Has anyone's feelings for KOTCS softened?

Montana Smith

Active member
Finn said:
While I agree with the rest of the criticism, I don't really get the bolded part. Because in YIJC, said figures were, most of the time, part of the scenery. They didn't really do nothing more than send Indy into places where he was more likely to brush shoulders with said people than not. It was not like he was hanging around in one place for the whole series, like on the stool of his regular bar and have all these celebrities just pop in for a drink due to some mystical coincidence.

There is really nothing wrong with concept of employing a historical ensemble cast - as long as it's done right. And YIJC did it so, because Indy never ran into people in places where it made no sense for them to be.

For me it's the fact that he was running into them at all, only because Lucas wanted to introduce those people to the audience. Which makes it Indysploitation. A cheap trick, employing as a lure a well-known character he didn't have to pay for, to sell something else.

It's a bit like this concept:

250px-IJ_Explores_Rome.jpg


In this exciting new series, Indiana Jones, the famous archaeologist and adventurer, explores the lost worlds of ancient civilizations. Acting as a guide, or narrator, Indiana Jones brings these ancient worlds to life by introducing young children to the excitement of discovering some of the secrets from the past.

http://indianajones.wikia.com/wiki/Indiana_Jones_Explores_Ancient_Rome

In the YIJC Old Indy is that narrator telling stories that may or may not be true which along the way will introduce children to said famous people.
 

Raiders90

Well-known member
Montana Smith said:
Disingenuous in relation to Indiana Jones. Lucas set out to create edutainment with a series that would introduce children to famous people from history, and used Indy as the mechanism to link it all together.

While it was very well made with lavish sets and big set pieces, for much of the time it doesn't feel honest towards Indy himself. There are rare occasions of real adventure. Then there are the episodes that really destroy the illusion: the Kafkaesque farce; the Halloween tale about Dracula; and the sum total of influential people he happened to encounter wherever he went. Old Indy himself had even become a figure of fun.

While the purpose may have been edutainment, the secondary purpose was about showing Indiana's youth. Taking Old Indy out of the equation, as the current version does, the character isn't really a figure of fun at all. And I never thought the 'vampire' episode was hokey.

Then there's the issue of linking young Indy to the mercenary Indy of 1935. Since he was still so upbeat in 1920, whatever made him the way he was in Temple of Doom was something even worse than the horrors he would have experienced during the Great War. Even after meeting all those people who imparted so much knowledge and inspiration, and remaining so upbeat after the war, Indy somehow becomes a rogue and a thief. (It was quite a delayed reaction since Fedora had left an impression on him way back in 1912 according to TLC).

So what we also get with the YIJC is Lucas beginning to redeem Indy from the dark side (the dangerous anti-hero we first see in Peru in 1936, and darker still at the beginning of TOD).

KOTCS directly references the YIJC with the Pancho Villa quip, thereby bringing the television series into film canon. It's also the film in which Indy makes amends for his treatment of Marion; and where we are instructed that real treasure is knowledge, which is at odds with Indy's former obsession with claiming the prize (which was shared by the likes of Belloq, Mola Ram, Donovan and Elsa).

In his early career Lucas was happy to present lovable rogues like Indy or Han Solo. In his later career he appears to be concerned with making them more respectable as role models. It's not so much a character arc as a creator arc, and it sets KOTCS and the YIJC apart.

I'd argue that the retconning of Indy's character began in LC. No more was it about fortune and glory, no no, 'it belongs in a museum' became Indy's rallying cry, and LC retcons this back to 1912--Indy was a goodie two shoes from the beginning, literally a boy scout, with a domineering dad who could brow best him. I'd argue that the YIJC and KOTCS fit because of LC, wherein we have a kinder, gentler, more humanized Indy. I can't imagine the Indy as portrayed in LC working for gangsters as a mercenary.

'It belongs in a museum' is a big character retcon which fans attempt to explain away by saying Indy had a character arc. But why give the benefit of the doubt to LC, but then criticize the YIJC for the same thing? People say that sometime in between Raiders and LC Indy had a change of heart and reverted to the attitude of his younger self. But YIJC fans say the definitive change from the more upbeat Indy of 1920 to the guy we meet in 1935 happens in the Bantham novels. It's the same kind of rationalism and IMO equally as valid in both cases. The presence of Ford in Mystery of The Blues is what makes the YIJC canon for me, not KoTCs

One could argue that LC goes against what the character was originally all about, The Man With No Name, that concept went out the window after we learned about Indy's past. Indy became a punch line when it was revealed that they named the dog Indiana, and when we find out that Indy ripped his outfit off Fedora.

The 1912 segment is as unrealistic as anything in the YIJC. In a space of ten minutes, Indy gets his inspiration for his outfit, his scar, his fear of snakes, the idea of using a whip, and his hat. That's pretty hokey. If you want to find where the post-rogue, post-anti hero Indy began, look not to the YIJC but to LC.
 

Montana Smith

Active member
Raiders112390 said:
While the purpose may have been edutainment, the secondary purpose was about showing Indiana's youth. Taking Old Indy out of the equation, as the current version does, the character isn't really a figure of fun at all. And I never thought the 'vampire' episode was hokey.



I'd argue that the retconning of Indy's character began in LC. No more was it about fortune and glory, no no, 'it belongs in a museum' became Indy's rallying cry, and LC retcons this back to 1912--Indy was a goodie two shoes from the beginning, literally a boy scout, with a domineering dad who could brow best him. I'd argue that the YIJC and KOTCS fit because of LC, wherein we have a kinder, gentler, more humanized Indy. I can't imagine the Indy as portrayed in LC working for gangsters as a mercenary.

'It belongs in a museum' is a big character retcon which fans attempt to explain away by saying Indy had a character arc. But why give the benefit of the doubt to LC, but then criticize the YIJC for the same thing? People say that sometime in between Raiders and LC Indy had a change of heart and reverted to the attitude of his younger self. But YIJC fans say the definitive change from the more upbeat Indy of 1920 to the guy we meet in 1935 happens in the Bantham novels. It's the same kind of rationalism and IMO equally as valid in both cases. The presence of Ford in Mystery of The Blues is what makes the YIJC canon for me, not KoTCs

One could argue that LC goes against what the character was originally all about, The Man With No Name, that concept went out the window after we learned about Indy's past. Indy became a punch line when it was revealed that they named the dog Indiana, and when we find out that Indy ripped his outfit off Fedora.

The 1912 segment is as unrealistic as anything in the YIJC. In a space of ten minutes, Indy gets his inspiration for his outfit, his scar, his fear of snakes, the idea of using a whip, and his hat. That's pretty hokey. If you want to find where the post-rogue, post-anti hero Indy began, look not to the YIJC but to LC.

Yes, this is where Lucas begins to change and where he (inadvertently?) sets up the premise of the YIJC. It's also where Indy starts meeting famous people, having obtained Hitler's autograph.

Lucas isn't good at keeping to his own canon because he openly changes characters as he himself changes. So we have Indy at a crossroads in 1912, inspired by Fedora yet also inspired by the idea of adventure and how he might find adventure while thinking of it as doing good. Yet in 1935 and 1936 he's willing to steal objects for a museum.

Then he changes the YIJC by removing Old Indy, thereby changing the character of the stories themselves. Did he really meet Dracula or was it just a Halloween story? Did he really have that wacky adventure in Kafka's Prague, or was it just a child's introduction to the concept of the absurd?

The internal logic established by the films is supplanted by Lucas with external logic for the television series. By that token why wasn’t he having more supernatural encounters in the YIJC? And why wasn’t he meeting more famous people in the films? The films and the TV series are separate entities linked only by Indiana Jones. As a repurposing I see it as disingenuous to the more interesting character Lucas first introduced to the world in 1981.

Twenty-seven years later Lucas completes his rehabilitation of Indy by making the philanderer a family man; making things right with Marion; taking on the responsibilities of a son and a new promotion.

In 1989 he at least got to gallop off into the sunset in search of further untold adventures.

To illustrate my feeling by way of a series of cliffhangers:

377.jpg


indy-cliffhangers.jpg


travl76.jpg



With those illustrations I mean that TLC was still honouring the old serials, in spite of its divergence.

Stoo said:

KOTCS moves Indy into 1957, and into a different world.
 
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Montana Smith

Active member
Indiana Jones and the Different World.

The lacklustre elements of KOTCS have already been well noted as a reason why feelings have not softened.

Combine that all round half-hearted effort with the issue of moving Indy out of his 1930s comfort zone into the atomic age that threatens to make him irrelevant.

The world is already smaller, less mysterious and less un-explored. Akator was a re-discovery, not a new discovery. The golden age is over and Colonel Spalko intends to make the world even smaller:

Spalko: Imagine. To peer across the world and know the enemy's secrets. To place our thoughts into the minds of your leaders. Make your teachers teach the true version of history, your soldiers attack on our command. We'll be everywhere at once, more powerful than a whisper, invading your dreams, thinking your thoughts for you while you sleep. We will change you, Dr. Jones, all of you, from the inside. We will turn you into us. And the best part? You won't even know it's happening.

The world we last saw Indy in is barely recognizable:

Dean Charles Stanforth: I barely recognize this country anymore. The government's got us seeing Communists in our soup.

KOTCS was therefore more concerned with Cold War B-movie inspirations: Communism, atom bombs, giant killer ants and the 1960s kind of flying saucers that Lucas ditched during pre-production for ROTLA.

These elements were dictated by Harrison's age, and the desire to remain faithful to both actor and character. He couldn't be anywhere but in this new 'modern' world.

And therein lies the other problem for me:

Dean Charles Stanforth: We seem to have reached the age where life stops giving us things and starts taking them away.


Out of the forty-five serials I've watched I only noted the following with reference to KOTCS:

The Tiger Woman (1944)

PDVD_015-1.jpg


353.jpg


The Perils of Pauline (1914)

Smiffy said:
One scene has Pauline and Harry trapped in a basement filling with water. They climb as high as they can, while furiously beating away the rats swimming about them. Their esape involves crawling into the fireplace and waiting for the water to rise to let them up through the chimney. This is somewhat similar to the escape from Akator in KOTCS.

Darkest Africa (1936)

Smiffy said:
The last episode has a minor Indy-ism. Two bad guys stop to gather green diamonds from the mine at Joba as a volcano is erupting. As with Mac in KOTCS, their greed prevents them from escaping...


And Stoo noted one from Spy Smasher (1942):

Stoo said:
In 2 episodes, Spy Smasher swings on hanging lamps (as Indy does in "Doom" & "Skull")


There's nothing wrong with '50s B-movie science fiction per se, but if the film that pays homage to them isn't up to scratch then it can become a little too self-referential for the wrong reasons.

The original Indy trilogy took the best from the past and improved upon the worst to present the best possible compromise.

KOTCS unfortunately maintained too much of the worst. Hence:

Raiders112390 said:
I think KOTCS feels half hearted and half baked in comparison to the original films. It almost feels unfinished or like a lot was left on the cutting room floor. You have some great, cool ideas: Spalko's telepathy, the Aliens as the teachers of humanity, the Ugha, but none of these are ever really explored to their fullest potential. Spalko never exhibits any real power and no real menace, the Aliens feel just thrown in there, Indy somehow gets redeemed at the end and the FBI no longer thinks he's a commie....it just feels very rushed. You'd think the film was the product of a first draft script rather than many rewrites.
 

Raiders90

Well-known member
Quick question for Smith:

Do you agree that if Lucas had has his own way, and Indy IV was wholly an alien film, no compromise (think Saucermen script refined), would a purer, uncompromised vision have led to a superior film, in your opinion?

Also, I do not understand why Lucas jumped right into the 50s. Mystery of the Blues was filmed in 1992, made just 3 years after LC, when Harrison was still young enough to portray an Indy in his late 30s or 40s, yet Lucas jumps his cameo in that episode to 1950, 12 years after LC. I don't think they made KOTCS take place in the '50s just to accommodate Harrison's age. That was the idea from the beginning.
 

Montana Smith

Active member
Raiders112390 said:
Quick question for Smith:

Do you agree that if Lucas had has his own way, and Indy IV was wholly an alien film, no compromise (think Saucermen script refined), would a purer, uncompromised vision have led to a superior film, in your opinion?

It's hard to tell, because so much of KOTCS was lost in the execution. I don't remember much of that script, but I think it would have been better if the aliens had been '50s aliens rather than '60s von Däniken aliens.

Raiders112390 said:
Also, I do not understand why Lucas jumped right into the 50s. Mystery of the Blues was filmed in 1992, made just 3 years after LC, when Harrison was still young enough to portray an Indy in his late 30s or 40s, yet Lucas jumps his cameo in that episode to 1950, 12 years after LC. I don't think they made KOTCS take place in the '50s just to accommodate Harrison's age. That was the idea from the beginning.

In KOTCS Harrison was a 65/66 year old actor portraying a 58 year old character. I don't know how much further back in time they could reasonably have gone.

If Lucas wanted to make a fourth film he should have done it much sooner, which is a charge I'm sure many would agree with. A post-war 1940s film noir would have bridged the gap between TLC far better. Maybe once that had been established it would've been more natural to progress into the 1950s.

Choosing 1957 seems like a compromise between the golden age of Indy (1930s); the 1960s idea of the Ark being a radio designed for communication with flying saucers that he proposed for Raiders; and Harrison's age at the time when it would be filmed.
 

Udvarnoky

Well-known member
It is interesting that Lucas never floated the idea of WWII Indy. The story goes that the light bulb moment was when he saw Ford in a beard for his Young Indy cameo. He was adamant that doing aliens was the only way to make another Indiana Jones with Ford work, and in fact let the project collapse when Spielberg put his foot down in 1996.

Something to bear in mind though, is that Lucas' approach would still be perfectly valid for the 1940s (Roswell being '47 and all that), and indeed a number of versions of the story (Stuart's and Nathanson's, at least) took place in 1949.

Raiders112390 said:
Do you agree that if Lucas had has his own way, and Indy IV was wholly an alien film, no compromise (think Saucermen script refined), would a purer, uncompromised vision have led to a superior film, in your opinion?

I'll throw in my two cents and say: probably. We do know that by the time Independence Day came out and Spielberg said "absolutely not," Lucas felt that Jeffrey Boam had gotten the saucer-chasing concept to a point where he was happy with it. It's worth remembering that the one draft of this incarnation we have is Stuart's first draft. Lucas didn't even think Stuart's final draft was gonna do the trick, and he turned it over to Boam for another year's worth of drafts. If Lucas had a case, that's the script that would have made it, and we don't have it. However, even if Spielberg didn't abort the entire idea, there's no guarantee that he was even going to direct the film - as with Temple of Doom, he claims he was actually considering just producing that fourth adventure. So that's something else to consider - would it have been worth losing Spielberg (the Spielberg of the 90s).

I'm actually surprised it took so long for Lucas to come up with the "breakthrough" notion of going the Chariots of the Gods route and simply grounding the alien stuff with lost cities and crystal skulls (an artifact that was going to feature in a Young Indy episode that Frank Darabont would pen, which is surely a big part of how he got the gig). The concept of Indy4 was straight-up alien invasion fare before the turn of the century, although to be fair Lucas was knee-deep in the prequels at the time.

From what we do have access to, I remain 150% convinced that the Darabont draft was the one to shoot - not only is it massively superior and more fun than the script they did produce, it had Spielberg's enthusiasm.

Montana Smith said:
I think it would have been better if the aliens had been '50s aliens rather than '60s von Däniken aliens.

I don't think you can accuse Spielberg of doing anything less than embracing the 50s in a lot his visual choices, though. He went off-script to give us a UFO straight out of Earth Versus Flying Saucer in the ending.
 
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Udvarnoky

Well-known member
For anyone curious, here's what the aliens' departure was meant to look like before Spielberg decided to just go for it.

orb3.jpg
 

Montana Smith

Active member
Udvarnoky said:
I don't think you can accuse Spielberg of doing anything less than embracing the 50s in a lot his visual choices, though. He went off-script to give us a UFO straight out of Earth Versus Flying Saucer in the ending.

It's not Spielberg's visual choices, but Lucas' employment of von Däniken's 'ancient aliens'. Chariots of the Gods? wasn't published until 1968, in which Däniken made the hypothesis about the Nazca lines being alien landing strips.
 

Udvarnoky

Well-known member
You make a great point, I just don't think that gives the movie a 60s connotation. Nothing about this movie's ideas would have been out of place for 50s audiences, since both the lost world genre and aliens were very much in vogue.

The concept of the Nazca lines being landing strips is just a cool and logical idea to incorporate into the story regardless of what decade some guy published the theory. I also have to believe that archeologists, anthropologists and good old fashion crackpots were pitching some pretty wild theories about the Nazca lines well before the 60s.

Using the Nazca lines was one of my favorite ideas in the movie. I just wish they had done more with it. As with the Roswell alien, they didn't really make an attempt to relate it much to the aliens of Akator. It's practically a red herring.
 

Montana Smith

Active member
Udvarnoky said:
You make a great point, I just don't think that gives the movie a 60s connotation. Nothing about this movie's ideas would have been out of place for 50s audiences, since both the lost world genre and aliens were very much in vogue.

The concept of the Nazca lines being landing strips is just a cool and logical idea to incorporate into the story regardless of what decade some guy published the theory. I also have to believe that archeologists, anthropologists and good old fashion crackpots were pitching some pretty wild theories about the Nazca lines well before the 60s.

Using the Nazca lines was one of my favorite ideas in the movie. I just wish they had done more with it. As with the Roswell alien, they didn't really make an attempt to relate it much to the aliens of Akator. It's practically a red herring.

The aliens of KOTCS were the kind that gave technology to humans through their history, which was also the theme of Arthur C. Clarke's 1968 2001: A Space Odyssey.

But when I think of aliens in the 1950s these are the kind of films that come to mind:

cinema-et-1950s.jpg


The closest in tone to the 'helpful' aliens of KOTCS would be Klaatu in The Day The Earth Stood Still, who's nevertheless mistaken for an invader.
 

Udvarnoky

Well-known member
Those are all specifically alien invasion movies though. What about the likes of Lost Continent (1951), in which a team crashes on a remote island in the South Pacific while looking for a lost atomic rocket and find themselves in a world of dinosaurs?

Maybe the exact cocktail Crystal Skull mixes owes Chariots of the Gods a high five, but there are a number of science fiction-tinged lost world movies that Crystal Skull's plot would have been very much of a piece with, even if alien forces were generally malevolent in the 50s. The decade's pulp fiction offered a lot more than flying saucers. Don't forget about Them! (1957), the movie featuring giant ants in the desert caused by the radioactivity from our participation in the nuclear arms race. If you consider the wider breadth of the science fiction genre, Crystal Skull fits right in. It's why I'm so amazed it took like seven years of development for Lucas to connect the dots and wind up in that territory. It's not like he was doing anything groundbreaking. I can only assume that he had his heart dead set on the more in-your-face alien approach and Spielberg was too cold on the project in general to make the obvious counter-proposal.

You know what's a great irony in all of this that we don't point out enough? The fact that Spielberg ended up remaking War of the Worlds in 2005.
 
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kongisking

Active member
Udvarnoky said:
You know what's a great irony in all of this that we don't point out enough? The fact that Spielberg ended up remaking War of the Worlds in 2005.

Which, ahem, I still think is a great film. Yes, I said great. As in, one of Spielberg's best.

Maybe KOTCS should have been a kaiju movie instead. Then we'd have Indy searching for the one artifact capable of killing it...:p
 

Udvarnoky

Well-known member
kongisking said:
Which, ahem, I still think is a great film. Yes, I said great. As in, one of Spielberg's best.

Blegh, I feel it's one of his worst, although the set pieces are incredible and the tone is wonderfully dour for a summer blockbuster. Don't ask me to buy Tom Cruise and Dakota Fanning as Regular People who get anointed by the screenplay to survive the horror. The movie is a bunch of self-contained scenes (yes, some of them amazing) clotheslined together. And the entire stretch with the Tim Robbins character leading up to Cruise having to kill him doesn't work at all.

To try to make this relevant though: am I the only one who noticed that John Williams purloined the music he wrote for the emergence of the tripod in War of the Worlds and just applied it to the obelisk puzzle in Crystal Skull? I swear it's the exact same cue.
 
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Montana Smith

Active member
Udvarnoky said:
Those are all specifically alien invasion movies though. What about the likes of Lost Continent (1951), in which a team crashes on a remote island in the South Pacific while looking for a lost atomic rocket and find themselves in a world of dinosaurs?

Maybe the exact cocktail Crystal Skull mixes owes Chariots of the Gods a high five, but there are a number of science fiction-tinged lost world movies that Crystal Skull's plot would have been very much of a piece with, even if alien forces were generally malevolent in the 50s. The decade's pulp fiction offered a lot more than flying saucers. Don't forget about Them! (1957), the movie featuring giant ants in the desert caused by the radioactivity from our participation in the nuclear arms race. If you consider the wider breadth of the science fiction genre, Crystal Skull fits right in. It's why I'm so amazed it took like seven years of development for Lucas to connect the dots and wind up in that territory. It's not like he was doing anything groundbreaking. I can only assume that he had his heart dead set on the more in-your-face alien approach and Spielberg was too cold on the project in general to make the obvious counter-proposal.

A "cocktail" is an apt description. I had Them as an ingredient earlier.

Smiffy said:
KOTCS was therefore more concerned with Cold War B-movie inspirations: Communism, atom bombs, giant killer ants and the 1960s kind of flying saucers that Lucas ditched during pre-production for ROTLA.

The film is a cross-section of 1950s leitmotifs. A bit of everything tumbled in to remind us in no uncertain terms when we are. There are ants and flying saucers. It's a bit of everything, yet none of the individual parts are very substantial. Further complicated by the acting, characters and unnecessary elements such as the monkeys and prairie dogs, and Indy's lack of enthusiasm. (At least being a White Zombie under the power of the skull takes him arbitrarily back to the 1930s!)
 

Udvarnoky

Well-known member
There's too much introducing of a promising idea and then not doing anything with them:

-Spalko might have mind-reading powers. Goes nowhere.
-Indy is convincing the Russians to hand over their gun powder and bullets! Oh, he was in fact just helping them and his big escape is precipitated by punching a guy when he's not looking.
-Indy's a victim of McCarthysm! Oh, they drop it unceremoniously.
-Exhuming the legendary Roswell alien from Area 51! Oh, he's just a "distant cousin, perhaps" and more or less irrelevant to the main story.
-Nazca Indians potentially worshipped the aliens and fashioned the Nazca lines for them! See above.
-Mac is a double-agent! Nope, just a distraction that gets unmade by a meaningless last act "twist."
-A jungle cutter! Oh.
-Raging rapids set piece ahead! Oh.
-Random killer Indians chasing our heroes, no doubt setting up a thrilling esc...Oh.
-A mysterious obelisk puzzle to solve! Oh, Oxley figured it out in his cell.

Etc.
 

Grizzlor

Well-known member
On paper, I think it was a good story. Had this been an Indy comic or a novel, I think people would have been excited to read it. The execution like I've said was terrible. The CGI was so over the top, and at times way out of place. Spalko was a weak villain, who was more comical than dangerous.
 

Udvarnoky

Well-known member
I think what makes the movie so frustrating is that if an admittedly perilous attempt to bring back a beloved character after a nineteen year absence had to fall flat on its face, it shouldn't have been for boneheaded reasons like these. To me it's like they adroitly sidestepped the most dangerous pitfalls built-in to the project only to royally screw up really basic stuff that had zilch to do with Harrison's age or the new era or anything like that. It's maddening. Where were the thrilling moments and last-second escapes in this INDIANA JONES movie? It's insane - all the elements were there.
 
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AndyLGR

Active member
My feelings haven't softened towards it. They've got worse over the years and I realise its not healthy to be so disappointed in a film, but equally thats testament to how good the originals were.

Udvarnoky hits the nail on the head in part for me, add to that a macguffin and an end goal that seems pointless and poorly explained, rubbish characters in the last half and rubbish humour and it goes some way to explain my disappointment.
 
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