Crystal Skull : A Special Edition

Millions

Member
Well, today I finally watched Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull again. It came on TV as I was messing around on my computer, and I found myself watching it almost by accident - after years of deliberately avoiding seeing it again because of the disappointment.

And seeing it again through fresh eyes has totally made me re-evaluate it as a film. This kind of analysis has been done over and over on this site before, so I won't go over what I liked or disliked.

What I would say though, is that by a small bit of editing (re-editing!), Lucas and Spielberg could vastly improve this film.

It would be relatively easy to take out some of the scenes that, even in my more forgiving mood today, are simply horrible.

Take out :-

1) Shia swinging with the monkeys scene
2) Shia always combing his hair
3) Shia getting hit in the nuts repeatedly during the swordfight scene
4) the gophers
5) shorten that terrible quicksand scene


Remove some of the crap dialogue :-

1) the space between spaces
2) I like Ike
3) you're mispronouncing your doublewoos (Indy mocking Spalko's accent)
4) Some of the Family Jones - corny son/dad chat.

The parts I mention all seem to wrench me immediately out of the film world - back into reality - where I am sitting there flinching at the bad decisions made by the film-makers.

I really think that there is a good film in there. Maybe not 9s and 10s out of ten like the previous trilogy, but a good solid 7.

If Lucas can go back and redo the original Star Wars trilogy, then surely he can do it to this film. A movie which would arguably benefit much more from a bit of retouching.

I get the impression that the reception towards this film from the fans still hurts Lucas and Spileberg. Maybe before the 5th one (which looks increasingly likely to happen now), they could bring out a Special Edition as a little thank you to the fans for their ongoing support?

What do you think?
 

Indyfan82

Member
I don't think anything needs to be changed- I like KOTCS just as it is. But that's okay that some feel differently because I know that's obviously the case.
However, I personally LOVE the "I like Ike" line. That was one of my favorite parts. Of course, I LOVE all of the movie.:) :cool:
These kinds of things are one thing Steven Spielberg mentioned in interviews about this movie before it was made- they "didn't want to leave a bad taste in anyone's mouth"- but that's really hard to do- it was very hard to live up to the expectations that people had built up for the last 20 years or so for this movie. I think they did pretty well overall myself.
Besides, I don't know if I'm a big fan of this "redoing" movies thing. George Lucas has done that with the "Star Wars" films, Steven Spielberg did that with his reissue of "E.T."- there have been "director's cuts" for a number of films ("Blade Runner" famously got a number of those)- sometimes those can be improvements, perhaps. But I think at some point things should be left well enough alone. Just enjoy the movie for what it is. While it was interesting to see some of the additions in the special editions of the Star Wars movies, I prefer just to watch the original movies when I'm watching them. This goes for most every such movie in that category.
 

Henry W Jones

New member
Well..... since Crystal Skull has so much CGI would a special edition just add more or would it be redone with less? I just hope they don't special edition the first three.
 
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