Is Indy 4 that bad?

I loved every single scene of the movie until the crystal skull lept on to the body of the skeleton.

That's when Indiana Jones died and New Indiana Jones was born.

But....I would still say that I enjoyed it better than TOD.

 

No. I think that Lebuff guy can go but other than that I had no problem with it.

 

It's an entertaining sequel just like Crusade and Doom.

 

I loved it. I'd rank it just under Raiders and higher than Temple and Crusade.

 

It is a fantastic film. I remember seeing it at the midnight premier and everyone was laughing and cheering in all the right spots. We have to ignore the haters, just like we do with the prequel haters.

 

I own the DVD, so I don't hate it (certainly better than the train wreck that was the SW prequels or Jurassic Park III.)
Harrison Ford had a strong performance, there were some good characters like the double-agent and Ox and there were some solid scenes like the chase across the university. Also the idea to fight the Soviets this time was a good call.

With that said, there were some major problems and it is by far the weakest in the franchise.
-The alien business. Not necessary in Indy's world. Keep it to ancient cultures and the occult.
-Shia--he just ruins franchises for me. He killed Wall Street 2 and he was bad in this. Keep him in Michael Bay movies that I'm not going to watch anyway. Even Steven has no place here.
-Marion--she was great in Raiders but we don't need to see old Marion (her days in Animal House really aged her.) Not a story I dug.
-Spalko--not a bad character idea but a horrible accent.
-The Monkeys
-The ants consuming bodies (as copied from the Mummy...)
That's my take--I know some will disagree.

Overall, it wasn't great--but it was still entertaining.

 

See, I'm actually oksy with aliens if they are actually done right. I don't think there's really a core set of "things" Indy is allowed to see or chase down. I'm okay with the series ranging from spiritual to supernatural. In fact, I think the series would have been better as a whole if each one stood alone, in the sense that Indy pursues a religious artifact, a historical one, maybe a lost city and then aliens. The grail in TLC makes you feel that Indy "needs" to chase down biblical artifacts, but it shouldn't be that way.

That said, they didn't do the aliens correctly. Why couldn't they just have been from outer space? Why were they inter-dimensional time traveling aliens? And if they travel through time, why are they flying around in a space saucer?

We shouldn't have actually seen the aliens either because it would have been more powerful to just have their presence be felt. You know, the classic omnipresent threat that you cannot see. The fact that the alien actually made an angry face and leaned in to the camera to stare at Spalko cheapened the overall mystique.

 

Because Spielberg refused to do aliens, and Lucas had to talk him into it somehow. So Spielberg was the reluctant director of Temple Of Doom and Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull. Let's hope he's more enthusiastic about the next one, but also that this won't necessitate another rehash of Raiders...

 

I'm actually fine overall with Crystal Skull, I have a few quibbles with it, but nothing serious, I thought it was very much designed to align with previous Indy lore and adventures and in that sense it was consistent. And I was fine with the Crystal Skull too.

I enjoyed the movie.

The closest thing I would have to a complaint about Crystal Skull, and this is hard to quantify, is that they threw in everything but the kitchen sink. I've not seen anyone on the net bring this up before. We've got the big villain, and then the double/triple agent issue in Indy's sidekick, and atom bombs going off, and Marlon Brando's mini-me, and the return of Marion on and on and overall, for me at least, the movie felt too crowded. YMMV.

One of the many shining achievements in Raiders is it's flow and simplicity. It just breezes along, doing everything it should do, introducing characters and presenting new information, seamlessly gliding back and forth between superb action scenes and necessary but engaging dialogue scenes in a way that still feels fresh and exhilirating and entertaining.

It's as if - in their ambition to cover every possible base - they went a little overboard in Crystal Skull. There's a saying that "too many cooks spoil the broth." Well, in this case I don't think it was a case of too many cooks, but perhaps too many ingredients.

Just my two cents.

 

JohnWesleyDowney: I couldn't possibly have put it so well! You summed up my feelings there, both the good and the so-so. I particularly agree with your point about the Skull being a good MacGuffin (I'd even call it a great one), and your negative view of the triple agent. That Mac character was the poorest thing in the movie, in my opinion. Not well written, not well directed, and not well acted...

 

I enjoy Crystal Skull alot. It's far from being the best Indiana Jones film in the franchise but it's a really fun movie,Which is what these movies set out to be in the first place.

 

For me, the difference is that in the original three films, while we see the artifacts and effects of the presence of the supernatural, we never see "YHWH" or "Kali" or "Jesus." There's always a layer of mystery and the films happen at a remove from the mythical presence(s). I didn't really have any problem with the use of aliens as it fit a 50s b-movie motif (as opposed to a 30s serial motif) and I knew about Von Danniken's books and stuff going in (maybe their recentness as opposed to the implied antiquity of the legends used in the other films also created a difference in felt 'authenticity').

 

There's a few minutes I'd cut & the climax needed to be more visceral & provide more emotional satisfaction. Having said that, I still enjoy the movie a lot. It's abt as good as TOD but in a different way. I like how each entry is different from the others.

 

Yeah, I like that the individual Indy films are only loosely knit together; good serial storytelling isn't a cookie-cutter operation. A good example is the first four or so episodes of Star Trek: TNG. Encounter At Farpoint is remarkably gutsy as it has hardly any action and is pretty highbrow intellectual for 80s TV; Code Of Honor, well, I'm surprised Paramount didn't get hit with an EO complaint or something, but the episodes all knit together to make an interesting patchwork, and so do the Jones movies. They keep things interesting; a movie's biggest flaw is being boring if you ask me, and Indy is never boring.

 

KOTCS is the Phantom Menace of the Indiana Jones franchise, a title previously bestowed upon Temple of Doom. It is, in other words, a debacle.

 

By "debacle" do you mean KoTCSand ToD having a difference in average rating of .4? Or is the term "debacle" closer in your vernacular to "Well this is my opinion that only applies to me?"

Temple Of Doom

Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull

Also, a note: on rottentomatoes.com, 59% of 1.1 million people voting enjoyed KoTCS, or just under 700,000 people. ToD was rated by 640,197, of which 80%, or 512,157 liked it. ToD gets a slightly higher average rating...of .3, or basically irrelevant. So once again KoTCS is apparently the more-enjoyed and also more-viewed film by a margin of, oh, a third of everyone who even bothered rating Temple Of Doom.

Such a debacle.

 

" So once again KoTCS is apparently the more-enjoyed and also more-viewed film by a margin of, oh, a third of everyone who even bothered rating Temple Of Doom."


It's not more enjoyed, 80% liked > 59% liked. There is a difference between 80% and 59%. Massive, really. I'm not familiar with Rotten Tomatoes, but ToD beat in KoTCS in every rating system, so how can you conclude KoTCS was more enjoyed?

What conclusion are we supposed to take away from the fact that more people rated KoTCS?

My conclusion is that ToD came out before anyone had internet and KoTCS benefits from being more recent and a product of an everyone-has-internet era. The only other conclusion I can come up with is that KoTCS is more controversial, sparking a greater response, not more enjoyed.



To answer the question in the thread, it's not that bad. It's not good either, which is what I expect from Indiana Jones.

 

How can I think KoTCS is more liked? Simple. The voting pool for Kingdom Of The Crystal Skill is literally twice as large as that for Temple Of Doom. As my post said and RT's figures show, literally twice as many people bothered voting anything about KoTCS and 59% of that is a far larger number than the 80% posted for ToD. Percentages are meaningless without a context, and in the context of the 1.1 million voters for KoTCS and the 640,000 or so for ToD, the 59% of 1.1 million votes to 80% of 640,000 is actually proof of more people having liked it and voted that way.

Lesson for the day is don't take percentages at face value; you need to look at the numbers behind them.

 

I must say, that is a terrible conclusion. ToD beat KoTCS in every rating category, yet you still think it is liked more simply because of sample size.

I did some research on Rotten Tomato:

Raiders has 735,433 ratings and 93% liked it. That's 683,952 people who liked it.

Temple has 640,197 ratings and 80% liked it. That's 512,158 people who liked it.

The Last Crusade has 689,059 ratings and 91% liked it. That's 627,044 people who liked it.

Kingdom has 1,177,264 ratings and 59% liked it. That's 694,586 people who liked it.

So, by your argument, Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is the most liked Indiana Jones movie. Well done.

 

A debacle in my opinion only.

 

I don't think it is by a longshot.

Keep in mind that TEMPLE OF DOOM had a very similar reception when it came out. A mixed to positive reception from critics, but a very divided audience reaction It's tone was considered off and a bit too goofy, and the sidekics (particularly Willie) got a lot of flack. The mixed reception and strong backlash was the reason they decided to try and make the following film (LAST CRUSADE) more like RAIDERS (Nazis, lighter tone, Judeo-Christian Artifact, the return of Sallah & Marcus Brody). TEMPLE became considered a classic over time. So similarly I hope that this film gets more respect as time goes.

 

While it was just ok. It did have it's moments. But, it also had it's moments that made me want to wince.

1. Indy in the sinkhole being offered a snake to help him out was a very stupid sceen.

2. Mutt swinging with the monkey's also bad.

 

Didn't think INDY 4 was terrible. Could have been better though...it was just lacking something that made the original 3 so special.

And no...aliens didn't ruin the movie. lol If I recall, did ROTLA have ghost that came out and melted people's faces off?