental achievement that was Raiders.
Lil' Thindime, lilting a lacrimose lament, krashes the kwaint konfines of Kokonino Kounty
There was no Highlander 2....
Keep repeating that.