Z dweller said:
I'm impressed with your unbridled optimism these days*, i just don't share it.
I am not convinced that Spielberg still has that much fire left in him, at least not for an Indy movie.
Well, it'd be hard for him to write a worse one...
*It's good to see that you managed to exorcise that silly Pratt demon that seemed to possess you for months.
Guess the news that Ford will star in Indy 5 really made you happy, and that's fair enough.
If we're being honest though, the one Indy film that really calls for an energetic young director is TOD. Raiders has plenty of action but there is a skillfullness and finesse to those action scenes that really doesn't require youth and vigor. The action scenes in Raiders are almost musical in a sense; at least, what I am trying to say is they flow with John Williams' music perfectly. LC's action scenes for me, outside of the 1912 prologue, are very by the books and boring. TOD is the only one of them that really meets the modern definition of a rollercoaster sort of action film in terms of pacing and pure kinetic energy.
I am not like, optimistic over the moon about it; I don't have unbridled enthusiasm. Any project that Kathleen Kennedy has any creative control over gives me pause. There is plenty of peril to be found with the Mouse in pushing certain agendas and also in turning Indy V into a soulless, safe nostalgia flick. One could argue that that is what the franchise needs after KOTCS, but I'm not so sure. I also don't want to see an ultra PC non-violent Indy. I also worry that Spielberg will be kept on a short leash by the mouse and forced to make a very 'modern' Marvel-esque film, that won't FEEL like an Indy film. KOTCS for all its flaws had a similar, if lazy, directorial style. A worry is that we'll get something with tons of gags and modern editing and things like that that feels like a different beast. Those concerns all stem from Disney, though.
One non-Disney concern for me is John Williams. I haven't heard an inspiring score from him in almost 20 years. I feel a great musical score - bombastic, over the top, almost cartoonish music - is as important to Indiana Jones as anything else. Put a lesser composer in there and the truck chase in Raiders is good, but not as great. The pure MAGIC of the 1912 prologue's music helps make that sequence quite possibly the best in the film. The Temple of Doom slave children theme is just iconic. I haven't heard that from John Williams - I haven't heard a hum-able, grandiose score from him in a very long time. That was a major failing of KOTCS, actually - an uninspired score and a film wherein the music took a backseat.
If someone hummed a certain musical piece from one of the first three Indy films, I would know immediately which scene it was from and what's going on during that scene; I can even recall musical pieces from some of the YIJC with ease too. I've seen KOTCS as much as any other Indy film and yet for the life of me I cannot recall a single musical piece, much less relate it to a scene in the film, outside of the rock n' roll music in the movie. The music was as halfbaked as anything else in the movie and I worry that this will be a problem with V as well.
Harrison to me is probably the strongest asset of this film, and I say that without bias or 'fetishism.' He seems to have found a second wind as an actor doing his old characters and seems to put a lot of effort into those old roles - more than he has with other films since 2000 or so. Age to me is just a number.
People call it fetishim but I do think Harrison is the last of a certain kind of actor, of the Humphrey Bogart sort of mold, which you really don't see today. I hated Pratt so much because Pratt for me represents a very dumbed down and goofy version of that. Like the worst apsects of Flynn and Gable thrown in a Millenial friendly blender - No Bogart.