Do you think the reaction to KOTCS was exaggerated?

Mickiana

Well-known member
The Drifter said:
I couldn't agree more. I can't count how many times I've read how someone tries to pass Raiders off as some sort of intellectual, artsy-fartsy film, when in truth. it's just pure popcorn fun as the other three are.

I've never encountered that myself. But, what I think differentiates Raiders was the serious effort put into a movie that pays homage to a certain predecessor genre. It does take itself seriously in that Kasdan wanted to inject a classiness and nostalgia into it and did it very well. This makes Raiders shine along with everyone elses' contribution of course. Apparently Kasdan had a great criticism of ToD and while I do enjoy ToD I can see his point. Kasdan had a very certain vision for the story and had he written the script for any of the movies following Raiders, I've no doubt he would have continued that style. We would not have got a ToD with all the camp and silliness and gratuitous gore, which was enjoyable but differently a few degrees different from Raiders.
 

Toht's Arm

Active member
Mickiana said:
I've never encountered that myself. But, what I think differentiates Raiders was the serious effort put into a movie that pays homage to a certain predecessor genre. It does take itself seriously in that Kasdan wanted to inject a classiness and nostalgia into it and did it very well. This makes Raiders shine along with everyone elses' contribution of course. Apparently Kasdan had a great criticism of ToD and while I do enjoy ToD I can see his point. Kasdan had a very certain vision for the story and had he written the script for any of the movies following Raiders, I've no doubt he would have continued that style. We would not have got a ToD with all the camp and silliness and gratuitous gore, which was enjoyable but differently a few degrees different from Raiders.

I didn't know about Kasdan's response to ToD. Do you know where I can find his response on the net?
 

Montana Smith

Active member
Toht's Arm said:
I didn't know about Kasdan's response to ToD. Do you know where I can find his response on the net?


It might be in this interview. He talks about TOD on the second page:

http://uk.ign.com/articles/2003/03/21/an-interview-with-lawrence-kasdan?page=1

http://uk.ign.com/articles/2003/03/21/an-interview-with-lawrence-kasdan?page=2

IGNFF: Okay. I just wanted to ask you a couple of quick, final questions. I can't let you go without bringing up either Raiders or Empire – but I'm going to ask very specific questions because I know you've talked about it in the past, about how you were hired for it and all that. Were you credited at all for Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom?

KASDAN:

No.

IGNFF: Because I came across a 1981 interview you did, with Starlog Magazine. In it, you describe in great detail – like four years before Temple of Doom came out – two sequences that you wrote that were cut from Raiders, because you said they were deemed too preposterous and too expensive. They ended up being used, basically, in Temple of Doom, and they're two of the most memorable scenes from that film. It was the scene with Indy and Shanghai escaping from a Chinese ganglord – in your version, a warlord – running behind a gong as they open fire on him; the other scene, escaping from the empty plane on the raft. How do you feel about those scenes showing up in the film, and you not being acknowledged for them?

KASDAN:

That doesn't bother me. I tell you, it's sort of flattering, you know, when they do go back and use a sequence. You know that after the success of Raiders, nothing was too expensive, and probably nothing was too outlandish, either after that. But, George and Steven asked me to write the Indiana Jones sequels, and I didn't want to. I mean, I really liked those guys and the experience of doing Raiders was really good for me, but I did not really want to be involved – I only did Jedi, as I really owed George a favor. I didn't really want to do another sequel. I go to those movies, and I just sort of enjoy them like a viewer. When they used those things from the first script, I felt that was very much in George's right. He had paid for that script, that franchise, and I had benefited enormously from my whole involvement with him on that. He helped me get Body Heat made. So there wasn't any feeling of not being acknowledged.
 
Montana Smith said:
It might be in this interview. He talks about TOD on the second page:
Unfortunately its not, if the quote Mic refers to is:

Lawrence Kasdan of Raiders of the Lost Ark was asked to write the script. "I didn't want to be associated with Temple of Doom," he reflected. "I just thought it was horrible. It's so mean. There's nothing pleasant about it. I think Temple of Doom represents a chaotic period in both their lives, and the movie is very ugly and mean-spirited.

Another case of web content which isn't available anymore...shame its not here somewhere.

Maybe Junior could be coaxed into locating the interview, (shy of horsetrading a Mola Ram sketch inked in Amrish's hemoglobin)...
 

Montana Smith

Active member
Rocket Surgeon said:
Unfortunately its not, if the quote Mic refers to is:

Yes, Kasdan was much more diplomatic when talking to IGN!

But, George and Steven asked me to write the Indiana Jones sequels, and I didn't want to. I mean, I really liked those guys and the experience of doing Raiders was really good for me, but I did not really want to be involved...
 

Toht's Arm

Active member
Thanks for that, folks! It's interesting to see insiders' reactions to subsequent films. (OFF TOPIC - here's hoping that Kasdan makes Star Wars episode VII special).
 

Mickiana

Well-known member
Rocket Surgeon said:
Unfortunately its not, if the quote Mic refers to is:



Another case of web content which isn't available anymore...shame its not here somewhere.

Maybe Junior could be coaxed into locating the interview, (shy of horsetrading a Mola Ram sketch inked in Amrish's hemoglobin)...

Yes, that's the one.
 
Raiders112390 said:
Do you think the reaction to Crystal Skull was exaggerated? What I mean is, while it clearly wasn't Raiders II, it also wasn't a terrible film or even a poor film, yet so many people (even the media, like South Park) act like it's one of the worst films ever or something along those lines. I myself go back and forth between loving the film and feeling it could've been much more--but I don't feel it was a bad film in any way and don't feel Indy was "raped".

Where did this reactionary line of thought toward films come from? That a film can't simply just be "good" or "average"; it has to be a film that "raped your childhood"? Any film that doesn't meet incredibly unrealistic expectations is treated as if it is The Phantom Menace....The Hobbit is going through this right now for example.

I mean, did we get the IDEAL Indiana Jones 4? The film that could've come out in 1994 based on Fate of Atlantis that would've been most fans' dream film? The perfect sequel to Raiders that really none of the other films were? No. But Raiders has never really had a sequel on the same quality. Raiders is a classic film. It's a B Movie that somehow rises above B Movies to become something great--something to be taken seriously. TOD and LC and KOTCS are just fun action/adventure films.

As a side note, will the "Trilogy" section and the "KOTCS" section ever be merged into one? The Trilogy section refers to "Discuss Raiders of the Lost Ark and its prequel & sequel.", and segregating KOTCS from the other films is almost the forum's way of saying it's not viewed as canon. I mean, KOTCS is Raiders' second sequel. Shouldn't it be in the same section of the forum as TOD and LC?

You lost me at the bit in bold.
 

Udvarnoky

Well-known member
There really should be a thread called, "Why did KOTCS get such a free pass by audiences and the press alike?" People are deliberately forgetting that this is a film with a 78% Rotten Tomatoes score that pulled in $800 million in order to put forth the flawed argument that "reaction" is the exclusive province of the blogosphere.

This isn't an underrated film. It's an overrated one. You can point to South Park and internet forums all you want to claim the former; I could just as easily point to the scads of respected, professional critics who pardoned the film as an "enjoyable romp" to claim the latter. The movie made a mint on the gratitude everyone had at the time to merely have this character back on the silver screen. I find the pious "don't look a gift horse in the mouth" attitude that this film engendered way more fascinating than the predictable nature of die-hard fans on the web to excoriate everything.
 
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Stoo

Well-known member
Udvarnoky said:
There really should be a thread called, "Why did KOTCS get such a free pass by audiences and the press alike?" People are deliberately forgetting that this is a film with a 78% Rotten Tomatoes score that pulled in $800 million in order to put forth the flawed argument that "reaction" is the exclusive province of the blogosphere.
With all due respect, Udvarnoky...which people are "deliberately forgetting" about a Rotten Potatoes rating?:confused: I'm an avid fan of Indiana Jones but have never, ever been to this Rotten Potatoes/Tomatoes place (or whatever it is) because I don't give a toss about what it would say. I don't even know if 78% there is negative or positive and I'd venture to guess that the mass majority of ticket buyers from 2008 have never been to that site either (nor would they give a hoot about it, even if they did).

Not every movie-goer visits (nor votes) on those types of Potato websites so, yes, whatever goes on in those sorts of places are, indeed, relative to a certain type of internet "blogosphere" demographic.

(Amongst my regular friends & family, 1 in 10 would probably have heard of Rotten Potatoes. 1 in 50 would probably visit it. That said, nobody I personally know thought "Skull" was GREAT.;) How's that for reaction/demographics?)
 

Montana Smith

Active member
Udvarnoky said:
People are deliberately forgetting that this is a film with a 78% Rotten Tomatoes score that pulled in $800 million...

Now this, in a nutshell, is the main problem with democracy...

Under a moderate dictatorship those 78% would have been safely incarcerated to make the world a safer place for everyone else.
 

Udvarnoky

Well-known member
Stoo said:
With all due respect, Udvarnoky...which people are "deliberately forgetting" about a Rotten Potatoes rating?:confused:

Sorry for apparently touching a nerve, but the objective of my post was not to validate review aggregator sites as some almighty arbiter of a film's reception. The only point was that there are other metrics for gauging a movie's "reaction" than the select few that tend to be used when declaring this movie unjustly maligned. You don't get to cherrypick. And yes, that does go both ways.
 
No point dressing it up in fancy words or meanings or questions - the film was sh*te, it is sh*te, and it will be sh*te. Amen.
 
replican't said:
No point dressing it up in fancy words or meanings or questions - the film was sh*te, it is sh*te, and it will be sh*te. Amen.
Your friends won't let you wear the fedora in public anymore without busting your balls eh?

My heart goes out to you.
 

Stoo

Well-known member
Udvarnoky said:
Sorry for apparently touching a nerve, but the objective of my post was not to validate review aggregator sites as some almighty arbiter of a film's reception. The only point was that there are other metrics for gauging a movie's "reaction" than the select few that tend to be used when declaring this movie unjustly maligned. You don't get to cherrypick. And yes, that does go both ways.
No nerve struck so my apologies if it seemed that way.:cool: In any case, I wholeheartedly agree with you. A couple of months ago, a Raven member compiled a list of such website ratings in an attempt to prove that the film was not a disappointment. Because of the statistics he chose to present, the list was extremely biased and didn't prove anything.
Montana Smith said:
Hype and expectation, coinciding with easy internet access.
Add spiteful-movie-nerd to your equation and you'd have all the reasons in one nutshell.

Personally, my expectations for "Skull" were very, very low so it turned out better than I thought it would be!:D
 

Raiders90

Well-known member
As I've gotten older (now 22, was 17 turning 18 when it came out) I am growing to appreciate it more and more. I view it as sort of the "spiritual" sequel to TOD. I view the series in two groups:

You have LC and Raiders with their Nazis, depth, Judeo-Christian artifact, desert chases, and favorable reaction.

And then you have TOD and Skull with their non-Nazi villains, humor, over the top action, non-Judeo Christian relic, jungle trekking, and mixed reaction. Both TOD and Skull even open with a musical number which immediately places you in the era that the film takes place in and seems to have nothing to do with Indiana Jones. The four films form a nice quartet and I'm really coming to love Skull a lot. It's a B+ film.

With time, I think KOTCS will come to be accepted more and more, just as TOD was.

An example of a truly horrid film that was an utter disappointment is The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey. It's even got a 65% rating on
 

Montana Smith

Active member
Raiders112390 said:
An example of a truly horrid film that was an utter disappointment is The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey. It's even got a 65% rating on

As you get older, no doubt you'll grow to appreciate it more and more.
 

Raiders90

Well-known member
Montana Smith said:
As you get older, no doubt you'll grow to appreciate it more and more.

Not necessarily. Seriously. It's baaaad.
I was always ambivalent on KOTCS, sometimes leaning heavy one way, sometimes the other. But I've watched it many times and have come to love it. There are some films where as I've grown older I've loved them less.

The Hobbit has everything wrong with it that the SW Prequels have combined with Jackson's penchant for bloat. I didn't like King Kong. All the flaws in that film are present in The Hobbit, plus tons of slapstick humor and stupidity.

I mean, you have an Orc doing a Wilhelm scream. You have a Goblin King make a cheesy one liner in cockney English as he's murdered. You have a wizard who literally has a bird's nest and hatchlings in his hair and bird droppings slicking his hair to his head. You have scenes placed in which are obvious fan service. The Dwarves don't really look like Dwarves for the most part, they look like humans. It's too slow paced. It's too padded out with unneeded stuff which detracts from the core story. And Jackson tries too hard to make an epic on the scale of the LOTR out of what was a simple, straightforward, adventurous children's novel.

Ian McKellen said he literally broke down and cried while making the film because of the overabundance of effects.

KOTCS, while it didn't live up to 19 years worth of anticipation and hype, wasn't anything like that. Is it Gone with the Wind or Casablanca? No. But it's a B+ film.
 

Henry W Jones

New member
Stoo said:
Personally, my expectations for "Skull" were very, very low so it turned out better than I thought it would be!:D

Same here. After SW PT, I had super low expectations for KOTCS. I don't hate it at all. Could it have been better? Yes :hat:
 
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