How KOTCS could've been made better?

Darth Vile

New member
Attila the Professor said:
I'm guessing Darth just means the section that actually plays during the credits, rather than the entire opening act. I'm not wild about the use of Hound Dog and hot rods, necessarily, but Spielberg seemed more invested in the material here than anywhere else.

Correct Attilia...

LQ - I was just talking about the credits sequence.
 

Wilhelm

Member
The criticism in 1989 of LC was the same: that Spielberg didn't have his heart in it and that he was forced by Lucas to direct it.

These movies work because are a combination of action / humour, so I like the silly jokes like the pairie dogs, the nazi monkey or the snake with surprise. It would be a great mistake to do an Indy movie like The Dark Knight or Casino Royale.

I like the Paramount dissolve because it begins with an eerie music (Taken from the final moment when they put the skull in the skeleton) and then surprise us with the prairie dog being crushed by the roadster. It makes the audience feeling confused like the musical number of TOD or the western atmosphere of LC. We follow the roadster and we see a convoy of military trucks. We then follow the trucks and they lead us to Indy inside the trunk. It's a great way of beginning a story set in the 50s with the contrast between the teenage culture and the Cold War with the Atomic Café as the point where these 2 worlds go in different directions. (Later Mutt is used as a character from the 50s inserted in the adventure).

I like the the American Graffitti reference because it was the first Harrison Ford movie with Lucasfilm and included a car race with his character Bob Falfa, so the circle is complete after 8 movies.

I don't think that the openers of Indy are always a mini-movie like the teasers of James Bond. Spielberg said thay they're a third act of a movie that we didn't see, not a mini movie. And in KOTCS I have that feeling with the plot of the Roswell crash "You were part of the team that examined it". In TOD with the search of Nurachi "So it is true, you found Nurachi?". In TOD the opener is essential to understand why Indy ended up in India with Willie and Shorty. It's more interesting not to see the Roswell crash, the Mexican excavation or Nurachi's tomb and begin the movie in the last act of another adventure (That could be related to the main adventure or not).

And the opener of KOTCS begins and ends with a prairie dog, closing the introduction. I like the idea of following a prairie dog - roadster - army trucks - Indy - Prairie dog again.

The worst part for me was the ending of the Chauchilla Cemetery and the Jungle camp where the action is too slow. An action scene between those two sets could have improved the pacing.
 
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Paden

Member
Attila the Professor said:
I'm in favor of the sequence despite being somewhat lukewarm about it is that the reveal of Indy being dragged out of a trunk of a car is so damned good, and that is one thing that has remained consistent from film to film, that we never get a good look at Indy until after the "Directed by Steven Spielberg" screen. I think that's a good thing, especially in the film that had us waiting 19 years for that intro.
It's interesting that this part of the opening was brought up. I wasn't wild about the Paramount/prarie dog fade-in, but when the film reached the slow reveal of Jones, complete with the silhouette of him putting on the fedora, it really took me back all the way to Raiders and recaptured some of the magic of the series. Obviously, I've got my share of issues with Crystal Skull overall, but with regard to this particular shot, Spielberg really nailed it.
 

Matt deMille

New member
Wilhelm said:
The criticism in 1989 of LC was the same: that Spielberg didn't have his heart in it and that he was forced by Lucas to direct it.

These movies work because are a combination of action / humour, so I like the silly jokes like the pairie dogs, the nazi monkey or the snake with surprise. It would be a great mistake to do an Indy movie like The Dark Knight or Casino Royale.

I like the Paramount dissolve because it begins with an eerie music (Taken from the final moment when they put the skull in the skeleton) and then surprise us with the prairie dog being crushed by the roadster. It makes the audience feeling confused like the musical number of TOD or the western atmosphere of LC. We follow the roadster and we see a convoy of military trucks. We then follow the trucks and they lead us to Indy inside the trunk. It's a great way of beginning a story set in the 50s with the contrast between the teenage culture and the Cold War with the Atomic Café as the point where these 2 worlds go in different directions. (Later Mutt is used as a character from the 50s inserted in the adventure).

I like the the American Graffitti reference because it was the first Harrison Ford movie with Lucasfilm and included a car race with his character Bob Falfa, so the circle is complete after 8 movies.

I don't think that the openers of Indy are always a mini-movie like the teasers of James Bond. Spielberg said thay they're a third act of a movie that we didn't see, not a mini movie. And in KOTCS I have that feeling with the plot of the Roswell crash "You were part of the team that examined it". In TOD with the search of Nurachi "So it is true, you found Nurachi?". In TOD the opener is essential to understand why Indy ended up in India with Willie and Shorty. It's more interesting not to see the Roswell crash, the Mexican excavation or Nurachi's tomb and begin the movie in the last act of another adventure (That could be related to the main adventure or not).

And the opener of KOTCS begins and ends with a prairie dog, closing the introduction. I like the idea of following a prairie dog - roadster - army trucks - Indy - Prairie dog again.

The worst part for me was the ending of the Chauchilla Cemetery and the Jungle camp where the action is too slow. An action scene between those two sets could have improved the pacing.

Very good points. I hadn't thought about that before. I think I can enjoy Kingdom's opener a little more now (not that I didn't enjoy it before . . .)

But indeed, an action sequence after the cemetery would have been nice. I really wish that's when the motorcycle chase happened, through Peruvian streets rather than Marshall College. Oh well.
 

Wilhelm

Member
I love the pacing of the movie, opposed to the expositional dialogue from the Star Wars prequels. I also like the running time not over 2 hours, like the other Indy movies.

But the section between the cemetery and the jungle camp is boring. In the original script there was an action scene with Mutt suspended over the Nazca Line trying to catch the skull. Maybe that was the reason of that boring section, probably they eliminated that to reduce the budget.
 

Attila the Professor

Moderator
Staff member
Wilhelm said:
I love the pacing of the movie, opposed to the expositional dialogue from the Star Wars prequels. I also like the running time not over 2 hours, like the other Indy movies.

But the section between the cemetery and the jungle camp is boring. In the original script there was an action scene with Mutt suspended over the Nazca Line trying to catch the skull. Maybe that was the reason of that boring section, probably they eliminated that to reduce the budget.

Really? I think the sequence in the tent is the best thing in the movie, after the the sequence ending in Doomtown and the ants sequence. They actually manage to slow down and take some time on the characters, and the mythos and motivations they've spun for the film in a compelling way.

I don't disagree that they probably should have used the cliffhanger moment, but what's in-between is far from boring.
 

Matt deMille

New member
Wilhelm said:
I love the pacing of the movie, opposed to the expositional dialogue from the Star Wars prequels. I also like the running time not over 2 hours, like the other Indy movies.

But the section between the cemetery and the jungle camp is boring. In the original script there was an action scene with Mutt suspended over the Nazca Line trying to catch the skull. Maybe that was the reason of that boring section, probably they eliminated that to reduce the budget.

I remember that. There's some sketches of that deleted scene in the artbook. Mutt falls through the floor in the tomb and Indy catches him before he falls off the cliff. I always wondered about that, given how flat Nazca is, so it's a shame they ended up with a cliff and no cliffhanger to use it for. The perils of moviemaking, I guess.

Attila the Professor said:
Really? I think the sequence in the tent is the best thing in the movie, after the the sequence ending in Doomtown and the ants sequence.

I like both of those scenes too. One really creepy (on par with the Old Man in Raiders examining the medallion), the other a perfectly-fitting "creepy creatures" scene.
 
Spielberg

Wilhelm said:
The criticism in 1989 of LC was the same: that Spielberg didn't have his heart in it and that he was forced by Lucas to direct it.

These movies work because are a combination of action / humour, so I like the silly jokes like the pairie dogs, the nazi monkey or the snake with surprise. It would be a great mistake to do an Indy movie like The Dark Knight or Casino Royale.

And I am one of those that criticized LC for that. Some of my earlier posts rate LC and KotCS very close. I am one of the few (at least it seems) that likes ToD better than the last two movies (Raiders is still the best).

Many of the set pieces of LC LOOKED kike sets (Castle, Germany, Grail Temple, etc). They just didn't have that gritty realism of Raiders or ToD. Even the bad matte painting of Indy and company in the Cave just before finding the temple of doom was better than some of those sets.

For instance, the Temple of Doom actually LOOKED like a secret temple beneath some mountain in India.

LC gets a little more of a pass because it is a character study of Indy and Dad with the adventure as the background. KotCS never really felt like a character study. The search for the skull was the central theme, even though they had the father/son/Marion relationship in the movie, it felt secondary to the story, which is OK, but requires a little more caress from the director for the sets and the adventure itself, which is where SS failed in this outing.

Don't get me wrong, it's still a great movie, just a bit more uneven than the previous 3.
 

Matt deMille

New member
punisher5150 said:
Many of the set pieces of LC LOOKED kike sets (Castle, Germany, Grail Temple, etc). They just didn't have that gritty realism of Raiders or ToD. Even the bad matte painting of Indy and company in the Cave just before finding the temple of doom was better than some of those sets.

I'm not sure if this is straying too far from this thread, but here goes: I felt the same way about Last Crusade. The sets looked too much like sets. At AFI, my master's was in Production Design, so I tend to like KOTCS more, one reason being the rich design of the film, especially at Akator.

On a side note, when I did my thesis (we were to redesign 2 sets from a known movie), I chose Last Crusade. I wanted to do Indy, but felt that, Design-wise, there was no way to improve upon Raiders, Temple or Kingdom. Last Crusade, however, had great room for improvement there.

If you're curious, the thesis can be seen here: http://www.mattdemille.com/reels.htm

Keeping this thread from straying too far, I feel this was one of the things Kingdom had going for it. The sets were all really cool. However, since this is about "making it better", I do have to say that I felt that Akator lacked giving Indy things to do. He basically just wandered through a cool series of sets. It would have been better if there were traps to overcome or something. Basically all he did was open a door. But, if behind the waterfall there were booby-traps, then the natives, then Akator itself was not sealed but open, but had more traps to avoid, that could have been cooler, more Indy-style.
 

Darth Vile

New member
punisher5150 said:
And I am one of those that criticized LC for that. Some of my earlier posts rate LC and KotCS very close. I am one of the few (at least it seems) that likes ToD better than the last two movies (Raiders is still the best).

Many of the set pieces of LC LOOKED kike sets (Castle, Germany, Grail Temple, etc). They just didn't have that gritty realism of Raiders or ToD. Even the bad matte painting of Indy and company in the Cave just before finding the temple of doom was better than some of those sets.

For instance, the Temple of Doom actually LOOKED like a secret temple beneath some mountain in India.

LC gets a little more of a pass because it is a character study of Indy and Dad with the adventure as the background. KotCS never really felt like a character study. The search for the skull was the central theme, even though they had the father/son/Marion relationship in the movie, it felt secondary to the story, which is OK, but requires a little more caress from the director for the sets and the adventure itself, which is where SS failed in this outing.

Don't get me wrong, it's still a great movie, just a bit more uneven than the previous 3.

I personally thought the sets in TLC were great. Be it the Venice library, catacombs, Brunwald castle, interior of the Zeppelin or the Grail Temple itself. I certainly wouldn't see them as inferior to Raiders, TOD or KOTCS. Most movie sets ultimately look like movie sets if you look hard enough. It's invariably the way they are shot and lit that makes the difference.
 

Lance Quazar

Well-known member
Darth Vile said:
I personally thought the sets in TLC were great. Be it the Venice library, catacombs, Brunwald castle, interior of the Zeppelin or the Grail Temple itself. I certainly wouldn't see them as inferior to Raiders, TOD or KOTCS. Most movie sets ultimately look like movie sets if you look hard enough. It's invariably the way they are shot and lit that makes the difference.

I think the sets were well-designed, but I agree that there is a slickness and a sheen to the overall "look" of Last Crusade which feels just a little bit phony. But, as in all things, KOTCS is even worse.

Raiders and Doom are much "dirtier" for lack of a better word.
 

emtiem

Well-known member
Lance Quazar said:
I think the sets were well-designed, but I agree that there is a slickness and a sheen to the overall "look" of Last Crusade which feels just a little bit phony. But, as in all things, KOTCS is even worse.

Raiders and Doom are much "dirtier" for lack of a better word.

I think in most places it's great, but I know what you mean: compared to the others there's a slight sense of it hanging together rather than the complete slickness of the others. The boat chase for example: that set of the 'Venice' docks is appalling (and more Turkish in style than Italian to my eye!) and the speedboat propellor bit looks like an attraction at Universal Studios or something.
It's all relative, of course; still looks better than most films!
 

Wilhelm

Member
The Venice Library set is one of my favourites of the saga. It really makes you feel inside that place (Despite the fake books behind Indy when he sees the "X").

In KOTCS all the sets are splendid, except the Orellana Tomb that for me didn't have anything special. I like the Chauchilla Cemetery,very atmospheric, but the tomb itself is a little boring. That part needs something memorable associated to the discovery of the Skull. The 4 movies have faults so I could live with that.
 
LC and sets

Wilhelm said:
The Venice Library set is one of my favourites of the saga. It really makes you feel inside that place (Despite the fake books behind Indy when he sees the "X").

In KOTCS all the sets are splendid, except the Orellana Tomb that for me didn't have anything special. I like the Chauchilla Cemetery,very atmospheric, but the tomb itself is a little boring. That part needs something memorable associated to the discovery of the Skull. The 4 movies have faults so I could live with that.

The Venice Library wasn't a bad set, and I personally liked the Orellana tomb set from KotCS. I still feel the Castle from LC was a bad set, and especially the Grail temple set looked fake to me. The jungle chase scenes from KotCS didn't look real enough, but the Akator set was pretty good. Just underused.

Most of the Kingdom sets were good, and did not feel out of place. But too much green screen in the jungle chase took me out of that sequence. I think I like traditional matte paintings over the green screen jungle that we got. I'm sure those would have looked fake as well, though.
 

Matt deMille

New member
punisher5150 said:
The Venice Library wasn't a bad set, and I personally liked the Orellana tomb set from KotCS. I still feel the Castle from LC was a bad set, and especially the Grail temple set looked fake to me. The jungle chase scenes from KotCS didn't look real enough, but the Akator set was pretty good. Just underused.

Most of the Kingdom sets were good, and did not feel out of place. But too much green screen in the jungle chase took me out of that sequence. I think I like traditional matte paintings over the green screen jungle that we got. I'm sure those would have looked fake as well, though.

I've always thought the Grail Temple looked bad. Really bad. It's like they ran out of ideas -- Let's just have a big cave. Plus, it clearly has glaring stage-lighting from above. Where's the light-source? What's the history of the place? Did the Crusaders find it? Create it themselves? How? When?

Compare the Grail temple with the "throw-away" South American temple in the teaser for Raiders. The idol's temple had grit, detail, scary lighting, and even the cobwebs looked real. The Grail Temple in Crusade just seemed like a bunch of plaster rock on a conveniently smooth floor, and the cobwebbing looked very synthetic. And there's really no detail, nothing interesting. It's almost like a "brown-screen" or "rock-screen". Even when I saw it as a teenager in '89 I thought that. Now as a trained film designer, it's more obvious.

Of course, the STORY at Crusade's end is lightyears ahead of the "what just happened?" ending of Kingdom, and story is what matters most. Still, I wish the Grail Chapel was cooler to look at . . .
 

Wilhelm

Member
Maybe the Grail temple looked more fake because they have to do the pin-ball sequence with the floor collapsing. But I like that set with the stone warriors, the staircase and the lions. Maybe the Petra exterior is now too much known to the audiences. Today they would have built a new digital facade inspired in that style.

I think that a lot of the sets are stylized appearing to be more fake because it's a tribute to old fashioned Hollywood where the entire movie was shot inside studios. For example the exterior of the windows in Donovan's apartment or in Venice are very evident as sets, but that adds a lot to the old fashioned feel of the series.

KOTCS is a dream for any production designer because each new scene is a new set, particularly in the last act: waterfall - cave - rotonda - akator - pyramid - staircase - treasure chamber - throne room . It's like a video game with a new level in each scene. Spielberg likes to use real sets and not bluescreen because he gets inspiration for his angles when he's in a real set with the actors.
 
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Matt deMille

New member
I agree. The sets are stylized and I'm glad they have a stage-built feel to them. And I wish more movies would do that, as it does indeed help performance.

However, I still think there could have been more detail in the Grail Temple. A floor mural, for example, would not have hindered the ground breakup later. Or some carvings in the walls besides the statues. Maybe paintings of religious import on the walls. Something. Just flat rock wall didn't do it for me, considering how richly detailed every other set in the Indiana Jones world has been. And the stage-lit ceiling was too much of a cheat. They could have had shafts of light coming in, implying the sunlight streaming through the openings at Petra, at least. One shaft could have fallen on the steps between the lions, so when Indy went alone, it was like God was watching him. Or maybe, as the sun shifted, that light could have moved to Jones Sr. when the Grail was brought to him. Anyway, the Grail Temple set was really flat in every way -- No depth, no detail, no interesting lighting, nothing. Not worthy of Indy's finale (or what was presumed to be his finale).
 

Wilhelm

Member
So then the Crystal Skull chamber is a better ending from the point of view of a film designer. At least that makes KOTCS better than LC!

LC had another exterior set that I didn't like: Iskenderun. It was a location in a town in South Spain but It was worse dressed than the Cairo scenes in ROTLA, particularly when they're in Sallah's car where you see doors and numbers typical from that part of Spain (Almeria). I know that location very well, so maybe that's the reason why I see it too fake.

One set I like more in KOTCS than in ROTLA is Indy's house. In ROTLA the set was too cold and obscure. In KOTCS it was more comfortable and with a lot of books, artifacts... except for the production photos, but I think they have to use material from LC because the copyright laws. It's the same with the photo of Crispin Glover in BTTF 2 where they have to use a still photo from 1985 when the newspaper headline says that he was murdered in 1973.
 
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Darth Vile

New member
Matt deMille said:
I've always thought the Grail Temple looked bad. Really bad. It's like they ran out of ideas -- Let's just have a big cave. Plus, it clearly has glaring stage-lighting from above. Where's the light-source? What's the history of the place? Did the Crusaders find it? Create it themselves? How? When?

Compare the Grail temple with the "throw-away" South American temple in the teaser for Raiders. The idol's temple had grit, detail, scary lighting, and even the cobwebs looked real. The Grail Temple in Crusade just seemed like a bunch of plaster rock on a conveniently smooth floor, and the cobwebbing looked very synthetic. And there's really no detail, nothing interesting. It's almost like a "brown-screen" or "rock-screen". Even when I saw it as a teenager in '89 I thought that. Now as a trained film designer, it's more obvious.
. . .

I'm not sure I'd agree with that... as much as Raiders is the better movie, its set designs are not as sophisticated as TLC (IMHO). I really like the idol set from Raiders (specifically the tiled/booby trapped flooring)... however, the lighting is just as dubious, if not more so, as TLC's (think golden idol lit up like a Christmas tree). Also, up until the point of the idol room set, the rest of the interior of the temple is pretty bland by today's standards. It basically looks like what it is i.e. a dressed soundstage.

Also, as far as the Grail temple interior of TLC is concerned, you have to remember it was a set designed to rip itself apart (well the floor area anyway). If I remember rightly, at the time it was one of the most sophisticated sets (because of the built in hydrolics used to spilt and shift).
 

Attila the Professor

Moderator
Staff member
Wilhelm said:
One set I like more in KOTCS than in ROTLA is Indy's house. In ROTLA the set was too cold and obscure. In KOTCS it was more comfortable and with a lot of books, artifacts...

Is that so wrong, though? I feel we have reason to believe Indy never spent all that much time in his home back in '36. He's not a guy who knows how to settle down.
 
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