Why are people so hard on Indy IV?

Major West

Member
Another key point is that the Russians just don't quite have the same threat and menace as the Nazi's. Both Raiders and Crusade have that instant without needing to think twice about it audience reaction of not wanting the Nazi's to win, whatever the mcuffin might be. The Ark for example, an invincible power, but who do we really not want to have it? The Nazi's.

Temple of Doom was the other movie with the weaker threat. Did the audience really care about the power of the stones, not really. Rescuing the children was the key part, but even then that's easily forgotten until the moment that they are freed. Temple has the momentum of the action to support it though, but until Skull came out ToD was generally considered to be the weaker of the first three movies. I said generally, before somebody chimes in with it being their favourite.

Of course you can't really go back to the Nazi's when you resume a film series and the star is 25 years older. If they ever do a reboot of the series, I propose they keep the films in the 30s and 40s for this reason.
 

Udvarnoky

Well-known member
The Sankara Stones lack the gravity of the Ark or the Grail but the stakes of the rescuing the children and the menace of Mola Ram made up for it. His whole "We will rule the world" spiel may be outlandish but at least he could back up the threat with actual black magic; by this point in the film we've seen him brainwash a number of people and cause a guy's heart to burst into frame. Plus he's actually scary.

Spalko gets a similar speech but there's no reason to believe the skull can actually be harnessed, and the movie makes the weird choice to undermine her paranormal abilities from the opening scene, to the point where we're left to wonder if she even has them in the first place. So she just kind of comes off as a crackpot who is a danger to herself more than to the heroes, which proves to be the case. And because Spalko's most ruthless actions happen off-screen and are carried out by her henchman, she's deprived of a real villainous moment, which even Donovan had.

I think a weak villain wouldn't have been as much a liability if the film had raised the stakes in other areas, but it consistently refuses to do so. The most egregious example is the whimper with which it initiates the third act. Indy proceeds to the lost city because the skull tells him to. That's it. It's a complete cop-out that the skull drives Oxley mad but affects Indy just enough that he can hear its commands but not actually suffer ill-effects. Imagine if Indy was losing his sanity and they had to return the skull to restore it. That would give the journey into Akator some urgency in the same way that shooting Connery turned up the heat on the Three Trials.
 

IndyBuff

Well-known member
I wish we had seen more of the skull's power. The novelization did a good job of showing Spalko's obsession with it and how she was able to tap in to its power. It made the skull more menacing and added some urgency to Indy's mission, which the film would have benefited from.
 

Lambonius

New member
IndyBuff said:
I wish we had seen more of the skull's power. The novelization did a good job of showing Spalko's obsession with it and how she was able to tap in to its power. It made the skull more menacing and added some urgency to Indy's mission, which the film would have benefited from.

The novelization is far and away better than the finished film. It includes the full uncut Nazca cemetery sequence, and features a greatly expanded and much more technologically impressive Akator. It also avoids a lot of the slapstick moments that make the film seem like a parody of the original trilogy.
 

Hartmurmur

New member
Frank Darabont's script

Sorry if this is a redundant question (I'm new here), but is there still a way I can access the Darabont INDY IV draft? I heard his was considerably better, particularly how it explored the Indy/Marion reunion...:gun:
 
I'm not a fan of Crystal Meth. The stunts were ridicularse. No 65 year old bloke could do any of that - hell, I'm 46 and even I'd only just about manage to survive a nuclear blast in a fridge.

And I'm still trying to work out what the fork the story was about, 10 years later. That scene in the coffee shop and then at Indy's house when they explain the plot? WTF was all that about - something to do with tracking down a spanish version of Avatar?

And the monkeys should have eaten Mutt's face off.
 
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Willie Hott

New member
Udvarnoky said:
Let me re-address a point made earlier in the thread about the look of the film. I argued that this movie looks significantly different from the first three movies. It was counter-argued that the first three movies have their own stylistic differences from each other.

To this point, the following are DVD screenshots from the main site. They are exterior, daytime shots of Indy with his hat from all four films:

193.jpg

355.jpg

293.jpg

341.jpg


Talk all you want about the nuanced differences in the photography between Raiders, Temple and Last Crusade. There's a clear outlier here.
This is the biggest issue with the movie for me as well. No question. Excellent job laying it out there with perfect examples, Udvarnoky. Thanks for this.
 

Mickiana

Well-known member
First three, clear, sharp and bright. Fourth one exhibiting glare, haze, almost some type of out-of-focus technique.

In that fourth shot of CS, the sky looks like the wrong colour. It looks like it has a film of smoke or haze that reduces the shade of blue that the sky would normally be.

Thus the film is not out of place for how the sky actually looks like these days. But in 1957 the sky would not have looked like this. It would have been a deep blue.

I have noticed this in films more and more to the point where all films now show it: unexplained horizon-filled haze (even at sea), cityscapes filled with what looks like the smoke from a giant forest fire, but there is no forest fire nearby. Any rational person should be getting very alarmed at what is the blasé portrayal of some insidious form of very visible pollution occurring in the real world and now being a constant feature of movies and that is never talked about.

Even pristine country and mountain landscapes are filled with this anomalous haze. What's going on?! I'm old enough to remember when this was not the case. The air used to be clear and looked clear. Horizons and landscapes were easily seen. Film makers seem to be not able to exclude this visual conundrum because it is so widespread, so their movie making efforts help to normalise it in a way.
 

Major West

Member
There's definitely a difference, but I'd use the Blu-rays for a better comparison. As I'm seeing digital sharpening and other digital video processing on the DVD grabs. So in that sense it's a bit of a superficial comparison.

That said, modern movies just dont like movies made 35 years ago. If you're expecting any future Indy films to be the exception, prepare yourselves for disappointment.
 
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Udvarnoky

Well-known member
Major West said:
That said, modern movies just dont like movies made 35 years ago.

I'd say that's got little to do with the majority of Kaminski's choices in Crystal Skull. The Force Awakens looks close enough to the original Star Wars films, because the effort was made. Crystal Skull looks nothing like the original Indiana Jones films, because the effort wasn't made.

I'd be happy to see the same screengrabs from Blu-ray sources. They would tell the same story.
 

Major West

Member
DVD
<img src='https://i.imgur.com/h69atM1.jpg' />

Remastered Blu-Ray

<img src='https://i.imgur.com/zUVMsc3.jpg' />

As you can see, the digital sharpening on the DVD transfers gives a nasty un-filmlike appearance. You can also see a more accurate and naturalistic color palette in the blu-ray grab. Yes there are differences in cinematography style, but it's much less prounounced and less of an issue when one is looking at decent transfers of the original movies.
 
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Stoo

Well-known member
Major West said:
You can also see a more accurate and naturalistic color palette in the blu-ray grab. Yes there are differences in cinematography style, but it's much less prounounced and less of an issue when one is looking at decent transfers of the original movies.
It's worth pointing out that colour in "Raiders" was tampered for the Blu-ray (and the IMAX version). Many sequences have a yellowish-orangish hue or the contrast has been fiddled with. It doesn't match the original theatrical release.

There were several complaints about it here at The Raven and abroad.

Trilogy on Blu-Ray
 

Udvarnoky

Well-known member
Yes, the color grading for Raiders was controversially revisited for the 4K scan, which the Blu-ray was sourced from. If you look at Temple and Crusade on Blu-ray, such changes were not made. The rationalization I've read is that Spielberg was perhaps trying to ape the theatrical look more accurately than home video formats had previously been able to, but this speculation does not seem to shake hands with anybody's memory of seeing the movie in 1981, and it would be far from the only example of director's getting jolly with the DI when given the opportunity.

And even though the urine coating Spielberg saw fit to retroactively give Raiders does put it a little closer to Crystal Skull aesthetically (draw your own conclusions as to the motive), it still doesn't feature all the trademark Kaminski blooming.
 
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