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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.
Weren't they all? Well, at least I haven't been counting down the days to see the next IJ movie. they certainly weren't that good.
No comprende? Let me type that a little slower for you...
So, torrent plz so I can see for myself?
The opening scene is a total heart attack. Indy barely escapes a huge stone ball despite being slowed by his walker. He pulls his colostomy bag out of the way just in time. It was a real heart pounding experience. But that was easily fixed with an emergency room visit and some clot-busting drugs.
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.
This one guy rants about the movie, but there have been several other positive reviews. Just now media is picking up on this one aintitcool review and running with it. The original poster, ShogunMaster, just wanted a lot of attention and he got it.
It's an odd phenomenon we're seeing: One original poor review, then it gets written *about* in several other places, now all of a sudden people think there are lots of bad reviews. Huh?
--- witty signature
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.
..the reviewer is the master of any Shoguns either. So I'm not too worried.
i remember seeing the episode 1 teaser preview for the first time and thought OMG yes! this is gonna be sweet. as we all know hindsight is 20/20.
do you like darth vader?
oh god yes! i love darth vader!
well in the first one you get to see him as a little kid.
is he evil like damien?
no he's just a little kid then he leaves his mom and gets sad.
do you like bobba fett?
hell yeah i like bobba fett.
well in the second movie you get to see him as a little kid.
is he like a badass bounty hunter in training?
no, his died dies and he gets sad.
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).
As a man who finds himself occasionally yelling out "INDY!!" in imitation of John Rhys-Davies, all I have to say is...
NOOOOOOOOOO!!!
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
So far this has been the pattern:
:P
1st film: Groundbreaking
2nd film: Great
3rd film: Ok
4th film: WTF was everyone thinking?
So help me if one character utters something like "Me-sa gonna get the skull, Indy?", I'm going to have kill myself right there in the theater. Maybe I'll humanley spare some fellow movie patrons by taking them out first.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
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 *TRAILER* looked good, so you're going to ignore the opinion of someone who's actually seen it in hopes that a piece of marketing will be a better reflection of what it is? What? "Yeah, the marketing was good, so it gets my $8-$10 for a ticket." On a site that focuses on technical detail, that should ring alarm bells. Who would respect an engineer who went and bought equipment based entirely on marketing hype without reading the specs? That sort of attitude encourages engineering companies to sell shitty products. Why would the same approach bring about a different result applied to the entertainment industry? Grumble..
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
...then I'm sure we can look forward to a multitude of Special Editions with various tweaks. Guns will be digitally replaced with walkie talkies, walkie talkies will be replaced with guns, and eventually Shia LaBeouf will be digitally replaced with an character that's more universally loved and admired, such as Jar Jar Binks.
not to mention that the guy is a theater executive and has a vested financial interest in de-hyping this movie before it opens. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/10/movies/10indy.html?bl&ex=1210564800&en=3ce1b1dc8e8ec160&ei=5087%0A
just because I don't care doesn't mean I don't understand!
media hype:
OMFG there's a negative review of indy 4!
reality:
negative
neutral
neutral
positive
the nyt has the real story: studios are required by law to show movies to exhibitors before they buy films (which is how the party pooper reviewer shogunmaster got to see it), which in today's internet age means that studios (especially control-freak spielberg on this specific issue) are losing the ability to control pre-release media buzz
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
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.
Well no shit.
"He who can destroy a thing, controls a thing." --Paul Atreides, Dune
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
Comment removed based on user account deletion
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.
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.
There was also an episode of The A-Team towards the end of its run about a crystal skull. It, too, was widely regarded as the worst episode ever, a fan's nightmare, and such.
The lesson: if it says "crystal skull" anywhere, avoid it like the plague.
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
No, a bad review is good news - for me. It seems that I absolutely HATE most movies that the reviewers love, and LOVE the ones reviewers hate.
I mean, how did the original Star Wars movie fare? Not well. How about Dirty Harry? Again, they hated it. The Terminator? Of course, if the movie turns out to make tons of money they somehow start giving it good reviews... funny, that.
If the reviewers gave this new movie kudos, I'd wait until a human being told me it was good before wasting my hard earned money on it. So hooray for the critics and their bad but predictable reviews! I'll probably be in line on opening day, thanks to the critics.
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
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.
Douchebag.
To the mods: That whole bit is by Patton Oswalt, not the anonymous coward.
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
There is no standard in the universe by which the Phantom Menace can be judged a 'great movie'.
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.Am I surprised that this fourth film, decades after the last, is no good? Of course not - 'twas ever thus.
I still haven't got over my disappointment at the utter pile of poo that was the second Highlander film, when the original was (and still is) one of my favourite films.
Creative people lose the original vision, the original enthusiasm, over time. It's difficult to do anything else. It doesn't make me happy, but it happens.
Dunx
Converting caffeine into code since 1982
You seem to be submitting your opinion as fact so I'll do the same. I thought Temple of Doom was a horrible, horrible piece of crap. Like too many Spielberg projects from the '80s, it tried was too hard to be funny, with the girl playing a slapstick character that didn't work at all in the context of the movie.
Spielberg in recent interviews repeatedly refers to these movies as "comedies," which I think is the root of the problem. Raiders was not a comedy, although it had some comedic elements (but they were occasional).
Your main argument seems to be that these movies didn't suck, but only paled in comparison to the vastly superior first installments. To rebut this (and strengthen my own point), I point to Empire Strikes Back. It is often considered BETTER than Star Wars, and is almost completely lacking in the unfunny "humor" that killed Temple, Last Crusade, and most of the Amazing Stories installments.
Really, it is.
...rom a story co-written by executive producer George Lucas..... Screenwriters Jeb Stuart, Jeffrey Boam, M. Night Shyamalan, Frank Darabont and Jeff Nathanson wrote drafts, before David Koepp's script satisfied all three men.
The wikipedia reference spells it out.
-The film was in development hell since the 1989 release of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, because Spielberg and Ford initially disagreed over Lucas's choice of the skull as the plot device.
You've got an actor with creative input into the movie plot. Very rarely does that ever work. Yes, the actors have input, it is most successful when it's improv within the filming of the movie.
-
Multiple treatments of the same premise, few of which actually materialize. This suggests the amount of vetting, oversized-personalities, and plain old stupidity was committee-style approval hell.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
Indeed, I could almost guarantee that without the original Star Wars pedigree, Phantom Menace would never have been greenlit in the first place and would *certainly* not have been released in its existing form. It would have been reworked, re-shot and probably still eventually shelved, then dumped straight to DVD assuming it was greenlit in the first place.
Can you see the pitch now?
Lucas: "It's a film about trade disputes and tax reform... in space!"
Studio: "Next!"
This is why a lot of decent to good movies get bad reviews. Because the theater groups are trying to force the studios to lower their demand in price.
"Slashdot, where telling the truth is overrated but lying is insightful."
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!"
I heard that the brother's W were making a Speed Racer movie quite some time ago... honestly it puzzled me how anyone could make a movie worth watching with Speed Racer as the source material.
I had also heard that they were using an experimental new HD camera tech that allowed all object in frame to be in focus at all times unlike traditional cameras that have a set focal distance. So this aspect really intrigued me.
Basically I didn't know what to think and I was increadibly impressed by what I saw in the trailer. I didn't get any idea of what the plot was about (but all of 30 seconds on imdb fixed that.) Visually it looks stunning and after V for Vendetta I have faith in the creators to make it something worth watching...
Now if I could only find someone else who's interested in going to the theater to see it with me...
Collector's Edition
... I found it funny that they mentioned the Lost City of Gold as it accidentally referenced the old Allen Quartermaine days (a crappy knockoff of Indy Movies incase you missed them)At any rate, take AICN stuff as you would with any critic. For those that have never visited the site, read only the first paragraph or two and then skip to the last paragraph or two of Harry's reviews. In between, he's going to expound about a recent mundane task he did which has no bearing on the review, such as his numerous trips to take his grandma to the vet or whatever. STFU, Harry, and get on the with the review. Sheesh.
-fragbait
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.
I read this on AICN earlier this week. If you read the reviews coming in (there are now at least 3) the first seemed to slam the movie. It was supposed to be an executive who saw the movie, and just wasn't impressed. Personally, I felt he was just trying to review it to sway the tide. The next two reviews that came in were both fairly positive. The second said that it was basically "just like the first two, just add 20 years to the characters." The third said "seems hollow, but still true to the Indiana Jones universe."
Basically, I feel that the first review was some guy either pissed off at the studios, pissed at GL or SS, OR, knew that a crapload of people who have been hanging on the edge of their seats for any word of this movie would hear HIS first, and for whatever reason he decided to hate on it.
Personally, I'm going to see it. I am too young to remember the others in the theater, though I have seen every one multiple times, and it just seems like the theater experience is the REASON to see a blockbuster like this.
---my 10 cents
It's worth noting that Star Wars: Episode I got great reviews from Aint It Cool News. So if they are panning Crystal Skull it may actually be a great movie!
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.
I mean, how did the original Star Wars movie fare? Not well. How about Dirty Harry? Again, they hated it.
Who hated these movies? Neither film was recognized as the classic that they'd eventually become - most future classics aren't at the time they're released - but I don't recall many scathingly bad reviews and I can't find many at the moment either. Star Wars was considered an exciting popcorn movie - ineffectual, but fun. Dirty Harry was criticized a bit for its politics but was still called an effective thriller.
Here are Rottentomatoes' "top critics" pages on both of these films, you can read some of the original reviews there (ignore the dates, most of these were written on the movies' release):
Dirty Harry
Star Wars
I mean, I dunno what your standards are, but an 88% positive rating from the top critics in the land seems pretty good to me for a film that was never intended to be anything but a light-hearted space romp.
I think you need to re-evaluate what you think of movie critics. Your stance is similar to one that I think a lot of people take, and it's based on this false premise that critics like bad movies and hate good ones. I would bet that 90% of the time, critics like the same movies you do. Where I think this idea that critics are somehow out of touch with the public comes from is the fact that they do not buy into hype. If a summer blockbuster has a $100 million marketing budget, a lot of people are going to be excited about that. Some of those people will even try to convince themselves that they liked the final product, so as not to feel they've wasted all this time and energy on anticipation. (This is the same phenomenon that's been observed in studies whereby the longer someone stands in line, the longer they're willing to keep standing in line, so as not to have wasted their time standing in line.)
Critics are trained specifically to ignore hype and judge a film purely on its merits. That means *good* blockbuster films, like the original Star Wars, do get good reviews. It also means *bad* blockbuster films, like, say, Wild Wild West, get bad reviews - even if they make hundreds of millions of dollars in box office and garner their share of fans at the time of their release. We all know that film's crap now, but the critics were ahead of the public in figuring it out. That's their job.
I'd also argue that not all classic films are really great films by any objective or even most subjective measures - go watch Dirty Harry again and tell me what's good about it. I'll tell you what's good about it: Clint Eastwood and the character that he creates. That's why the film endures today. Without him and without that character, the film would be just another cookie-cutter thriller. But critics don't review characters; they review films.
Anyway, enough of my rant. You should listen to critics if they don't like the latest Indiana Jones film, because they're looking past how cool it is to have Indiana Jones back on screen and instead reviewing the film. And they've generally got pretty much the same tastes as everybody else.
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.
I remember thinking the movie was likely not that good when I heard that it was set in the 1950's and that the Soviets had become the villains along with some Nazi hold-overs in South America. Indy needs to fight the Nazis. That's the point. The Nazis make the movies good because they're his enemy.
I don't see that at all - Indy's "enemy", if you must put a definition to it, is someone seeking to use a powerful artifact for evil.
Well the Russians fit the bill quite well. Around that time they were doing some horrific things to their own people. Shipping people off to siberia, or forced labor camps mining uranium, etc. They also had similar fascinations with mysticism that Hitler had so they even keep that element alive.
The Russians of that time to me seem to be a fine stand-in for Nazis which just would not be practical for the time frame of this movie, at least not as such a major force.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
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.
Oh, come on... I admit it should've been done sooner. But even Spielberg isn't good enough to be able to release the fourth installment before the third!
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?
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?
Um, without Star Wars, the reaction to Phantom Menace would have been a lambasting in the press, poor box office sales, and it quickly being forgotten among the huge pile of mediocre CGI drivel that has been produced at break neck speed in the last decade? It would have been to pop sci-fi what Eragon was for fantasy. Which is to say, not much.
Seriously, without the connection to Star Wars I wouldn't have given a rats ass about Phantom Menace at all. The only reason I could stand that annoying little prat Anakin was because I knew that someday he would grow up to be Darth Vader, and I was seeing how it happened. The only reason I could stand all the pointless and ham-fisted politics was knowing that it was all part of a plan to create The Empire. Hell would Obi-Wan have even been an interesting character if it didn't evoke memories of Sir Alec Guinness' performance in Star Wars?
No, PM isn't a victim of nostalgia. It leaned on nostalgia to make the audience care about the characters when otherwise they wouldn't have.
Temple of Doom without Raiders? B-grade comedy/action flick nobody remembers at best.
The enemies of Democracy are
Yousa people gonna try...to write and direct a good film? No, Mr. Lucas, you'll just keep cashing in on the original fandom and rush out more crap films so you can afford to keep stuffing your face with more fois gras. So much for the American vision. Are there any real artists left in this country?
I'm waiting for the second Buckaroo Banzai movie. Come on, people, get to it. It would probably be very helpful for Jeff Goldblum's career.
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.
You haven't seen many movies lately, have you? I suspect it would have gone more like this:
Lucas: It's a film about trade disputes and tax reform... in space!
Studio: Ooh! Can we put in an alien with a really annoying voice to make it funny?
Lucas: Uh... I guess so.
Studio: Great! I think we've found ourselves the next Last Action Hero!
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
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).
Spielburg has had his share of excellent movies as well as his substandard movies. Many of 'meh'-quality movies had a screenplay penned by David Koepp, who also wrote this newest Indiana Jones movie.
"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.
I'll defend Spielberg on a point here. From DVD interviews, of the three, Temple was Spielberg's least favorite and Lucas's most favorite. That says it all. It's amusing watching Spielberg in those interviews as he keeps tiptoes around calling Lucas's opinion and style a pile of crap (which he clearly wants to say).