Why are people so hard on Indy IV?

Udvarnoky

Well-known member
I don't buy that the softness was an attempt to disguise Ford's age. For one thing, it doesn't, and for another the filtration is characteristic of Kaminski's work prior and since. And what does the obnoxious blooming around every light source have to do with hiding wrinkles?

Besides, that BS wasn't used in The Force Awakens, and Ford was seven years older in that. No, Crystal Skull looks the way it does because of a DOP who couldn't suck it up and put his preferred style aside, even for a movie where it plainly was not compatible. But I might be more pissed at Spielberg for giving it his approval.
 
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Udvarnoky

Well-known member
Here's a production still of Harrison Ford during the filming of Crystal Skull. It functions as a reference of what he looked like with make-up, but without Kaminski's "enhancements."

indian-jones-kingdom-of-the-crystal-skull-harrison-ford.jpg


Looks great to me.
 

Mickiana

Well-known member
Yeah, that softness gave a sort of misty look to much of it. It seems very common these days. I wonder why that is?
 

seasider

Active member
I recently had a dinner table discussion with some friends regarding the Indiana Jones movies and which one was their favorite. Naturally, the discussion eventually steered towards KOTCS and it was like they suddenly transformed into an angry Trump voter (no offense to those who voted for him). There was no room for middle ground or to maybe have them meet me halfway on certain aspects of the movie. It was just flat out "how dare you! The movie is an abomination and I hate the aliens, etc"

The most common denominators always seem to be:

-Aliens was a dumb idea for an Indy movie and they don't belong in that universe.

- George Lucas already ruined Star Wars with the prequels and now he ruined the beloved Indiana Jones franchise.

-The nuke the fridge scenes were dumb and fake.

-Aliens. Still hate those aliens (would it help if I told you they were technically "interdimensional beings"? ...Ok it was worth a try.)

Of course none of these points really explain the vitrol froffing of the mouth hatred some people have for the movies. I think part of it has is generational where people who grew up in the 80's have a deep affection for the 3 movies and then the social media age we live in.
 

Kai Hagen

New member
From what I remember of the movie, I lost my interest in the story when I saw Mutt laughing with the swinging monkeys. And the argument between the couple was too long. It was supposed to be a tense action sequence. It just showed me that the villains weren't a serious contender.

The previous series were very different.
 

DeclaringTiger

New member
It doesn't seem to be mentioned in this thread but one thing that I noticed was different when watching KotCS was how (and I don't mean this harshly) "forgettable" the soundtrack was compared to the other three films. Don't get me wrong, there are some good pieces of work invested within the movie, but they don't stand out and achieve what the other films did in my opinion.
 

seasider

Active member
DeclaringTiger said:
It doesn't seem to be mentioned in this thread but one thing that I noticed was different when watching KotCS was how (and I don't mean this harshly) "forgettable" the soundtrack was compared to the other three films. Don't get me wrong, there are some good pieces of work invested within the movie, but they don't stand out and achieve what the other films did in my opinion.

I partially disagree. I find Irinas theme and The Adventures of Mutt theme to be as memorable as themes from Temple of Doom and Last Crusade. I also like the music that plays when Indy has to stare into the eyes of the skull. There are some parts of the soundtrack where it does feel like John Williams is just mailing it in but I think it is a better soundtrack than most fans give it credit for.
 

DeclaringTiger

New member
seasider said:
I partially disagree. I find Irinas theme and The Adventures of Mutt theme to be as memorable as themes from Temple of Doom and Last Crusade. I also like the music that plays when Indy has to stare into the eyes of the skull. There are some parts of the soundtrack where it does feel like John Williams is just mailing it in but I think it is a better soundtrack than most fans give it credit for.

Funny you mention those specific songs, as those are the more favorable pieces IMO along with some others like "Ants!"
I agree that there are pieces just as memorable from the previous films, as I occasionally find myself with little bits of The Jungle Chase/ The Adventures of Mutt stuck in my head.
 

IndyBuff

Well-known member
DeclaringTiger said:
It doesn't seem to be mentioned in this thread but one thing that I noticed was different when watching KotCS was how (and I don't mean this harshly) "forgettable" the soundtrack was compared to the other three films. Don't get me wrong, there are some good pieces of work invested within the movie, but they don't stand out and achieve what the other films did in my opinion.

I agree that Skull's soundtrack is the probably the weakest of the Indy scores, yet there's still a lot to like. The Jungle Chase and The Adventures of Mutt are two of my favorites, along with Spalko's Theme and Ants!. I love the music from the warehouse escape and it's baffling to me why it wasn't included on the soundtrack. I had to rip the audio from the DVD special features, along with the Jungle Chase extended version. Why both weren't included on the main release is anyone's guess.

I also love the little variation of The Raiders March at the finale, which definitely took me by surprise the first time I heard it.:)
 

DoomsdayFAN

Member
DeclaringTiger said:
It doesn't seem to be mentioned in this thread but one thing that I noticed was different when watching KotCS was how (and I don't mean this harshly) "forgettable" the soundtrack was compared to the other three films. Don't get me wrong, there are some good pieces of work invested within the movie, but they don't stand out and achieve what the other films did in my opinion.

I agree. The score for IV felt lazy and contrived compared to the greatness of the scores from 1-3.

The movie was a dud through and through. May very well be Spielberg's worst ever.
 

Dr.Sartorius

New member
DoomsdayFAN said:
I agree. The score for IV felt lazy and contrived compared to the greatness of the scores from 1-3.

The movie was a dud through and through. May very well be Spielberg's worst ever.

Worse than The Lost World, The BFG, and 1941? Really?
 

AndyLGR

Active member
DeclaringTiger said:
It doesn't seem to be mentioned in this thread but one thing that I noticed was different when watching KotCS was how (and I don't mean this harshly) "forgettable" the soundtrack was compared to the other three films. Don't get me wrong, there are some good pieces of work invested within the movie, but they don't stand out and achieve what the other films did in my opinion.
I think a lot of that is also down to how iconic the original scores are and how long we've had to soak those in. The same was also levelled at The Force Awakens within hours of it opening, its way too early to make such judgements IMO. But with KOTCS going hand in hand is the fact we got a movie thats not as good as the other 3, so it instantly becomes less favourable overall. But I agree with a previous poster that the KOTCS score isn't IMO as bad as its sometimes painted to be.
 

IndyBuff

Well-known member
Dr.Sartorius said:
Worse than The Lost World, The BFG, and 1941? Really?

The Lost World was awful. I don't know how anyone could think Crystal Skull was worse than that mess of a film.
 

dakota

New member
KOTCS was an ok film and got better the second time I watched it, the first half of the movie was passable but when the aliens came into play it just went down hill.
 

Randy_Flagg

Well-known member
dakota said:
KOTCS was an ok film and got better the second time I watched it, the first half of the movie was passable but when the aliens came into play it just went down hill.
Considering that aliens came into play in the opening sequence, that's a pretty big problem :D

Kidding aside, though, I agree that the movie was okay for a while. For me, it really went downhill after the jungle chase. It had some problems before then, sure, but it also had plenty of genuinely fun moments. After the jungle chase, there are simply too many characters that I don't care about, the action scenes lack all tension, and Indy isn't even acting of his own initiative ("because it told me to.")

The final act of a story is when everything should get the most intense and the audience should feel the most invested, but in KOTCS, the exact opposite happened.

For me, the aliens themselves were not the problem. If Lucas/Speilberg/Koepp had crafted a story involving aliens, and managed to avoid the problems I mentioned above, it would have been fine.
 

IndyBuff

Well-known member
I liked the way the novelization handled the aliens, as they're more implied than actually shown. Had they gone with something like that I think it would have worked much better.
 

seasider

Active member
For me the problem is not so much the aliens/interdimensional beings but in more in the way that premise was executed. Lucas had so many ideas he was trying to cram into one story. I mean you had the crystal skull, the conquistadors, el dorado, roswell all kind of just slapped together and audiences were confused most of the time and when that happens they stop caring.

Compare that with Raiders, Indy is on a mission to recover the ark of the covenant before the evil Nazis do because the ark has wrath of Godlike powers that you don't want falling into the wrong hands. It's a very appealing and straightforward premise for an adventure that is easy to get invested in.

I think for Indy 5 to be successful, they need to go back to basics with the storytelling no matter if it's aliens or some other judeo-christian artifact.
 

Drones33

New member
Crystal Skull is by no means a terrible film I think, it is however a missed opportunity to do something great. And it does contain some poor ideas which I`m sure have been discussed thoroughly in this thread and others. I must say though, for me the most annoying and disappointing thing in the entire film... worse than Shia, worse than the monkeys, even worse than that god-awful "say grab the rope" snake in the sand pit gag... is this shot;
bad_hat_1_by_00177840-dblok8q.jpg

This is quite a key scene; Indy admitting that the skull is, either directly or indirectly communicating with him, and that he is being pulled towards something significant. Its not comedy, its quite an important bit of exposition and its ruined for me by the fact that Indy looks...well...silly. And its because of his hat, the way its pulled down so that his ears are bent over at the top. Granted he`s just been through it a bit by this point, but Indy has looked battered and beat up many times in the previous films, and thats always represented in his appearance as it should be. But he`s never been made to look foolish before, and in this shot he looks like a clown, (those of you old enough to remember Freddie 'Parrot Face' Davis will know what I mean). Should've used a different take, Mr Spielberg.
 
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