Is Indy 4 that bad?

"Mac is a double agent who has forgotten he's a double agent. He has switched sides so many times, he doesn't know who he's working for anymore. He is Indy's mate, but he can't help betraying him. (...) there's a bit of the Richard Burton character from the war thriller "Where Eagles Dare" in Mac." (Ray Winstone)

"In 1957 a lot of popular literature was about spies, betrayasl, sneaking around. So the fun part about Mac is you never quite know whether to believe him or not. He tells lies throughout the movie to suit current circumstances. But he's charming, so we like him against our better insticts." (David Koepp).

 

Mac was one of the reasons I disliked the movie, was very annoying in every way..and Indiana should've shot him after his first betrayal.

 

Making a send up on 1930s serial films and setting it in the 1950s didn't really make sense to me. I guess that's why I understood that "Crystal Skulls" was a send up of the 1950s "B" movies.

 

I still haven't seen this.

 

It still doesn’t work though IMO.

I agree. It was just one of the reasons why the supporting characters didn’t gel for me. By the end of it he was superfluous along with Ox and Marion. There were too many people along with Indy on the quest, which meant none of them got enough time as an individual to become characters that I felt invested in.

 

I saw it in theatres and thought it was very good at the time. It felt like a "back to basics" Indy movie, staying very close to the formula of the original, or Holy Grail. I haven't seen it in a while, but I own all 4. I've watched all the special features, and the people involved seemed to have had a blast making this, and Spielberg was very happy with how it turned out. They should've done more movies. I find it amusing when people say "I only like the original trilogy," when Indiana Jones was never a trilogy. I also wish more people would check out the TV show, or it would get more attention. It was really ahead of it's time and went above and beyond by shooting all on location, all over the world. It was often more interesting than the movies.

Also, I haven't seen many complaints of Indy 4 that equal actual film criticism. It's usually "They nuked the fridge"(a great scene, imo), or "Aliens don't belong in Indy" to which I would say "They weren't aliens."

The last time I watched all the films was years ago, and none of them quite lived up my memory of them. The stories were still good, and the action was still perfect, but the dialogue and script in general is pretty cheesy and campy in all of them. ...which is probably intentional, but I can't take it as seriously as an adult.

 

I did offer some actual complaints about it in a very long post up above, the primary ones being that it’s boring, that it lacks any excitement or tension, and that it feels more like one of those bad TV reunions than a legitimate action/adventure outing.

 

It worked for me. Which is why it isn't my least favorite INDY film.

 

It was awful. It was like the latest Die Hard, Attack of the Clones and Phantom Menace. A terrible mix of trying to appeal to different groups of fans. Same thing happened to the Terminator movies. These writers and directors today, even the ones who were around in the 70s and 80s and early 90s seem to think that EVERY action type movie was just over the top b.s. and pure action and that is absolutely not true.

It's become a cliche' to complain about the refrigerator scene in Indy4, but that is a perfect example of what is wrong with stuff today. Being unrealistic in fiction is normal. Being over the top for no reason and without any semblance of reality is different ball game.

 

The refrig scene was great, and very much "Indiana Jones."

 

Well the new Indiana movie will feature him dying of radiation sickness instead of carbon sickness.

 

It was not my favorite because of two major things: , 1. The pacing was slow to the point where there never seemed to be a sense of tension
2. The plodding expositional academic dialogue just went on and on for way too long


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I can't believe I haven't responded to this topic yet.

Indy 4. Well, yes, I like it. Harrison Ford is still very charming, Karen Allen and Shia LaBeouf complete him, Cate Blanchett and Ray Winstone are good at their parts, the fifties style worked. I love Area 51 and the jungle scenes. Sure, there are some dodgy parts, some are just too much (the ending with those, let's say, aliens and CGI), but I love it more than TOD. Also, the references to young Indy series made me smile. As much as I thought TLC ending was superb, this one worked even better.

 

I thought it was good, if a drop off from the first 3. (I love TOD as Lego Short Round is my av. but get that others don't). It did seem to revive Ford's career in a big way, which had taken a bit of a dip in the early 2000's.

 

Considering that, most probably, the fifth film will never be made, I see Indy 4 as a nice coda to the 80s trilogy. Last Crusade is the "big finale", and Crystal Skull is just a nice way to round up Indy's journey, with him getting married to Marion at last.
It's hard to imagine a better ending to either riding into the sunset (Crusade) or the wedding (Skull).

 

Yeah. Unless they recast Jones and have it set in the 30's or 40's, there isn't a whole lot more they can get out of it. I mean, the film would have to be set in the 60's by now (or even early 70's).

 

I enjoyed it. Not as much as the original three, but I did enjoy it.

Great stuff:
I loved seeing Marion again. Those two getting married was a perfect ending, Marion's by far my favorite Indy leading lady (my biggest gripe with Temple of Doom is Willie, she sets my teeth on edge).
I didn't mind the aliens, they're no less credible than the Ark of the Covenant or the Holy Grail. Even if all of the crystal skulls (human) found so far seem to be modern fakes.
John Hurt was great, but then, he always is.
I loved the fridge scene, that gets a laugh out of me every single time.

That said, I did have several issues with the movie:
Overuse of CGI: when it's so over the top that it's completely obvious, you've taken it too far. I hated the ants and the CGI monkeys, and judging by this thread I'm not the only one...
Shia LaBeouf: I'm sorry, but he just doesn't work for me as an actor. Admittedly I haven't seen Borg/McEnroe, but there's just something about him that bugs me in everything I've seen him in.
Mac: The triple agent stuff was unnecessary filler and didn't really contribute anything. The last scene with him where he tried to take as many of the gold artifacts as he could while the temple was collapsing was just stupid. Ray Winstone's okay, I liked him as Henry VIII.
Spalko: On the one hand, I really liked the idea of a female villain. But I didn't like the accent at all, it just sounded so fake. I also don't think she was menacing enough and she was played a bit too much as comic relief. I really like Cate Blanchett in Veronica Guerin and she's okay as Galadriel in LotR, so it was the writing for the character that bugged me rather than the actress.
The aliens: The plot of the aliens worked for me, but why did they have to be interdimensional? And if they were interdimensional, why the flying saucer thing at the end? They could just have disappeared into the other dimension and the disappearance could have caused the temple to collapse.

 

I pretty much agree with the above post. Shia was great in Borg/McEnroe I must admit.

 

I rewatched KOTCS a couple months ago and reaffirmed for me that until the jungle segment, it isn't as bad as a lot say--a bit silly at times, but for the most part not hugely more so than the originals (even the nuke scene isn't that much more physically improbable to survive than the raft in Doom when you get down to it). However, once we start getting Mutt swinging around and the theme park waterfall plummeting and all that other stuff, then yes, it all starts to feel like too much. I didn't mind Shia--yeah, he grated in the Transformers films here but I didn't see too much egregious in this one--nor the alien aspect, which I liked fine enough as calling back to fifties pulp in the way the originals did to the same material of the thirties. But, once again, the goofy action starts to go overboard in that latter third.

Still, it has its moments--the motorcycle chase is fun, there's a poignant moment of an ageing Indy feeling alone, the cemetery scene had its atmosphere, etc. Even the Cold War psi-warfare aspect I dig. It's certainly not on the level of Raiders or Crusade, but yeah, I'd put it a notch above Doom still (which has similar flaws, but for me starts going overboard waaaaay earlier).

 

Biggest issue is character motivation. Once the heroes escape from the Russians with Oxley, they have no reason to go to the temple. If they knew ahead of time that going to the temple would cure Oxley of his madness, then I could see that working as motivation, but as it stands there is no reason to keep going. The heroes could have just escaped and been done with it.

 

I would have have liked to see Connery return in Indy 4, but he was retired.

 

In my opinion, Indy 4 is a wonderful film that reproduces the spirit of B-films and pulp novels of the 50s.

P.S. By the way, I'm from Russia

 

Why? The film takes concepts from the anti-Soviet propaganda films of the Cold War, nuclear threat, coupled with the popular theme of the invasion of aliens in those years. Even the manner of shooting and lighting is taken from that era. The 50s is the era of similar concepts, Ed Wood films about flying saucers, etc.

 

Indy had a desire to solve the riddle of Akator. He's an archaeologist and that's enough.
Likewise, in Last Crusade, there was no pressing need to go to that temple at the end. But finding the cup was Henry Sr.'s work of life, so the characters headed there.

 

They go to the Temple in TLC because the Nazi's already knew where it was and they had to stop them.
In KOTCS, the Russians have no idea where the temple is. That's why Mac has to keep dropping tracking beacons. The entire draw for Indy was saving his friend Oxley. That's the entire point of him going on the adventure. Oxley was the one who was interested in Akator, not Jones.