Thoughts on the new Indy?

[Kaosaur]

Major Disappointment. 19 years later and this is the best idea they could come up with? There was not a single second during the movie where I felt one of the characters on screen was in actual peril.

I actually think Kaosaur sums the movie up the most eloquently/succinctly.

Well, truthfully, yes it is the best that they could come up with. The very basis of the franchise is that a loosely-based-on-history artifact leads the gang to an exotic location. They're all tapped out in that regard...the movie has to compete with more recent movies in the genre (Tomb Raider, The DaVinci Code, National Treasure) without looking like it's borrowing from them. They needed to be able to come up with a plot that seemed original using an artifact that the general public would have some remote familiarity with and would logically be able to lead to an exotic location. Very difficult.

What they ended up getting was a very formulaic, by-the-numbers movie that didn't add a damned thing to the franchise. They used typical Hollywood megamovie shlock marketing tactics (the younger, hip face (i.e. Shia)) to get a younger generation into the movie and got a guaranteed winner of a movie that doesn't really do anything special. Referring to story elements (extremely cheesy, convenient and contrived ones, I might add) in dialog that happened in-between movies without showing them on screen is some pretty poor storytelling...and Mary never ever EVER called Indiana by his real first name before this movie. Unfortunately some of the ways I'd like to rail on this movie more would require spoilers.

What it all boils down to though is that this is a movie that didn't NEED to be made. It was a money-grab, pure and simple. I'm not saying that every movie has to be a special, fancy art piece but at the end of the day it's the movie-maker's job to tell a story. ...Some of us get unhappy when you try to recycle a story by changing some of the details and reading it to us again... ...and others tend to eat that shit up... That's why you're seeing reviews that are so polarized.


Final edit: When not a single one of your bad guy characters is believable or convincing in absolutely any way conceivable, it ceases to be an action movie and becomes a comic book superhero movie...and even those are doing a better job than this crap these days. This movie took any of the edge/grit the character/story may have had and turned it into cartoonish nonsense.
Also, in case anyone is interested, the movie is based on combining two separate real artifacts of mystery into one: The deformed Paracas skulls found in Mexico and Peru and the crystal skulls (like the mentioned Mitchell-Hedges)

 

[sh0kr0k]

I have only a small interest in seeing this movie, so I doubt I'll give it a fair review. I'm only interested because they put "Crystal Skulls" in the title, a topic that I am heavily interested in. Same with the Nazca/Alien Astronaut theme Shaye mentioned. Kinda weirds me out that all of this is lumped together in one movie, no less an Indiana Jones movie Come to think of it, I think I'll skip this movie and go see, uh... something else.

 

[Pellaz]

temple of doom is trash, surely you lie!

That's pretty much what I was thinking, yep.

Masterpiece theater ... no ... better than Crystal Skull .. yes.

Temple Of Doom was my least favorite of the first three, but it seemed to me to have a lot more character than Crystal Skull.

Whew, damning with faint praise. I doubt I'll see this one, since I loved the first Indy movie and really liked the third. (The second one? Well, it -did- feature the old bassist from Ozric Tentacles in a cameo.....and that's about all. )