(Spoilers) Initial Reactions and Discussion for Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

Well this was my first Indy film.

Like I said, my perspective was the producers purposely went over the top. With the possibility of this being a "last hurrah" they decided to go out with an over the top bang.

 

I'm glad this movie was everything I was hoping it would be and then some.

 

The thing is: the parachuting raft and mine car chase was supposed to be in "Raiders" but I guess they didn't have the budget for it or felt the movie just didn't need it anyway. And even though you don't see it, remember, Indy lashed himself to the parascope of the German sub and survives a many mile sub marine journey. I heard they filmed that scene and the audience would have even seen a shark(s) swimming around Indy. Little over the top doen't you think?

I mean one thing that I always found silly about "Raiders" is that the Germans were losing their minds looking for the Well Of The Souls but there it was right behind a block wall that was uncovered. Remember? The same wall that Indy uses to exit out of the Well Of The Souls. "Raiders" is silly and I don't think it shouldn't be put on a pedestal.

I would say the most fantastical thing about the first three movies is the song and dance number in "Temple of Doom". How the small stage turns into this huge stage and the dancers' individual pocket scarves turn into one big piece of cloth. But the rest of the stuff is on the same level as "Raiders". Well maybe not the Meschersmitt skidding through the tunnel. But I think if they would have had the budget for that in "Raiders" then they would have done it.

 

Hugely disappointed is my initial reaction. And I really wanted to love it. One thing that I don't think has really been mentioned, is the distinct lack of "moments". The other three films were full of them. Here, well, the guy who basically replaced Marcus, telling Indy he resigned after Indy says something like, "Yeah, just what did you go through?", actually made for one of the very few nice moments. Another was a great shot of Indy's face, thinking of his father, after he looks at his picture. But I'm actually hard-pressed to come up with more here. Why weren't there any good moments between Indy and Mutt after they find out they're father and son? A few jokes and Indy giving Mutt the occasional proud look just doesn't cut it. Indy and Henry Sr. had great character-developing scenes in "Last Crusade", and there was just none of that here. And Indy and Marion, I can't believe they made Marion borderline retarded in this.

I was hoping the action would deliver at least. Even that was never really spectacular. The jungle scene was a mess. The best parts of the opening wharehouse scene were all in the trailers. All of them. I really didn't have a problem with the refrigerator/nuke scene. And it did provide the best shot in the film, by far. And that's the big wide shot with the back of Indy in the foreground on the hillside, watching the giant mushroom cloud in the background. One of the very few, if not the only time I felt the old Spielberg magic. But the best action sequence ended up being Mutt and Indy on the motorcycle together. That's sad, because while it was cool, I didn't think it would end up being the best in the film. There was nothing particularly exciting about anything in the climax.

I'll see it again, I have to like it better.

 

But the scenes with the mine cart and parachuting raft were not in Raiders. It's impossible to speculate on how such scenes would have or might have been depicted if they had been in the movie. The style of that film is verisimilitudinous, regardless of what scenes the filmmakers speculated on possibly including in the movie but ultimately did not, for whatever reasons.

The crypt that Indy and Marion crawled out of was separated from the Well of Souls by a large wall that Jones crashed through on a statue of Anubis. There is no means by which the Germans or Belloq could have known or even suspected the Well was hidden behind that wall, especially given that they were "digging in the wrong place". This is not an inconsistency or plothole.

 

Those are great points, Vort, but I just think if they would have had the budget to make "Raiders" more over the top they probably would have. I know I shouldn't speculate on such things but I think Spielberg and Lucas both saw "Raiders" as just nice and fluffy, unrealistic entertainment, but there is no doubt it is endearing entertainment. And even though the movie has serious scenes, the movie never takes itself serious and this is obvious from the opening action sequence when Jock tells Indy to show a little backbone even though Indy has just been on what most of us normal people would regard as the most dangerous adventure of a lifetime.

Fair enough, but I notice you didn't touch upon how Indiana could go surfing for miles using a submarine!!
I just have a hard time swollowing that myself. It's about as realistic as jumping out of the airplane with a raft.

 

I think in the original Raiders script Indy parachoutes out of the plane and lands in the river, and thats why he grabs the inflatable raft in the first place. Which is more believable than him slapping against the side of a mountain and then falling off a cliff into a river. But Temple of Doom still got away with it because the plane was at low altitude, it wasn't a total superman moment, just unrealistic.

 

About the realism of the raft and the plane in "Temple of Doom", hey, you see that raft come out of that plane and the camera follows it until it hits the snow. Damn cool shot that makes it very easy to suspend disbelief.

 

Well, funny little one-liners here and there don't mean the movie doesn't take itself seriously. Regardless of an occasional light-hearted joke, the style of the film is realistic and verisimilitudinous. If you can't distinguish the gritty, real-world approach that Raiders exhibits from the kind of tongue-in-cheek silliness that happens in Temple, Crusade and now Crystal Skull, then I don't know what to say. It's right there on the screen.

We don't see him "surfing on a submarine". The screen dissolves into a map indicating the trajectory of the sub; it does not appear to travel far. We can postulate that Indy clung to the side of the vessel as it rode the waves rather than submerging, and I for one don't find that far-fetched at all. Even if it's a little dodgy, it's the one instance in the film that even approaches a questionable depiction of reality, as opposed to the sequels, which as zombie has detailed and anyone who has seen the movies can view for themselves, is riddled with them. Throughout Raiders events are shown as if they are happening according to real-world physics, gravity and human muscular potential. Not so the Temple life-raft and heart-seizing scenes, or a myriad of events in Crystal Skull, from vine-swinging to tree-driving to ant-pyramiding.

 

Yeah, it was definitely over the top, but even so I think the scene has a certain charm to it given that Indy uses the same "hide under a desk" technique that kids were learning in schools during that era. Ridiculously unrealistic it may be, but that logic is pure 50s mentality. Similarly, I'm not really familiar with the history behind Tarzan, but I'd wager there were enough radio dramatizations and what have you dealing with the character during the 50s to make it that Mutt might have even realized the inspiration for what he was doing. These scenes didn't negatively affect my enjoyment of the film, but then again I've always preferred Temple of Doom's atmosphere of zany pulp to Raiders' "verisimilitude."

 

Ooo, let me jump into this discussion.

They didn't show the "surfing with a submarine", so that doesn't count. Can't say a movie would have been unrealistic when the scene was cut.

The raft outta the airplane... I honestly never had a problem with it. As for why it doesn't seem *that* over the top, I think it's because they don't show the plane thousands of feet off the ground. It's already just skimmed a mountain so it's close to the ground to begin with. Plus the movie makes you believe the raft opens up (like a parachute) to help slow down the fall. Oh oh, and finally, it is not blatantly obvious that the stunt is completely and utterly unrealistic. If it was...Mythbusters would not have devoted an experiment to it. ;-)

On the other hand, driving a car onto a tree, making it lower you into a river, and causing it to slingshot into bad guys is pretty blatantly unrealistic. I guarantee the slingshot tree effect is lifted out of a cartoon. Don't need mythbusters to tell us that nothing from the sequence is plausible.

I think the main difference here is that the old movies ask you to suspend disbelief so that the characters can simply survive. In the new movie, you not only have to do that, but also suspend disbelief so the characters can perform superhuman acts (ie to swordfight between jeeps, swing through jungles like tarzan, use trees as slingshots, etc) That is how this movie goes OVER the top, even for an Indy film.

 

I don't understand what Marion is supposed to be thinking there. It just seemed like she lost her mind and decided to drive them off the cliff. She couldn't have predicted that ridiculous outcome.

 

Agreed about Marion's apparent moment of insanity for driving the car off the cliff. There was a moment earlier, when Marion looks over the cliff and gets a smile on her face, but we don't know what she's smiling at. In retrospect, obviously she was formulating her plan in that moment. But it's still ludicrous, implausible, improbable, physics-defying, cartoonish, and about sixteen other negative adjectives I can think of.

 

Well, geez. Guess we should firmly BAN all ludicrous, implausible, improbable, physics-defying, cartoonish moments from Hollywood's summer popcorn movies.... because what we really need is more realism to our escapism...

 

No no you're missing what we're saying! Escapsim is fun and we all love it, but you have to admit there is a point where it can go too far. I mean if Indy got shot in the head and just shook it off, you couldn't accept that as funny escapist fantasy. There *are* limits. Unfortunately, I think for a lot of people (certainly myself and others on the board), this movie had many moments where it crossed the line.

What really sucks though, is that the movie is better than those flaws. I mean I worried about Harrison not being able to get back into character, about Indy acting too old, about Mutt ruining the movie, and all kinds of problems that didn't materialize. Harrison *was* Indy and he still kicked ass, and Mutt was a pretty good character. It's just the CGI/cartoony/far-fetched elements really caught me off guard and took me outta the movie. All along everyone said the movie was being made with minimal CG, with an effort to make it like the old ones..but that clearly wasn't the case.

 

Please don't roll your eyes at me. That is a very rude icon to use, and I don't appreciate it. I'm entitled to my opinion and you to yours. This is a discussion forum, Princess_Tina, where we are all entitled to share and express our opinions without concern for sarcastic retaliations. So cut it out.

 

Very much agreed. I think people, myself included, will be complaining about these things for a long time because the film is good but without these things it could have been very good. Still not great, but it would have made a drastic improvement. I think thats the reason fans twenty five years later still can't get over Ewoks because Return of the Jedi would have been about 30% better without them.

 

The mere fact that the opening act is so strong increases the level of disappointment I have for the ending and direction of the project. It had so much potential, they proved they were capable of something, and then they squandered the opportunity. Give us more dialogue with Marion and Mutt--add dimension to the other new characters, give us a more interesting direction with the artifact. Something more...

In the end, the project is the heir to the Jurassic Park sequels. It has the same characters, but less depth, less magic, and something seriously lacking.

Edit: I've had very mixed feelings about this return to whole franchises by Spielberg and Lucas. Based on the results, it begs this question of whether you can go home again. Or more aptly put--can you return to something which had been finished for 20 some years? That is a major concern. Based on the opening scenes of "Skull" they proved they could return (albeit under different circumstances.) Yet, the direction they moved in--really brings the question back again. Once the adventure picks up speed, it loses control of itself. Sadly, it might be time for both Lucas and Spielberg to move on. They're attempting to reclaim a part of their youth, to return to something which definied them...but so many years later it is difficult thing to do.

-Seldon

 

I agree, they just took me out of the movie. Indy's an action hero, but the original movies established him as a different kind of action hero than most. He got along on his wits, not his muscles, and he regularly got the heck kicked out of him and had the blood, sweat and scars to prove it. He doesn't just walk away unscathed, even when he comes out the winner. This just didn't have that gritty feel to it.

 

More cartoonish that jumping out of a crashing airplane in a deflated rubber boat that magically inflates whilst plummeting to earth where it bounces lightly, goes on a luge run through a forest, flies off a cliff, plummets to a white water rapids portion of a river and ending up somewhere in India with all of their traveling goodies intact?

 

Exactly.

 

Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is a Pulp Adventure and I don't think that it's meant to be taken anymore or less seriously than Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow if you honestly want to think about it that way or The Mummy. I think that while you could say that Raiders of the Lost Ark is definitely presented as taking place in the real world, the other movies make no such pretensions.

I point out that Temple of Doom blatantly places GUNGA DIN in the Indiana Jones continuity.

Seriously man, Gunga Din.

The only thing you could be more direct on would be Indiana Jones lifting up a paper that says "The Shadow Strikes Again in New York!" or "Doc Savage foils Foreign Agent's Plot!"

Re: Indiana Jones vs. the Atomic Blast

That moment had a curious power to it. It worked on several levels for me.

1. Indiana Jones is a man who actually SURVIVES AN ATOMIC EXPLOSION. That's a moment of heroism you really can't beat.

2. Indiana Jones gets to essentially stare into the face of an evil that's arguably as dangerous as the Crystal Skull. Humanity has created something every bit as powerful as the other menaces he's faced.

3. I'm really glad Indy wasn't planning on having anymore kids by this time. I imagine any Grail Drinking he's done is going to be necessary to keep cancer at bay.

 

This is exactly the kind of thing I'm objecting to. The original film in the franchise did not contain such ludicrous moments as these. The second and third films had a couple or a few, here and there. The new film is riddled with them.

 

Just came back from the theater. Terrible, just plain terrible. All CGI, and nothing more. Watching Shia swing through the trees, with the monkeys is of the stupidest things I have ever witnessed in film.

 

Thats basically what I was saying--Temple of Doom had one or two of these, and they were dumb back then. People have sort of been rolling their eyes at the plane crash scene for twenty years, but you know its really only one or two bits like that so you go with it, you let them get away with it, and honestly the plane crash is still much more realistic than any of the "big" stretches of credibility in Crystal Skull. There's always been that element in the two sequels, so its not a giant step away, but it is a step away, and a very impactful one IMO. The atomic blast I would rank as just above the plane crash in Temple of Doom, its pretty unrealistic, but okay it might be possible if that were to really happen and you let the filmmakers get away it that one time. That one time. IMO the atomic blast was the "gimme" of Crystal Skull, it was the plane crash in Temple of Doom or the meeting Hitler scene of Last Crusade, and it was still more cartoonish and implausible than both of those combined but I think its still at the very, very edge of "believability." But with atomic blast plus the half dozen things that happen in the last act, it crosses that line.

Its true that this is much more pulpy film than any of the others and more like Sky Captain, but its not like that all the way, it starts off normal and pretty much stays like a regular Jones adventure for 75% of the film, thats why it doesn't get away with it, it doesn't feel like deliberate design the way Sky Captain is, it just feels like Lucas and Spielberg went off the deep end and forgot the parameters of their own series.