So i broke my cardinal cheapness rule and went to a movie at the theatre. Tee movie? Indiana Jones 4: the kingdom of the crystal skull. If you have not seen it and don't want any spoilers, stop here. Otherwise, read on. Now, i'm a pretty big fan of the other two indiana jones movies (i will NEVER acknowledge "temple of doom"! NEVER!), but this one was... well... where do i begin?
***************SPOILERS BELOW****************
First of all, the action scenes were stupider, the plot cornier and by the time the giant UFO showed up i knew that somewhere george lucas and steven spielberg were laughing at me personally. "Giant UFO?" you say? Yes. Giant UFO. I'm NOT making this up.
As for the movie itself, the plot is basically indiana jones, now a 60 year old former military man and tenured professor, goes off on a wild adventure with his former colleague's adopted son which later turns out to be (unsurprisingly) his own son. They travel to the amazon rain forests in their quest to return the crystal skull of the title to its birthplace, all the while under the pursuit of the new villains: a rapier weilding ukranian and her muttly crew of wascally wussians who have so little reason to be doing what they're doing it's pathetic. To be fair, they did try to capture the feelings of the day, what with the "red specter" and mccarthyism, but the "i like ike" line was just so cringe worthy, you start to wish they just stuck with the unmotivateably evil communists.
Speaking of the villains, the main one, the rapier weilding ukranian, is so two dimensional. The most character development she gets is when the fbi overtly TELL indiana (who had just recently survived a nuclear blast, mind you) about who she is and where she comes from.
Turns out her only real motivation is a lust for... knowledge? In the end, her "crazy" quest for knowledge lands her in hot water and she dies from what i call a "knowledge overload" (see kids? A little knowledge CAN be a bad thing!), her last words even being "i want to know... everything" (wow, that's just so evil!).
The movie ends with indiana making up with and marrying marian (the girl from the very first movie and young henry jones' mother) all while her former husband, indiana's friend and colleague and jr's father applauds: "way to score with my wife of 20 years, indie! WOO!"
All in all, hollywood again lived up to their reputation and ruined a series for me on the third movie (re: i will never acknowledge "temple of doom"). The movie's probably worth watching if you were a fan of the originals (nothing i say will convince you otherwise anyway), but from indiana surviving a nuclear blast in a fridge to the lame villainesse death at the end to the UFOs, there's just not enough here to call it "classic indiana".
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poor tipz-e it seems that somewhere you lost your imagination - this movie was an exercise in fantasy. of course nobody can survive a nuclear blast in a refrigerator, unless you're the legendary Indiana Jones, nobody could have such a thrust for knowledge that their head would explode, except for the villain facing Indiana.
ReplyDeleteIt was a brilliant fantasy played out before our eyes - and we were lucky enough to behold, it amazed, dazzled, thrilled and chilled - a masterful finish to a series that spawned an entire genre of mythical grave robbing super archaeologists.
oh Indy, I miss you already.
and yet, with all that complaining about a perfectly good movie, you completely missed that despite his aged veneer Harrison Ford played a very spry aged professor; and I do wish that they had set up for the next series of "Young Indiana Jones"
http://thepiratebay.org/tor/3466758/Flubber.Disney.DVD
ReplyDeleteDo this one next