The Drifter said:
Yes, but so does the pulp stories of the day. They were rife with horror elements. The supernatural, the occult (as in Doom's case), etc. That gives it an even better footing at being inspired by the early pulp stories.
Well, it has strong horror elements infused into an adventuring archaeologist story, just as Crystal Skull is science fiction infused into the same.
Along these lines, I've never quite known what the whole "Boys Own" thing means with regards to Last Crusade. I know Ebert's review talks about that, and I have a vague sense, but I'm not sure I see how that applies more to Last Crusade with the exception of the Young Indy and Henry Sr. elements. Is there more to it than that?
It possibly feels as though there are two different discussions going on here, as exemplified by Darth's "1950s B movie/sci fi." I've similarly conflated these ideas before, but there's a question of genre (or, really, genre additives) and then there's a question of form or tone or some better term that I'm not finding now. Complicating this even further is that each film is taking different mythologies and traditions and smashing them together.
It may be that Temple of Doom is the only one with any strong genre additive, with its horror elements, as even Crystal Skull, which has the second-best case, isn't so much science fiction as it is an adventure film using aliens as part of its mythological backstory. (In the sense that Roswell-style aliens + Meso-Americans + the ancient astronaut theory = the Crystal Skull mythos, just as early Christianity + medieval chivalric romance = Last Crusade's.)
What I'm loosely denoting as the question of form or tone is one that Darth's categories above, or the Saturday matinee serial/violent pulp fiction/Warner Brothers big budget adventure/1950s B-movie
delineation that avidfilmbuff used to offer seems to be answering. Now, there's reason to doubt this sort of description in the first place, as has been mentioned before...
Stoo said:
Saturday matinee serials = "pulp fiction" and Hollywood made adventure B-flicks, too. While I do understand what you're trying to distinguish, there are traces of all 4 of those elements in every Indy film. Point being, Indiana Jones movies are NOT Bs! They are made from top-notch talent in EVERY area.
...but I nevertheless feel that it is quite easy and sensible to recognize that each of them has different elements to varying degrees.
Really, the genre never changes; they're always adventure films, in the treasure-hunting subgenre. But consider the Western: there are more urban, crime-related Westerns. There are ones with epic overtones. Some are closely related to the war picture, as with John Ford's cavalry films and other lesser pictures. There are family sagas, there are comedies, and there are sometimes even ghosts. (And this entirely leaves aside all of the definite subcategories that the Western itself has that are unique to it, including the three most obvious: settlers & Indians, ranchers & farmers, lawmen & outlaws.)
And just as the Western is often infused with some elements of other genres, so it is with the Indy stories.
None of which is to argue that there isn't room for more horror elements in a fifth film than Temple of Doom had, but I think it had more horror than Kingdom of the Crystal Skull had science fiction.