Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny

Go nuts

fuck off

stop

No LaBoof, at least.

is Lucas involved?

Spielberg has directed every film in the franchise. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, the last film, opened in 2008 and starred Ford opposite Shia LaBeouf, who the producers hoped could over the baton, but the mission failed.

YOU DON'T SAY.

No immediate mention of Lucas.

I sincerely hope they continue with this futile effort until they've made at least one straight Indiana Jones adventure film when Ford is in his 90s.

Which'll be great because then it'll be set in the 1970s.

Five minutes in, he jumps off a moving boogie van and immediately shatters his hip.

Indiana Jones and the Somewhat Boring 1975 Conference of the Society for American Archaeology

Indiana Jones and the Mullahs of Tehran

its sad that harrison ford will be irl dead by the time this comes out but it will be a nice tribute :(

Ben Affleck already did the Indy/Iran thing at the end of ... -- i literally can't remember the title of that Oscar-winning horseshit.

so is this going to be about Atlantis or what. maybe they can do Spear of Destiny w the Boys From Brazil

They're replacing the Nazis with hippies in this one.

xxpost iirc the title was Raiders of the Lost Argo

broken hippies

The tentpole will hit theaters in summer 2019.

now everybody--

Indiana Jones and the 1968 Democratic Convention

Indiana Jones and the Texas Book Depository

Indiana Jones and the Tet Offensive

Indiana Jones and his Ancient ol' Petrified Gnads

i can see him evacuating embassies from Saigon to Manila

Khrushchev rouses himself long enough from his drunken stupor to hatch a plan to recover the last known piece of the true cross, which bestows upon its holder powers of agricultural progress and effective macroeconomic mastery of the command economy. septuagenarian indiana jones believes the piece belongs in a museum, and embarks on a globe-trotting quest to beat the kgb to the quarry

John Williams score to ape Henry Mancini rather than Korngold

just realised that Harrison Ford is only 12 years younger than Sean Connery

‏@NickPinkerton
Glad I'll once again be able to bask in the palpable sense of joy that Harrison Ford exudes when standing in front of a movie camera.

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull 2

If the original films were meant to be an homage to serials from the '30s and '40s and set during that same era, it only makes sense that an Indiana Jones film set in the '60s would pay tribute to cinema from that era. I'm thinking something like Bonnie & Clyde meets Easy Rider? There will definitely be at least one extended psychedelic trip sequence.

Maybe more like I Am Curious (Yellow) meets Head. I dunno, there are so many possibilities!

Indiana Jones and the Return of the Napping Chair

Guardian sez Lucas is a producer

http://www.theguardian.com/film/2016/mar/15/harrison-ford-back-as-indiana-jones-for-fifth-film-directed-by-steven-spielberg

Indiana Jones and the Filming of Raiders of the Lost Ark

Rip van Harford finally woke up in TFA. Maybe they promised to kill off Indiana in this new one.

Would tributes be more likely to be original Man From Uncle/Mission Impossible/Bond?

Or something like Arabesque/Charade/Topkapi/To Catch a thief or similar if those actually are.

JUst trying to think of exotic adventure from the 60s. Probably forgetting something more directly involving archaeology.

man you guys are really into fan fiction

like you know there's no way in hell this will resemble any films from the 60s, right?

that's kind of the ironic thing, adventure movies kind of died out by the 60s, one of the reasons they had to reach back to the 30s for Indy in the first place.

Indiana Jones and the Apartment

I Am Curious (Jones)

bah Old Lunch beat me to it

Fifths

Indiana Jones & the Jonathan Livingston Seagull

It's an Indy Indy Indy Indy Indy Indy Indy World

what a disaster for shia thebeef

i hope they explain his absence with a brief aside explaining he was fragged by his platoon in korea

Which'll be great because then it'll be set in the 1970s.

― Ned Raggett

Indiana Jones and the Magic Powder of Studio 54.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SlKao_Pox5A

They're replacing the Nazis with hippies in this one.

― Horse Throat (Old Lunch), Tuesday, March 15, 2016 1:15 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

so, this is basically the dragnet 1968 to the original trilogy's dragnet?

They should set this one in 1962 and make it a James Bond crossover. Indiana Jones and the Dr. No.

will no one laugh at my frankheimer joke

I don't know why, but I knew which movie you were referring to but somehow didn't process the joke it until just now. I'll blame daylight savings time.

Y'know, I've never actually seen that one, but fortunate coincidence has it such that I was already planning on seeing it at the local classic movie house next Wednesday since they're running a series on cinematographers.

Screening is a "digital restoration," so I hope that it holds up. Digital grain/pixel-y bits are far less pleasant than 35mm grain, obv.

part of me is a little sad that shia leboeuf (sp?) is now on the ash-heap of popular cinema history, right there on top of brandon routh.

(cue sexy ash-heap fanfic)

keep misreading this thread title as "Indiana Jones and the Filth Movie"

That slag Jones e's only been talkin to the old bill

Brandon Routh's on Legends of Tomorrow! ... so, yeah.

We've found our No 1 on the [insert year here] ILX films poll then.

So far the slate for 2019 is "Mashup: A Butterfly Lovestory", Bad Boys 4, the Inhumans movie, the last Avengers, and Timeliners:

A message of an impending alien invasion that will wipe out all life on earth forces the creation of a special paramilitary team that has the ability to cross parallel realities, preparing all possible futures for the attack. But when a "timeliner" named Eric Mathers is told that the pan-dimensional beings called the Krith may have a hidden agenda, he must attempt to discover if the war he has been fighting for the last fourteen years is really for the greater good or just part of the "greatest lie".

Is that Inhumans movie still happening? I thought that was less likely since they're bringing them in thru the tv show

They only announced it recently, I thought, the same time as the Black Panther movie (so after season 2 of the show)?

Apparently, the filmmakers who made the new Captain America were asked whether the Inhuman insurguence on AoS (which you'd think would be a development in the MCU that would directly inform super person registration) would be addressed in the movie and they had no idea wtf was even happening on AoS.

Which I hope was a dodge or fake-out because otherwise I find that really aggravating.

finally, the comic-book tradition of janky continuity is being translated to the big screen

I think maybe a few more people are going to watch the film than the TV show - I'd be amazed if the show runners weren't being previewed on the film.

no comic book slop here plz

... you do know which thread this is?

https://bplusmovieblog.files.wordpress.com/2014/10/dr-strangelove-or-how-i-learned-to-stop-worrying-and-love-the-bomb-57.png

I suppose we should have revived this one already because it's been filming and all. I appreciate that this is a sentence that legitimately exists:

Baffling new pictures from the set of Indiana Jones 5 see Harrison Ford and Phoebe Waller-Bridge on the run from an angry horde of Roman centurions, inciting new rumors that the film includes time travel.

Having said that, per an announcement from Disney today on its overall schedule:

Untitled Indiana Jones Movie, previously dated on 7/29/22 moves to 6/30/23

So ... time travel confirmed, then?

So Indy will be an octogenarian when the film finally comes out xp

Indiana Joey, do you like movies about gladiators?

rewatched Crystal Skull recently, going in with 'I don't remember it being all that bad'.
but oh dear oh dear.

Misread this as Indiana Jones and The Filth Movie.

Cute

https://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/c_fit,f_auto,g_center,pg_1,q_60,w_1165/a5ed8b66acb44efe2a7ec2298d1c2b16.jpg

Really is!

Still no title but they screened some footage at D23 yesterday.

hold on to your potato!!

They showed a trailer didn't they? Anyway, by all accounts Harrison Ford was in good spirits, even moved, which is unlike him.

Emotionally or physically/spatially?

(content-less, but nevertheless...)

Disney In “Panic” After ‘Indiana Jones 5’ Flops
https://insidethemagic.net/2022/11/disney-panic-after-indiana-jones-5-flops-ab1/#google_vignette

A report from Hollywood insider Overlord DVD has now indicated that Disney has tested six different endings to the movie and that the audiences haven’t been happy with any of them.

“Indiana Jones 5 has been a troubled production, delayed a full year after this channel leaked the horrible things Kathleen Kennedy had planned for Indiana Jones. Now, after a year’s worth of reshoots and tinkering, Disney realizes that they have a disaster on their hands as test audiences reject every single version they’ve been shown!”

As with Han Solo I don’t need to see some tragic Indy death scene ever

Well, it is the director of "Logan," right?

That source name alone makes me raise an eyebrow.

that all sounds like hooey. I wouldn't be surprised if the movie sucks but there is no way they are sending it to disney+ only and there is no way PWB is taking over the lead role, give me a break

Perhaps in reaction to that negative rumor, there have been ton of leaks and tidbits the last couple days...

Dun dah dun dahhhhhh

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZfVYgWYaHmE

Already getting better vibes from this than the last movie.

Is there a shot of him jumping the Falcon into light speed in that? At 1:08?

Lotta crap looking CGI there

Lotta crap looking CGI there

― papal hotwife (milo z), Thursday, December 1, 2022 5:33 PM (one minute ago) bookmarkflaglink

This is true.

Last four posts all otm

Weirdly looks and feels like a video-game trailer...

It's not uncommon to use unfinished effects in trailers

I don’t think polishing is going to improve the shot of Indy jumping in the car coming from the opposite direction.

St Vincent Street looks good though.

Ye olde trailer breakdown

https://gizmodo.com/indiana-jones-5-trailer-breakdown-dial-of-destiny-ford-1849843527

Dial of Destiny as in he's finally fucked off into retirement and we spend two hours watching him awkwardly decide what to watch on TV?

I'm sure the Falcon shot will be some pseudo-WWII-era plane that he's flying into a faith-based mystical vortex, as a dumb cheeky nod.

Ah, the key question:

LaBeouf and his character will not be in Dial of Destiny, and Mangold promises audiences will "find out what happened" to him, but of course, won't say more.

Hoping 'boiled in oil' is an option.

Indy set him up to get melted like the Temple of Doom Nazis.

Died on the way to his home planet

Beheaded by a low-hanging branch while motorcycling.

"He's a guy who's never happier wearing glasses and reading a book, but somehow finds himself in these kinds of incredible situations. He uses unorthodox weapons to defend himself. He usually figures his way out of trouble with his brain, which is a very different set of circumstances than most of the heroes of our contemporary culture, who are just empowered."

Feel like he's describing a much more clichéd character than Indy here. Indy goes for the blunt, direct approach just as often. The sneaky stuff mostly doesn't work.

Shia LeBouf was just another fragment of Indy's personality.

and in fact he is imagining these adventures

re-watching all the Indian Jones movies after having watched things like King SOlomon's Mines is making me see how Spielberg put movies from his childhood on steroids

I am just now realizing Shia Lebeouf was a timelord

xpost Funnily enough I've ended up doing the same thing recently, halfway through an IJ rewatch now. (The Quartermain trashfires are truly mockbusters of their day.)

Paul Robeson is in King SOlomon's Mines which was a synchronicity for me because I have been listening to him a lot lately. Maybe the new INdy movies needs some baritone musical numbers as well (Sisters of Mercy?)

Dun dah dun dun

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQpwONzpcy4

Looks CGIed out its arse.

I hope it's as good as but not as depressing as Logan

The only Super Bowl movie trailer I gave even half a shit about

Dun dah dun dun

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eQfMbSe7F2g

So here's my real question -- between Denholm Elliott, Jim Broadbent, Ray Winstone and now Toby Jones, does...Indiana Jones have ANY American academic colleagues?

damn outsourcing

Looks CGIed out its arse.

― chap, Monday, February 13, 2023 6:13 AM (one month ago) bookmarkflaglink

More or less than the Call of the Wild trailer?

So here's my real question -- between Denholm Elliott, Jim Broadbent, Ray Winstone and now Toby Jones, does...Indiana Jones have ANY American academic colleagues?

― Ned Raggett, Friday, April 7, 2023 10:53 AM (thirty-six minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

The Nazi-era brain drain brought many academics to the U.S., but surely they would be more...Central European?

They were fleeing the evil Stanley Baldwin regime. (Maybe it was.)

if they ever do a modern day reboot Indy can chase down NFTs

I'm in. Dammit.

Per reports, 154 minutes long. Dun-dah-dun-dun, hold-your-piss.

first movie to ever run long because the actor on screen had to take a piss

Dun dah dun dun
Three more days

rewatched all the movies this week
kinda excited for this? idk idk

Excited to see it, just hope it's better than the last one, and that they don't do something dumb with Marion!

I've managed to watch and enjoy the first three films plenty of times since Crystal Skull came out, without Shia LeBouef-adjacent thoughts popping into my head. I tried rewatching Crystal Skull once and only got thirty minutes in, it really is awful.

same, yer get that 'really, how bad could it have been?' and then you watch it and then it's oh christ make it stop.

stop
― we can be heroes just for about 3.6 seconds (Dr Morbius), Tuesday, March 15, 2016 1:07 PM (seven years ago)

I tried rewatching Crystal Skull once and only got thirty minutes in, it really is awful.

What's happening 30 mins in that was so bad?

Rewatched Temple Of Doom a few weeks back and still think it's the weakest of the first four.

It really isn't

cool

Well, at the very least "Temple" starts with the club sequence, which is better than "Crystal Skull" and iirc most of "Last Crusade." But haven't seen the latter in a long time. Have only seen Crystal Skull that one time. And honestly? Just based on the marketing, something seems off about this new one. Feels kinda desperate and cheap, don't know why.

What's happening 30 mins in that was so bad?

- Plot felt inert aimless. The pacing in the first three movies is amazing.
- Bad CGI
- Harrison dialing it in
- Feeble references to Denholm Elliott and Sean Connery
- Personal opinion but I don't think I've enjoyed a single Cate Blanchett performance (although I haven't seen Tar)
- Fridge thing wasn't as funny as it needed to be
- Just didn't grab me!

And IIRC that's still before we even see Shia

Sometimes the line “knowledge was their treasure” drifts unbidden into my mind and my brain just shuts down, so glad my dad paid for my ticket cos I’d be so angry if I’d spent my own money on that pile of shit.

I think 30 minutes in you've endured Cate Blanchett's accent and the nuclear bomb fridge, and you've settled into the jabbed nerve that is every second Shia is on screen. You've not yet hit John Hurt's casualty, who might be the best part.

(xp!)

This started well, and then it gets worse as it goes on, and in the end they fly a plane back in time to meet Archimedes (and not in a good way) and I kind of want to broadcast that 24 hours a day on all media, "Dumbledore killed Snape"-style.

That's not so out of line with things that happen in any of the other four installments

assume the viewer is stirringly instructed to FIND A PLACE TO STAND... AND MOVE YOUR WORLD

Indiana Jones and the Jordan Peterson Audiobook

Walter Chaw: https://www.filmfreakcentral.net/ffc/2023/06/indiana-jones-and-the-dial-of-destiny.html

Worse than nonsense, it's boring nonsense--and, even worse than boring and nonsensical, it all carries with it a mild but pervasive taint of pettiness. So many civilians are casually assassinated. Two of Indy's academic colleagues are gunned down like cattle for no discernible reason but to make the bad guys look worse. A Black FBI (or CIA? It's not clear) agent, Mason (Shaunette Renée Wilson), gets a truly gross closeup on her face as she dies betrayed, which is just one of many examples of dire bullshit you shouldn't do in this age of representation without any sort of understanding of representational issues. Meanwhile, the underwater death of one henchman is so cold it makes the hero responsible more irredeemable than he already was. (Then the picture doesn't have the balls to show the bastard drown.) What I'm trying to say is, there is somehow not one single cheer-worthy moment in this film where Nazis are routinely punched. That's the only surprising trick Indy 5 manages to pull off. John Williams's epoch-defining "Indiana Jones Theme" first swells beneath a 25mph tuk-tuk chase, reducing it to self-parody. It's like using that music to score a video of snails porking. I think about how the Apollo 11 astronauts cameo during a ticker-tape parade that has so little iconographic impact it's offensive to the memory of their deed, and again how this massive boner functions as a microcosm of how irretrievably broken this disasterpiece is--how completely its appeals to our collective childhood have missed what made these movies special in the first place. It's easily the worst film of a series that has been maddening before, scattershot before, even bad before, but never so facile (including the jungle swinging in Crystal Skull). Never so pathetic. I wish I could dial back time a few hours. I wish I didn't have to watch Indiana Jones dodder into dust as Phoebe Waller-Bridge looks on, self-satisfied and knowing. Luckily, most of it's already faded away.

watched the one from 15 years ago on TV last week (first time) and it's a perfectly Fine no-expectations nineteen-years-later george-lucas sequel EXCEPT for LaBoeuf, and especially how his presence defines Marion - Allen brings so much juice, but has nothing to do.

walter chaw making me want to see it more tbh

there aren't really so bad they are good movies anymore especially at this scale, this shit will just be tedious attempted fan service

i feel like the intelligence and care required to make good films or tv within a world full of demanding fanbases has totally evaporated. sometimes you get little miracles like Andor but usually it's just embarrassing to watch.

the problem is also that studios have directly or indirectly kowtowed to these fanbases which signals these toxic assholes that it's ok to impose their will over franchises.

like I remember everybody sharing that stupid Lisa Simpson meme "we should see Sonic the Hedgehog because the studio listened to our concerns", and yeah, if Sonic had been made with the terrible original visual design, it would have been dogshit, so the fans weren't wrong, but I don't see "lol we got the studio to bend the movie purely to the desires of us very obnoxious assholes" as a thing to celebrate in general

i feel like the intelligence and care required to make good films or tv within a world full of demanding fanbases has totally evaporated.

I mean, this movie is by the same guy that did "Logan," and that was great, and just a few months ago we got "Guardians of the Galaxy 3," and it was good, and we just got the new "Spiderverse" movie, and it was good, too. So I think people with the necessary fandom/skillsets do exist. The bigger question is what causes movies like this (I assume), or , I dunno, "The Flash" to flail/fail. Is it a misunderstanding of the fanbase? Is it an overestimation? Is it over-caution? Is it bad marketing? Bad editing? This one's got four credited screenwriters, one a brother team, one A-list lifer David Koepp, one the director, and I've got to assume others had their hands on this as well, each with their own vision/mandate. Is that the problem? Probably all of the above.

Definitely a conundrum, though, when you get into the habit of playing it safe *and* spending $300 million plus a movie. Not that I care if H-wood goes all franchise all the time, but there's probably a better ROI on making 10 $30 million movies that do OK or better than one $300 million movie that underperforms. But that's not as flashy, I guess.

Of course, maybe this movie will be a huge hit, and H'wood will learn nothing and double (triple?) down on bullshit.

they will either way

there's probably a better ROI on making 10 $30 million movies that do OK or better than one $300 million movie that underperforms

it doesn't actually seem like this is the case. there's a good book about this called Blockbusters from about 10 years ago. interview with the author here - https://www.forbes.com/sites/hbsworkingknowledge/2013/10/15/blockbuster-strategy-why-star-power-works/

That's not so out of line with things that happen in any of the other four installments

Well, on the one hand, one of the things that I know some disliked about the Crystal Skull was that it crossed a (sometimes-muddy) line from fantasy to sci-fi. I'm not that attached to this point of view, you can do all sorts of stuff if it's good.

But (and this next hidden tag is a huge chunk of the plot of a film that's been released today, don't come crying to me) the idea is that the 'Antikythera' (a real device that actually exists) was actually made by Archimedes and can be used to find 'fissures in time' in a Curse of the Black Pearl compass style - There's a list of when these fissures are, and Mads Mikkelsen's Paperclipped Nazi wants to go back to 1944 (this is the one good idea in the film, that the Nazi wants to win the war by going back to kill Hitler) but Indy figures out that Archimedes hadn't factored in continental drift, which somehow means that the fissure does exists but just drags them back to the Siege of Syracuse. I think my position is that I'm simultaneously offended on behalf of the actual Antikythera Machine for being associated with imaginary objects and offended on behalf of the religious imaginary objects for being associated with the Antikythera Machine as a 'magic' object.

Maybe even weak blockbusters have a longer and more lucrative shelf life, especially in overseas markets.. like I don't imagine Lady Bird blew the Chinese market

errm, blew 'up'

Lady Blew Bird

xps But for real, if anyone comes at this series with the notion that any one of these films is in any way serious … sorry, not on that train

Ugh that review kind of confirms my fears. It's Crystal Skull but likely worse. Shame this is lower than CG monkeys fist fighting Russians (literally the phrase I use to summarize KotCK). Looks like I've saved time and money this summer.

The bigger question is what causes movies like this (I assume), or , I dunno, "The Flash" to flail/fail. Is it a misunderstanding of the fanbase? Is it an overestimation? Is it over-caution?

I remember in the run up to the Force Awakens, JJ Abrams mentioning how he hadn't been a really big fan of Star Trek but he was a huge Star wars fan, but you sure as hell couldn't see that anywhere in the trilogy. Of course it doesn't matter how passionate you are if you're simply a bad filmmaker. I think, to go back a few posts, marvel is another animal entirely where there's such an authoritarian quality control over everything that nothing is truly awful or really truly great. It's the ultimate safe bet. Sure, Logan was excellent though. And Mad Max: Fury Road. And somehow the mission impossible films got better once they hit the 2010s. But I just think there's way too many filmmakers who are trying to recapture some magic that was unexplainable in the first place. Like Bill Murray trying to artificially recreate that perfect night in groundhog Day over and over again and it never works until he stops trying so hard.

Like I have genuine respect for George Lucas more so these days for what he attempted in the prequel trilogy, he wasn't trying to recreate the magic of the first Star wars trilogy, he was trying to do something else entirely different and it was an eminently respectable endeavor. And in retrospect definitely a pure expression than the very mercenary and empty storytelling of the sequels.

Related, the most vocal fans of a thing online tend not to know what made them fans in the first place(which is understandable, as you need more than a bit of perspective and understanding of this shit) and just glom onto the most simplistically/superficially kinda distinct aspects of the thing and trumpet that.

The RedLetterMedia guys have good impulses in what makes franchise fans tick, or at least, what marketers rely on to sell shit to these fanbases. “They love their logos,” to quote Rich Evans.

They just covered Temple of Doom, which they both really like, not least because it's not just packed with callbacks, like most sequels these days.

did they copy over the racism too

https://64.media.tumblr.com/a2832cc61f43e6fe258e4892d9c3e058/4a01adfb56406366-0f/s540x810/877694a03676215b80d906e5857778dea1f4cd67.gif

Like I have genuine respect for George Lucas more so these days for what he attempted in the prequel trilogy, he wasn't trying to recreate the magic of the first Star wars trilogy, he was trying to do something else entirely different and it was an eminently respectable endeavor. And in retrospect definitely a pure expression than the very mercenary and empty storytelling of the sequels.

― omar little, Wednesday, June 28, 2023 11:52 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

totally, I mean the sequels were totally better movies than the prequels in a lot of ways but also I don't remember shit about them, whereas with the prequels I remember a lot of random shit. something to be said about how bad movies are often more memorable and interesting than good ones. which makes you wonder which one is really the bad one. oh well.

I only think those comments really apply to TFA and RoS - Last Jedi actually turned many long-standing assumptions on their head and challenged the idea of a Jedi, and also wasn't directed by Abrams

(I also did like TFA even if it was a bit retread, and enjoyed RoS despite recognizing what a lazy, unimaginative screenplay it was)

The last Jedi is one I was gonna step in and defend from my own comments but ultimately with its story memory wiped and it floating in between the other two, it's just a meaningless film. Even though it's a pretty good one. TFA benefits from Abrams having that ability to hook you in the opening of a story (see: Alias), though it feels empty upon subsequent watches. ROS I was forced to watch a second time w my son for completist reasons and he was even more appalled than me. It underscores dramatically Abrams' inability to ever conclude a story (see: Alias) That film is the reason he'll never want to watch mission impossible 3. Anyway, that dude sucks. I've said it a couple times here before but him being given the keys to the kingdom for so many major franchises is an indictment of hollywood.

I mean I hope they've learned their lesson by now though.

i liked them all fuiud

but i’m on record as loving solo so yknow

They just covered Temple of Doom, which they both really like, not least because it's not just packed with callbacks, like most sequels these days.

I still remember going to see Temple of Doom when it came out and being absolutely appalled. I couldn't believe this was supposed to be the successor to Raiders.

https://i.imgur.com/ohbJTk4.gif

^why you gotta floss, folks

I made my uneasy peace with Temple of Doom a long time ago; it's in many ways a better film than the first film. And politically I prefer Capshaw's airhead '30s-era loony tune to teasing a good actress like Karen Allen with a hint of strength before stripping it reel by reel.

Surprisingly, if anything I've made less peace with Temple of Doom over the last decade. But it's still the one I'll defend against the other three Spielberg himself directed, at least.

I don't hate it as much as I did at first, but it still pretty much sucks.

https://i.imgur.com/ebhJLnI.gif

I don't hate it as much as I did at first, but it still pretty much sucks.

― immodesty blaise (jimbeaux), Thursday, June 29, 2023 3:05 PM (twenty-two seconds ago) bookmarkflaglink

RIP Morbs.

I had similar reactions to The Goonies and Popeye.

Oh, I'd sooner sit strapped to a chair watching Last Crusade (which I hate) and Crystal Skull (which I don't) for six months on end than submit myself to five minutes of The Goonies again

I like The Goonies, sorry. Mine is a high and lonely destiny.

xxpost personally i gotta disagree on that

Temple was a fave as a kid for memorable “bits” like “chilllled monkey brrrains” & KALIMAAAAA heart grabbing & minecart rollercoaster

But now watching it now again recently the vibes are SO dark and grimdark in so many unnecessary ways and even at the time really unsupportable racism … it just feels so far away from what the first movie brought & was not a pleasant experience at all

First movie to me is better on almost every level, script, pacing, cinematography action & performance

The only thing enjoyable or qualitatively good for me now is the Short-Round/Indy relationship & genuinely heartfelt interaction which hold up beautifully & add a lot to both characters

Yeah, as with The Goonies your reaction may be at least in part a function of where you were in your life at the time. I was almost 19 when Temple of Doom came out.

yeah Mr Veg was about the same age, 19 or 20 and he has never liked it

I was 10.

But now watching it now again recently the vibes are SO dark and grimdark in so many unnecessary ways and even at the time really unsupportable racism … it just feels so far away from what the first movie brought & was not a pleasant experience at all

You're right -- I saw it again in January and thought, wow, THIS was a blockbuster in 1984? It probably didn't need Molo Ram wresting hearts out of chests and Short Round getting whipped.

There was a lot of stuff going on at the time (which the Red Letter video gets into a bit). On one hand you had George's divorce, which he claims partially accounted for the "darker" tone. Then there was Spielberg not really giving a shit; he admitted he didn't care for the story very much, and (very out of character for him) apparently didn't storyboard every inch of his film for once. But also, for whatever reason, Spielberg had really been pushing the violence in his movies. Melting faces in "Raiders," the horrors of "Poltergeist" (which he at least wrote but probably at least partially directed), shepherding the more grisly elements of "Gremlins" through the studio, "Temple of Doom" ...

sequence where indy/SR watch from behind convenient ledge as some exquisite boy undergoes a textbook issue-free evisceration/lava-immersion so that we understand how the process is supposed to work for later is so impressively sick that the heart moneyshot actually takes its place as only one image among equals-- drumming, screaming, erotic tempo of editing, climactic fireball etc.-- in certain ways this kind of thing is peak spielberg.

The reaction shots of the mesmerized Kali worshipers too.

When my sis and I saw Doom again on VHS with my abuela in the late '90s, she didn't ask us to turn it off but she did mutter, loudly, in Spanish, "Esto es diabólico!"

It sounds like it’s a good thing I haven’t seen Temple Of Doom since like 1990. Yikes

No, I absolutely recommend watching it again.

My biggest gripe with Last Crusade, in the end, is that it's just plain boring compared to Temple and the good parts of Raiders. It belongs, with Always and Hook, to the most dully cautious phase of Spielberg's entire career.

Watched it a couple months back and it largely holds up, in terms of filmmaking craft.

During the editing between drumming and sweating and swaying and heart ripping, there are a couple palpably hot cuts to a terrified Kate capshaw, Spielberg was feeling it obv.

It's definitely not a "fun" film and I think the undercurrents of religious fear play a bit better in ROTLA, it remembers that the bible is a horror story a lot of the time.

Even more than the (perfect) first movie, "Temple of Doom" is such a weird conflation of B-movie tropes, constantly veering from cartoonish violence to horrific violence, sometimes even in the same scene. You can tell Spielberg was practically giddy with the possibilities of gags and set pieces and ott sequences. "Last Crusade" definitely feels more like the retread that "Temple" wasn't, though it has its moments.

i have fond kid-memories of last crusade but it is a movie where indy goes to nuremberg and stands face-to-face with hitler and nobody's abuela bats an eye

Temple of Doom might've been the opposite of Poltergeist: so safe it might've been directed by Tobe Hooper.

Yeah I'm glad I rewatched ToD but it only confirmed my view upthread. The minecart chase is inSANELY long which was more just surprising.

I was down on Raiders for a few years and felt it was overrated for more trivial reasons until recent rewatch made me 180 back on that.

Last crusade is a safe film, albeit entertaining and pretty bloodless (literally!), I mean the first two were grisly as hell (spikes thru heads and gunshots to the face and meltings and propellor chopping) but Indy 3 avoids it almost completely.

Indy 3 has better lines ("Goose-stepping morons like yourself should try reading books instead of burning them!" and "I find that if I just sit down the problem resolves itself").

I SHUDDENLY REMEMBERED MY SHCHARLAMAGNE

ROTLA feels like an elevated story taking place in a place informed crucially by the real world (just the character interactions and asides and beats give it extra verisimilitude, very much in the immediate wake of nu Hollywood in that sense) which makes the fantastical elements hit harder. ToD is strict pulp (not a complaint per se), LC is a big budget summer Indiana Jones on a McDonald's cup kinda movie (also not totally a complaint exactly...)

Also: "She talks in her sleep" said by Sean Connery elicited a gasp from my theatre audience and a nervous look to my prudish mom from me.

lol dlh :)

Oh my

While filming the whipping scene, the crew played a practical joke on Harrison Ford. While he was chained to a large stone, Barbra Streisand appeared, dressed in a leather dominatrix outfit. She proceeded to whip him, saying "That's for Hanover Street (1979), the worst movie I ever saw." She continued whipping him for Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope (1977), and making all of that money. Carrie Fisher then threw herself in front of Ford to protect him, and Irvin Kershner chided director Steven Spielberg. "Is this how you run your movies?" This entire sequence was filmed.

https://media.tenor.com/8l2hniWNEHoAAAAd/indiana-jones-last-crusade.gif

Last crusade is a safe film, albeit entertaining and pretty bloodless (literally!)

there are a lot of cruel jokes about killing but there is no blood-- omar otm that it points forward to our current national art form

their double-act (son, i'm sorry-- they got us) is a lot of expert fun and consistently better than the apparatus around it

yet tbf to that apparatus my fave lol in the movie is I'M SORRY DOES ANYONE HERE SPEAK ENGLISH? OR EVEN ANCIENT GREEK

last crusade is good

these are pretty easy to rank
raiders
crusade
temple
dan aykroyd's vodka

"Indy...the PEN is...mighty-ah...than the SWORD!"

I still think the CG in Last Crusade (which I saw in 70mm a number of years ago) and Empire of the Sun look just pretty nice all these years later.

Shame that Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is such dogshit. Easily Spielberg’s worst, along with The Lost World (rumor has it that Joe Dante supervised post-production like George Lucas did on the first Jurassic Park due to filming Amistad back-to-back).

I just hate Janusz Kaminski’s overblown photography, too. He just doesn’t gel with Spielberg the way Allen Daviau and Dean Cundey did.

Raiders has the best action, Crusade has the best gags, ‘No Ticket’, ‘Our situation has not improved’, ‘He chose poorly’ etc.

The last time I watched "Last Crusade" I was actually struck by the general shoddiness of the FX, which I'm sure took a lot of work but suffered from straddling the shift from practical to computers (which of course he did seamlessly just a few years later with "Jurassic Park").

Last Crusade is such a sad reminder that River Phoenix might face become the biggest actor in the world. I still wonder what could have happened if he’d made Interview with the Vampire and then John Boorman’s still-unmade Broken Dreams in 1994

Really? I think the brief CGI looks pretty great. The digital matte paintings in HOOK are still very nice as well (along with The Rocketeer, the first 2 films to have them)

Janusz Kaminski’s overblown photography ... just doesn’t gel with Spielberg the way Allen Daviau and Dean Cundey did.

A.I. + War of the Worlds + Munich + West Side Story alone = this is objectively madness

Was just reading about the (credited) screenwriter of "Last Crusade:"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffrey_Boam

Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, the third film in the popular Indiana Jones series, went through a flimsy scripting process before Boam was hired to write a draft. As early as 1984, George Lucas was playing with the concept of having the fictional archeologist-adventurer encounter the fabled Holy Grail, the cup said to have been used by Jesus Christ during the Last Supper. Director Steven Spielberg rejected Lucas's script outlines, disliking the Grail idea. Screenwriter Diane Thomas wrote a haunted house story for Indiana Jones, but Spielberg said that after producing Poltergeist, he didn't want to do a similar film. Lucas hired Chris Columbus to write a draft for the film, and he submitted Indiana Jones and the Lost City of Sun Wu Kung, a story with evil spirits, ghosts, and demons. Again, Spielberg rejected the story as not believable enough. Lucas convinced him to go back to the Holy Grail idea, and Menno Meyjes was hired to develop another screenplay. The new script focused on the Arthurian legend aspect of the Holy Grail. Although the script was not to the liking of Lucas and Spielberg, it had elements that eventually became part of the finished film: the Holy Grail, and the introduction of Indiana Jones' father, Henry Jones Sr.

Spielberg suggested that Boam write the next draft, and Lucas agreed to it. Boam felt some nervousness going into the process. He joked that "the battlefield was littered with writers before I came on to the scene. There were four or five before me. Each writer had their script next to them covered with blood." Boam said that when Spielberg called to offer him the job, Spielberg said "something like, 'You wanna get real rich?' and I said, 'Yeah, why?' and he said, 'I think you should do the next Indiana Jones movie.'" Boam is reported to have replied to Spielberg's offer by saying, "I just don't know why you didn't come to me before." Boam spent two weeks filled with eight-hour days working with Lucas to develop the story. The two blocked out all other commitments to create the story, building it "beat by beat". Lucas already knew many of the set pieces that were to be in the movie. During the two-week story conference, Boam worked to incorporate it all into the new narrative. "Jeff was very collaborative," Lucas said, adding, "He'd try to include both Steven's ideas and my ideas, and tried to get what we wanted done."

Spielberg liked the story outline presented by Lucas and Boam, but wanted a first draft before making a decision to move forward. He was planning direct the film Rain Man, but an Indiana Jones project would take precedence. Boam signed a contract on April 14, 1987. He wrote his first draft that summer, and turned it in on September 15, with another revision on September 30. It was at that time that Spielberg made a commitment to direct the Indiana Jones film over Rain Man, based on reading one of Boam's unfinished drafts. Spielberg said, "We licked it with Boam". Spielberg brought actor Sean Connery in to portray Henry Jones Sr., and Connery provided substantial input into the character, who Lucas originally conceived as an eccentric professor—"an Obi-Wan Kenobi type." Boam wanted to expand the father character, making him more central to the plot. He said that in Meyjes' original script, "the father was sort of a MacGuffin ... they didn't find the father until the very end. I said to George, 'It doesn't make sense to find the father at the end. Why don't they find him in the middle?'" He wanted the father-son relationship to be the main point, rather than the Grail. With the input of Spielberg and Connery, Boam altered the senior Jones from "a somewhat crotchety old character" to a man with more "vitality". Connery wanted the father to have a prior sexual relationship to the same female archeologist that Indiana Jones sleeps with. Boam incorporated this into the script, with Indiana's reaction to learning that he and his father slept with the same woman defused through humor. Boam said, "He's a bit humbled and surprised that his dad would be able to attract this young attractive woman ... but he isn't appalled by it."

Kaminski’s work fits A.I.

But compare Lost World to the original Jurassic Park or The Pist/Bridge of Spies/The Fabelmans to Empire of the Sun or even Always. There is no question that Zigmond, Salomon, Daviau, etc. were much better at painting with light and controlling mood better than Kaminski. He’s very fast, and that’s why Spielberg likes him, but I just don’t like most of his output

"Connery wanted the father to have a prior sexual relationship to the same female archeologist that Indiana Jones sleeps with"
lol

I'm watching these with my kids and they enjoyed Doom more than Raiders - more slapstick I guess

Doom starts at 100MPH and never lets go. It’s a phenomenal work

Interesting to note that it’s the 2nd film David Fincher worked on. He shot matte paintings for it after filming some of the miniatures used in the opening of John Korty/Lucasfilm’s unbelievably great Twice Upon a Time (1983)

Last Crusade has the horrible greenscreen shot of the nazi waving his fist as the zeppelin takes off - I remember us kids snickering at that when we first saw it at the cinema. I don’t remember any weird FX outside of that.

I can accept that LC is too safe and not as good as Raiders, but I love it completely and am unable to criticise.

The temple parts of Temple are draggy in my memory. Indian friends at high school also disowned it (quite rightly) when we barely teens.

I’ve never heard of twice upon a time!

Hey, YOU try compositing shots on a Commodore Amiga

Twice Upon a Time and Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters are the two best films with George Lucas’ name on them. He wrote some checks and let the geniuses make their films

So much madness here. ROTL is a streamlined, exciting adventure film while TOD is fun, very grimdark and Capshaw feels completely anachronistic somehow. LC is fine but - yeah - very much a safe, McDonald's cup Indy film. less said about KoCS the better. Dunno if I'll just wait for the new one to hit streaming. Looks ugly.

Last Crusade has the horrible greenscreen shot of the nazi waving his fist as the zeppelin takes off - I remember us kids snickering at that when we first saw it at the cinema. I don’t remember any weird FX outside of that.

This is what instantly came to mind too, but it's one quick shot and everything else looks fantastic.

LC might be bloodless but Indy certainly murders some nazis (I remember some unsurvivable motorcycle crashes in the chase scene after the castle, lots of tank and plane pilots exploding, probably a bunch more).

I definitely saw it at the right time as a kid (literally got the VHS as part of a fast-food promotion iirc), but every line is burned into my brain and I've never not enjoyed rewatching it. I really do think it's the best one, idc.

I have not seen Last Crusade since its first run. I've watched Raiders maybe half a dozen times.

Indiana Jones and the Mystery of Alison Doody’s Career Choices

The Chris Columbus Indy 3 draft can be found online. Some really creative action set piece ideas, but it’s mostly junk that they rightly discarded

Doody was in RRR, it's Doodymentum!

i haaated crystal skull when it came out but I definitely enjoyed it more this time around

like it’s not ~great~
the whole jungle swordfight + monkeybusiness section slows the whole thing down to an intolerable crawl
and mutt’s brando is such a wrongheaded idea because with all the greaser haircombing he mostly reads as a bad fonzie cosplay at best … it would have been better for him to be ~trying~ to give greaser but failing, so that laboeuf could bring more natural awkwardness & idk humanity to him
but with the character as half poser-greaser AND half irl greaser but neither here nor there it just becomes dumb & murky
and I hate the ending with the stupid alien gravitron carnival ride

but … a lot of it actually works, weirdly.
I liked the thread of following the iterations of the Crystal Skull, the adventure stuff played really well for me this time round

i like David Edelstein’s take here:

https://reverseshot.org/symposiums/entry/730/indiana-jones-and-the-kingdom-of-the-crystal-skull

ie Indy finally achieving a family of his own without family/adventure being an either/or proposition
it’s quite affecting through that lens, and matches up with Spielberg’s own re-examinations of family in his later period, personally & directorially

xps But for real, if anyone comes at this series with the notion that any one of these films is in any way serious … sorry, not on that train

They're not serious but they can have serious things in them. The genius of the first film is that it takes an adventure serial approach to what would now be a History Channel question - "what would happen if the Nazis found the Ark of the Covenant?" and answers IT WOULD MELT THEIR FUCKING FACES OFF. And the thing is, the Antikythera Machine is pretty cool, it's clockwork a thousand years before any other that we've found, it doesn't need to be turned into an alethiometer. I just think of those as very different vibes.

Anyway, the film.

The first section (pre-credits, I think?) is 15-20 minutes of Indy and Toby Jones and Mikkelsen in 1945, mostly on a train where the Nazis are trying to flee with various relics, including the Spear of Destiny (no relation). This is just great, to be honest, they've de-aged the fuck out of Ford and Mikkelsen and it's obviously not him leaping over traincars, but it's still very much what I came to see. I'm setting up a petition for the next film to be entirely like this

Then it's the 60s, and he's a crotchety alcoholic, and Phoebe Waller-Bridge, as Toby Jones's kid, ropes him into trying to find the half of the Antikythera that they told everyone they lost at the end of the intro, but he's got it, and then the Nazis turn up for it, and then it's a series of setpieces and character moments.

Two weird echoes of Star Wars actually: PWB's whole schtick is that she's stealing it to auction - at one point she declares that she's only in this for cash, which, you know, ballsy move to do that in a film that also has Harrison Ford in it. And the story with Marian is that they're divorced at the start - one of his character moments is saying that if he could go back, he'd tell Mutt La Beouf not to go off to war, that his parents would never recover from his death and it'd tear them apart. Kylo Ren doesn't die but it's a very similar dynamic.

After all of that, after the trip to 212 BC, after PWB yells at him to go back to the present and not just die in the past, he just, like, gets a free Marian? He wakes up back in the present, and she comes by because she "heard he was back", and PWB and Sallah (who's a fucking taxi-driver!) shoo all of Sallah's grandkids out, and they do the "where doesn't it hurt?" routine that was cute 40 years ago. We need a word beyond "wasted" to describe Karen Allen's role here.

And yeah good news there's a black female character in an Indy film bad news she's a total patsy CIA agent who gets fooled and then killed by the Nazis - and not a frumpy Amanda Waller sort, she's hip, she's down, she's... probably been infiltrating the Black Panthers?

Everything just goes downhill in Kingdom so quickly after the model town test nuke scene. It’s a sin to waste Karen Allen like that

Indiana Jones and the Buttdial of Destiny

Like I have genuine respect for George Lucas more so these days for what he attempted in the prequel trilogy, he wasn't trying to recreate the magic of the first Star wars trilogy, he was trying to do something else entirely different and it was an eminently respectable endeavor. And in retrospect definitely a pure expression than the very mercenary and empty storytelling of the sequels.

a) I agree with you against you on The Last Jedi, which is a proper example of a film maker saying "Yeah, this is all very cool, but I've got some thoughts".
b) It's possible to overstate the extent to which Lucas was just ploughing his own furrow, though - we've been watching through them and we went from Empire one week to Attack of the Clones the next, and AotC is full of stuff that reads like attempts to play to what people* think they remember shaped by the fan memory funnel of the intervening decades. So Yoda goes from a handful of backwards-syntax lines in Empire to pretty much every line in the prequels, and C3PO's fussy butler body horror and frustrated attempt to tell the heroes that oh shit there's Troopers here gets turned into bad slapstick and worse puns
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ou53FKku9kQ

To be clear, there are lots of exciting new Lucas-made bad ideas in the prequels, and the castings of Anakin kill a lot of what he might've been trying for. And Lucas is of course terrible at romantic dialogue - the guy who wrote the best line on that front in the original Star wars is... sadly present in body only in Dial of Destiny.

*people is possibly just Lucas here!

I recently learned that an acquaintance of mine from college made it to the final three for young adult Anakin!

wow!

I don’t know if it got posted in here, but RLM had a very nice conversation about Temple of Doom and why it differed from the other films. George Lucas getting divorced and Spielberg being _real_ distracted by his lead actress had a significant impact.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAPOojRLY2U

Jesus, I hate them so much

definitely saw it at the right time as a kid (literally got the VHS as part of a fast-food promotion iirc),

we all did

I cannot and will not watch the Red Letter Media dickheads

Why? I've never minded them.

Anyway, just saw this. Based on that snippet, Chaw woke up on the wrong side of the bed. That said Andrew's got some very good points here -- to echo one of them, Shaunette Renée Wilson gone done dirty by this film -- but it beats the hell out of Crystal Skull as a ending to the story-as-such, among many other points.

Last Crusade has a LOT of shoddy effects moments, BTW. (Rewatched all four films a few months back, in the case of LC and Crystal for the second time ever each in case I felt any differently about them...and I did not. And basically none of the sequels has the shoot-the-moon ease of the first film, it just can't be recaptured.)

so is this going to be about Atlantis or what. maybe they can do Spear of Destiny w the Boys From Brazil

― AdamVania (Adam Bruneau), Tuesday, March 15, 2016 11:14 AM (seven years ago)

A pretty close call there!

Doody was in RRR, it's Doodymentum!

No way, that movie killed Ray Stevenson's career

Doodissance

Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis wasn't bad. Would have made a pretty good movie.

So then, who wants to stan for The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles?

I was thinking about going back and checking some of those out again. And hey, Ford appears in one of them.

I think Carrie Fisher wrote an episode too - I recall an interview where she was complaining about Lucas simply ignoring everything.

As a bookend to the story of young Indy fightin' crime and likin' jazz with his friends Elliott Ness and Ernest Hemingway!

https://indianajones.fandom.com/wiki/Young_Indiana_Jones_and_the_Mystery_of_the_Blues

(xp)

i loved Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis

I did too. Every once in awhile I still wonder if squab is good to eat

"Ah hope ya like squab!"

https://i.imgur.com/1S2hUAB.jpg

The splendor of the meal adds to its enjoyment.

Be still my heart!

This was a good scene

https://www.dosdays.co.uk/media/games/indylc/sshot_5.jpg

CGI looks fake

Decided to do a Patreon writeup where I mostly thought about music in this one (and the other ones), but also some general thoughts about the whole cycle.

Today I learned that Crystal Skull is the highest grossing film in the series.

absurd, temple is clearly the grossest

Indiana Jones and the Dad Joke of Destiny.

You need to consider inflation when looking at film grosses. Temple of Doom made over $10 million in its first two days, which was fucking astronomical in 1984

Crystal Skull apparently made over $100 million its opening weekend.

$100 mill in 2008 is impressive, but still not as crazy as Batman ‘89 clearing $100 mill in 10 days

Agreed! But the Batman hype and marketing was historic.

I saw Last Crusade on opening night in 1989 and I can confirm that the #1 thing people were talking about after the movie was Batman trailer at the beginning. There was even a trailer for Star Trek V (which no one knew was bad yet), but even in a crowd of Star Trek fans everyone was "hfs that Batman trailer"

That Batman trailer is so poorly cut together, but it still created an unbelievable buzz

I don't even remember what the third trailer was, maybe The Abyss? Whole theaters losing their minds at the Batman trailer.

If you saw Last Crusade in 70mm, it might have been The Abyss

Confirm on 70mm, so yah - probably The Abyss.

That Batman trailer is so poorly cut together, but it still created an unbelievable buzz

Batman trailer was cut together by Jon Peters personally. Probably the best thing he ever did.

Saw this yesterday and...I wasn't completely disappointed? It's a 21st C Lucasfilm/Disney joint so fan service will rear its ugly head throughout but not in the sledgehammer-y ways the SW sequels tended to do. Captured some spirit of the old films at times and that was enough to keep me in my seat. As Ned mentions above John Williams put in * a lot* of work here. Ford does his thing well. Phoebe Fleabag is a headscratcher for me. She always comes across as goofily self-satisfied and unlikeable but she's in this thing throughout so if you're a fan you'll have a lot to love. I hope this is IT, though. Let it rest.

Oh, wait! It wasn't Ned mentioning JW doing more work than normal on this one. I conflated it with a non-ILX friend's comment. Never mind.

Talked to a friend who saw it, and he had a great time. But there was some sentimental handicapping, I suspect, since he and his kids saw a series of one-off theater screenings of the previous four leading up, which means not only was the whole nostalgia machine in full-effect, but that also means he'd seen "Crystal Skull" most recently, which sets the bar pretty low.

I dunno, there are several Star Wars movies/shows I just never bothered with, but I like Ford and Indiana Jones, so I'll eventually see this. On Disney+. It just feels so unnecessary, and maybe wouldn't if "Crystal Skull" didn't exist, and *this* was the actual big, belated send-off to a beloved character, and not just a re-do of same that its predecessor attempted yet didn't pull off.

If nothing else I was thoroughly amused by the fact that they went right ahead and Neidermeyered good ol' Mutt and then had to have Indy and Marion act as if this was a sad thing -- and all without specifically mentioning Vietnam once in the entire movie in any context.

"Hell No! We Won't Go!"

saw this last week and I thought it was a lot of fun, headlines like this: "Opinion: Indiana Jones passes his mantle to the queen of millennial side-eye"(https://www.cnn.com/2023/07/05/opinions/indiana-jones-harrison-ford-phoebe-waller-bridge-thomas/index.html) likely didn't help the box office since it makes it sound like she is taking up the role going forward which is not the case at all.

it would have been really funny if the last scene was a sentimental rendition of the theme accompanied by phoebe waller-bridge snatching the hat off the clothesline

the names Bond, Indiana Bond

It's weird because she plays a larger part than Mutt - without the father issues she has: interiority! a sidekick! a sidekick with interiority, for a bemusing 5 seconds! And when she's got stuff to work with, she's good, but the rest of the time she's just paid on a wry-smiles-per-minute basis.

i enjoyed this, but was bracing myself for the ending - all of the reviews i saw made it sound like things go completely off the deep end into ridiculous schlock. but i thought it fit fine in the context of the series? i mean its extremely fantastical, but for a series where Indy has previously met & conversed with a knight from the crusades, been subject to voodoo mind control, and had God literally come down from heaven and smite his enemies, this one didnt feel like some crazy departure.

Indy 3 has better lines ("Goose-stepping morons like yourself should try reading books instead of burning them!" and "I find that if I just sit down the problem resolves itself").

new one could have used a Stoppard pass.

I found this film quite satisfying, especially the ending.

It's definitely in the top 3 IJ films, maybe top 2.

Strikes me that Ford doesn't act much. A lot of action, running, grouching - but not much of what you would really want a good actor to do (conversation, expressions, emotion) - even by the standards of A NEW HOPE or RAIDERS.

PW-B seems to me the risky crux of this film. She's irritating, she seems almost embarrassingly limited in mostly reprising her other famous role here, she smirks and smiles when things should be serious. Yet, as correctly noted above, she's in the film almost throughout. I think it's best or necessary to accept these limitations and irritations and posit that, as something different from the rest of the franchise, she brings a certain spark that does help it keep going to the end.

I consider action, running, and grouching acting imo.

His grouching is flawless, even by his very high standards!

This is not, I think, the first time that someone has smirked and smiled their way through a serious situation, even within an Indiana Jones film.

It was pretty funny that his reaction to the entire astronaut parade was "who gives a shit"

Truth be told, I think Ford is underappreciated as an actor. For a while, he was the closest thing we had to Gary Cooper, even moreso than Kevin Costner (who used to get a lot of those comparisons) and it was all in the face. Cooper was unrivaled in close-up, especially in his older years, and the anxiety and the distress that was naturally there in his aging features (and which spoke volumes in the right context) was something Ford had. I don't think Ford did enough films that really took advantage of that, and when he tried, those attempts rarely got enough notice. (Witness may be the lone exception. It's too bad he turned down Syriana and Traffic, what a resurgence that would've been.)

I almost want to say The Fugitive is the best example of his talents because it was a widely seen movie that amazingly got a lot of acclaim for an action film, but Tommy Lee Jones gets all the attention. To be fair, Jones is great, but Ford's role was challenging in a very different way - it's a lead role where the character has to avoid interaction or even just to be seen. So as an actor, he's really left to his own devices, but he carries it remarkably. It's almost a silent performance where 99% of that performance is just in the face and his body language, and he's great, there's not a moment where he doesn't seem like somebody who's carrying a lot of anguish without being obvious about it.

otm. i rewatched The Fugitive recently after many years and found myself floored by Ford's performance. i never really thought of it as an acting vehicle for Ford before, but seeing it through that lens, he pulls off some extraordinary stuff in it.

I have a memory of watching The Fugitive opening weekend and my cousin leaning in to whisper, "This guy's a hell of an actor." Burt Lancaster said a similar thing in 1981 when he wondered why Ford wasn't nominated for an Oscar.

I can believe that Ford may be a very good actor - which is why I'm somewhat disappointed that he isn't given more substantial acting to do in this film.

I think the secret to his acting is it’s not flashy and seems unsubstantial to the point people think he’s just being Harrison Ford, but that’s not at all true

Americans who think art should look difficult and require Method-y research condescend to star actign.

as an actor, I'm not going to disparage whatever inspiration actors use to create their performance, but internally, I hate method acting simply because people who subscribe to it often falsely suggest to other people that it's the 'only' way to act authentically, and a great, growing number of people use it to justify abusive behavior on set/on stage. ("I'm sorry I hurt you, but I need to be this character on and off stage, and that's what he would have said or done").

Ford's "How are you?" ad lib in Star Wars still cracks me up

method = rockism obv

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0k-6X2H7pCo

I think the best part of Ford interviews is the revelation that he is funny, even goofy at times, but his sense of humor isn’t really that of any of the characters he’s played.

as an actor, I'm not going to disparage whatever inspiration actors use to create their performance, but internally, I hate method acting simply because people who subscribe to it often falsely suggest to other people that it's the 'only' way to act authentically, and a great, growing number of people use it to justify abusive behavior on set/on stage. ("I'm sorry I hurt you, but I need to be this character on and off stage, and that's what he would have said or done").

― linoleum gallagher (Neanderthal)

My non-scientific theory: Adler, Strasberg, et. al. developed the Method so that actors could feel better about a profession they thought was unmanly or something. Plus, actors love nothing so much than to prattle on a talk show about how much RESEARCH they did for the part; showing your work is an American phenomenon.

this is akin to my lazy rockism quip, yes, it's about making your ephemeral trade important and yeah of course that ties into work, machismo etc

xpost lol....yeah totally.

In 2018 I played Samuel Byck in Assassins. Obviously I knew all about who he was and what he did by that point, but there was a brief moment where I was seduced by the dumb Jared Leto way of doing things so I wound up listening to the only known recordings of Byck and trying to mimic his voice, and after two days I stopped myself and said "who the fuck knows or cares what Byck sounded like? That's a parlor trick, not acting", and I just used my own voice. wasn't doing the 'staying in character even backstage' nonsense, was cracking fart jokes minutes before going on stage most nights. and won an award anyway.

so there, Method!

hurray!

i realise i'm sidetracking a thread i'm not bothered about so sorry i shd take it elsewhere but this is fun

https://aurorasginjoint.com/2017/08/05/the-a-b-cs-of-robert-mitchum/

You're not hijacking -- this is important.

neanderthal, the mimicking of someone’s voice, attempting a particular physical style that’s not your own, etc is pretty far from anything described as The Method ime. the most famous part of The Method is about summoning up emotional memories from your own personal experience as a tool for understanding how the character you’re playing might react to something - which is kind of the opposite of what you’re describing (effacing yourself in service to a character)

everybody’s got their own way and my impression is that Ford doesn’t have much or any training at all but i’m probably just basing this on the famous story of him being a set carpenter and only accidentally an actor (i suspect it was less accidental than he has allowed the myth to indicate)

i don't think there's a good/bad dichotomy between method and any of the other tools actors use, the mistake is ascribing goodness to one and badness to others. also especially in screen acting the actor's performance is tied into the other aspects of production: camerawork, editing etc

anyway in short if your argument is privileging one kind of thing over another it's a stupid argument, i'm sure my lack of interest in the ongoing Indiana Jones saga is fuck all to do with whether Ford nails his part or not

trust me, I know what method is! we had a Meisner studio adjacent to ours for months during a production where I heard the weird exercises they were doing. my comment on trying to mimic the voice was more to respond to Alfred's comment about bragging about the 'research' that was done. my comment about 'fart jokes before going on stage' was to point out I didn't sit there delving into my emotional memory bank to locate the feelings for Byck (mostly because I have nothing relevant for what that dude was feeling). i was just able to turn the feelings on and off internally like a light-switch when I was on-stage. many actors are! it's valid, but it's often devalued for Method approach. especially Meisner with the "living truthfully" exercises they do.

to Noodle's point, I've worked for directors who insisted that if you weren't using the Method approach you weren't really in character, which used to infuriate me, mostly because it only works for some people. and for some people it is harmful because it causes them to dredge up harmful memories and damages their mental health. one friend broke down crying after a production of Closer for that exact reason.

Ford I think makes good choices and knows how to balance warmth and comedy deftly, without trying to steal scenes or pull focus. and is good at showing grit.

Ford’s especially great in Frantic iirc

I cant recall any memorable performances from the late 90s till Bladerunner 2049

He definitely phones it in “Crystal Skull”

I’m glad he seems to be “back” even if the stuff he’s appearing in is still middling

GET OFF MAH PLANE

ok I guess that's not evidence for my side so much

i know you know what you're talking about Neanderthal precisely because you're engaged with it, that's where the "method or nothing" line looks so dumb

Interesting to see Mitchum brought up here because having read that Lee Server bio of his he was almost always openly disdainful of the "craft" of acting, which certainly makes him look cooler than a lot of the self-serious thesps but there was also something sad about it for me, like at root he couldn't handle the idea that this was a decent job for a Man to have despite being so self-evidently superb at it. Harrison Ford from what I see whenever he pops up in media junkets and such - and I'll admit I haven't followed too closely - seems to me very much in that tradition, and again that's refreshing on some levels ("who gives a fuck" def the correct take to have about Star Wars in 2023), a bit sad on others.

Overt dismissal is as bad as wheezing on and on about how difficult acting is.

i.e. not good for the profession

for some people it is harmful because it causes them to dredge up harmful memories and damages their mental health

yes totally - your own emotions can get v uncontrollable v fast

have you ever read "a practical handbook for the actor"? it's from people who studied at mamet's atlantic theatre company and i think you'd like some of what they say. eg don't worry about "being the character". if you're playing abraham lincoln, put on the hat and beard and people will believe you're abraham lincoln, we're all adults here. what people want to see is what YOU bring to the part

i was gonna go further into the Mitchum thing to say yes he's been used as an outspoken critic of craft for a long time but it's more complex than that, the links and quotes on that page i linked are more complicated than simple "method bad/natural character good"

reading thru he's not saying this, or can't be quoted saying this, it's about ways of performing rather than dismissing the job of performing

in short i wouldn't give much credence to the most quoted Mitchum lines about acting any more than i would give credence to any other famous person quote swilling around the net

Oh I def didn't mean that he was saying anything about method acting, the kind of self-important Acting Mitchum was fond of deflating didn't start with the Method.

The quotes I'm thinking of are not "swilling around the net" tho, they come from a deeply researched biography, albeit one I read 10+ years ago and don't have on hand to quote from.

sorry Daniel i haven't read the biog so i'm not saying Mitchum wasn't prone to posturing about this stuff. i was thinking that he's the go-to example for other people who wanna posture about it and the truth is probably more complex, like it always is. it was intersting reading things where he definitely wasn't completely dismissive of the job of acting

Mitchum of an appropriate age would've been a perfectly good Indiana Jones btw

I have nothing relevant for what that dude was feeling

i doubt this tbh - and you say you were able to turn him on/off like a lightswitch so there's something in there

that book i mentioned talks about using "as ifs" - you use something from your own experience, or that you can easily imagine, and say "you know, if AS IF i was trying to convince an airline employee to let me on the plane after the gate was closed" and that's enough of a goose to your sensibilities to let your body and mind feel it.. like.. ahh yep, that's the vibe i need

the affective memory thing is famous because it's controversial (now as then) and prob the root of the DDL-style immersion we now mean when we say method, but all the other stuff that came from stanislavsky (relaxation, focus, deliberation, the "magic if") now seems so obvious i think we forget someone had to think of it

much virtue in if

yes totally

Tracer that feels much closer to my understanding of what the Method is than the extreme examples that are celebrated by fans of lads behaving badly

I always cringe when I hear about stuff like Jared Leto's method approach to the Joker of all things...every performer needs to find the approach that works for them, which makes sense simply because every individual is going to be different emotionally and psychologically with very different life experiences, but unfortunately the inherent nature of method acting makes any misguided practice of it especially appalling.

Even with the best practitioners, it's pretty unsettling to me. I remember years ago Philip Seymour Hoffman mentioned on a talk show (probably Charlie Rose) that acting to him was "pretending to have feelings that aren't really there," and I have a vague recollection that he framed it as an explanation as to why acting to him was not only difficult but risky or potentially damaging. It wasn't something he wanted to elaborate, and I remember it being a quick, rushed answer, but it was a disturbing concept. I never forgot it, and when he died years later, it was hard not to think about it - I think the New Yorker even did a profile that seemed to link his craft with the turmoil he had gone through over the years.

It's even possible he said "create" or "imagine" feelings rather than just "pretend" which would be more disturbing...it's been so long and I only saw it once, so my memory of it may have changed. Wish I had a copy so I can get it right.

I imagine the pressure to perform is harder as a screen actor because if you are doing a stage production and one day think to yourself "fuck, I'm in over my head here", yeah, you could get savaged in the press, and yeah, some vids might show up on Youtube, but in a movie, your shit performance is preserved in amber for everyone to see and clown endlessly. not to mention some of the punishing circumstances people are put into on set.

so I can see perhaps doing everything possible to give yourself an edge there, including pushing yourself over the edge mentally speaking.

Also, all Leto's method acting stuff leads to incredibly irritating and unconvincing performances. In BR 2049, for example, he kills the film dead every time he appears.

i'm probably a "but that's the point!" guy more often than is tolerable but BR2049 really does test this to its limit: no no that's the point of course the impotent scion of a corporate god would be callow and pretentious! this callow and pretentious tho?

(i guess jeremy strong is what this looks like when it rly is the point)

If it hadn't been written about ad nauseam, I wouldn't have guessed that Strong was method acting. He's so good and unforced! Leto is the opposite: big effort, totally unconvincing.

If it hadn't been written about ad nauseam, I wouldn't have guessed that Strong was method acting.

same applies to leto tho-- if variety told me "his process is peculiar: he insists on not knowing anything about the role until five minutes before camera, when he receives his lines and invents a funny voice on the spot" i'd be like "makes sense"

https://www.cnet.com/a/img/resize/f276f287ca657d3a26444d14161e25149a951718/hub/2021/07/30/1052ee5d-bc80-4994-b23f-8da620eb7e43/screen-shot-2021-07-30-at-11-04-39-am-copy.png

https://i.ibb.co/jbyGfK4/bof.jpg

same applies to leto tho-- if variety told me "his process is peculiar: he insists on not knowing anything about the role until five minutes before camera, when he receives his lines and invents a funny voice on the spot" i'd be like "makes sense"

Tom Hardy's process, no?

Frantic and the Fugitive obv great vehicles for Ford's acting; I also remember loving the Mosquito Coast, which I haven't rewatched in probably 25 years.

It was bizarre watching Dial of Destiny (shit title) now refracted through the 40 years of action-adventure culture - the anonymous National Treasures and Mummy movies, Myst-like puzzle games and their progeny, etc. - and just how far removed we are from the original idea: taking a cheap Republic b-movie serial plot and going at it with all the forces of Big Hollywood. Not altogether different from Die Hard's original blueprint of a taking a basic heist film and making everything about it, no matter how small, as awesome as possible.

Also like the Die Hard movies, none of the subsequent Indiana Jones sequels ever got it just quite right like the first one, each one less memorable than the previous, until you get to movie #4 when the movies themselves are abstracted into only one identifiable part: it's the one with Shia LaBeouf; it's the one with Kevin Smith. By movie #5, Jones and McClane are, glum, angry, and never in charge of themselves - only reacting to whatever the plot is doing at that moment. Kinda like these final sequels themselves... who would even be excited to work on this? Just shove it out and make sure those checks clear before the strike.

I felt sorry for Indy. He never would have been able to publish anything related to his government work in archeology for national security reasons. His major finds are warehoused away and forgotten (is Hangar 18 an accredited museum?). Undergrads were flirting with him in the first movie, now they openly mock him. All those years of fighting Nazis and now they're throwing a ticker tape parade for the men who flew to the moon on Nazi rockets. I suppose if Indy had cooperated better he could have retired to a nice place out in Long Island, but knowing him he probably said "that belongs in a museum" to a Rockefeller or some benefactor that could ensure he'd never ever get tenure.

Good post, especially last paragraph - though I maintain that this film is much better than #4, and also FWIW better than #2. I think that age and pathos ('I feel sorry for Indy') can contribute something of value rather than just detracting.

Watched #2 again over the weekend and, while the Short Round/Indy relationship is fun and endearing and the first sacrifice scene is all-time the rest of the flick, I felt like I was watching some other adventure film and not Indian Jones. Plus most of the thing takes place *in a cave*. And then, a lifetime later, we're out on some cliffs.

*Indiana Jones

Finally saw this today & don’t know why I bothered.

Phoebe v enjoyable, Ford fine, some of the early Nazi quips were good. the end.

The Antikythera device? rmde Look. i agree that much like the ~idea~ of crystal skulls it has an interesting actual history
but the heavy lifting required to turn this into a plot device is really stupid.
keep it in the woo-woo supernatural/occult realm, do NOT start explaining at length how this shit works for all of our sakes

unlike the ark or the grail there is never a concise handwavey “ok got it” explanation of what it is or does or what the stakes are

so we’re nowhere as soon as it’s revealed.

and then it levels up into a timetravel device? wait ok but ~not really~ because it jpoints to possible time fissures … uuughhhh YOU GUYS JFC
li’m already bored
whaaaaat are we doing

OH but we’ll make it pay off because we are ~fully~ going back to Chekhovs siege of syracuse by flying a fucking plane through a time tunnel

we’re shooting roman centurions
indy wants to … stay … here with archimedes
yep nbd we’re hanging out in 212 BC Sicily chatting to archimedes in ancient greek

what the actual fuck are we doing here please

am I watching motherfucking Bill and Ted
PLEASE STOP THIS AT ONCE

spielberg’s absence as a director was noticeable in that this shit was dull as hell and then levelled up into pure stupid absolute liquid shit

oh and we’ll end with indy in a shitty ny apartment with nothing except some perfunctory makeup sex w his ex wife & maybe cry abt their dead son afterwards

great job everyone clap clap

a truly lifeless movie
zero fun, no stars

what about wet Banderas

loved!

old indy: ah, old wet banderas, my old friend!
...
old indy: stop having fun! my old friend, wet banderas, is dead!

He didn't seem that broken up about his colleagues being murdered though...

banderas was great, i was relieved when he showed up, like oh he’ll be a good companion but then no

indiana jones and the dull of density morelike amirite

Yeah I totally agree about the Antikythera stuff

Was Indy meant to be an explicit villain in this? He pries the dial from a mentally disturbed friend promising to destroy it but catalogs it in the stacks instead and forgets about it and also about checking up on his supposed goddaughter. I guess the series as a whole has an implicit undercurrent of Indy being a graverobbing cad but there's a distinct lack of heroic tone in this movie.

It is very funny to me how they de-aged Harrison Ford’s face but not his voice or his body movements

I wanted to see this but Veg's comments have stopped me

(Literally - I thought "uh oh" and I've been put off ever since)

if i can give back in some small way

It looks absolutely sensational - the colours and the editing and the camerawork are all just ridiculously satisfying. The henchmen are extremely A+ henchmen. One laconic, drawling hothead, bursting out of his too-tight shirt, and one mountain of a man who I think never speaks, just hurls scenery around. Phoebe Waller-Bridge does her thing, and it’s great. A lot of the pieces are there. But none of it really adds up, and Ford is just a nullity. Would have been better as a Tin Tin movie imo

Oh and the script is super hacky. Stuff you’d cringe at even in an Uncharted cut scene. At one point Indy grabs the contested artifact and yells “to the victor go the spoils!”

That said the Tangier bit was very good I thought

One laconic, drawling hothead, bursting out of his too-tight shirt

That's Boyd Holbrook, who's great as Lackey #1 in Logan too.

Also very good as DEA Agent Steve Murphy in first couple of seasons of Narcos

Meantime, this is about due:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z2aqnWFpRAY

zzzz

getting Tomb Raider vibes here ;)

subpar for an Indiana Jones movie is still way above average for a video game... probably won't be as good as Fate of Atlantis though!

very few things are as good as Fate of Atlantis, tbh. I must have played through that game a half dozen times

I never got that far with Atlantis, but I must've played the Last Crusade adventure game a similar amount.

https://preview.redd.it/this-game-doesnt-get-enough-love-i-guess-because-of-the-v0-9l5ohkzlbq3b1.jpg?width=1920&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=7d4a1361786be30dcbdcbff32205d250e99ed171

first person seems strange for an indy game