cdmeredith
New member
James said:...But people that grew up with the films obviously have a much different view of how serious the original trilogy was meant to be taken.
Here we see that all of the sequels' most hated elements were present right from the beginning.
Maybe it's just me, but I think what people are most responding to in their dislike of KOTCS, whether or not they can really put their finger on it, is the shallow writing. It's not really the tone, or the subject matter, or things like that. It is characters that lack proper motivation and aren't engaged with the story. Non existent stakes, dialogue that doesn't reveal character, clunky exposition, etc. After all, both Temple of Doom and Last Crusade suffer from many criticisms too, but most people still think of them as good movies. And both of those films differ in tone from each other, and Raiders. I think this is different for Crystal Skull, which is widely seen as a subpar film. I sincerely don't think it's fond memories that ruin it, but the writing. This is something you can clearly see mattered to Lucas, Spielberg, and Kasdan when they were creating Raiders in this document. Everything was second guessed, and every motivation had to be cemented. Characters and scenes didn't just exist, they had to serve the story, and in a logical way. The main mystery/puzzle plotline was endlessly argued over until it made a certain amount of sense, and worked within the story's architecture. Character arcs and relationships had a certain number of beats to them, all character plotlines needed resolution in some form. Kingdom really lacks all of these things. It never feels like a cohesive story, more like bunch of random scenes. There are no stakes. I think that if Kingdom of the Crystal Skull's screenplay had been fixed, while retaining basically the same story elements and setpieces, that people would have enjoyed it. They would still have criticisms about things like aliens and tone, etc., just like all the other indy films have, but indy fans would have welcomed this film with fondness, instead of recoiling from it in horror. That's my take.
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