As announced on the last Major Spoilers Podcast, we’ll be diving deep into all things Indy… Indiana Jones that is. We’ll be reviewing the new movie and the original films, we’ll also discuss the many Indiana Jones Comics, toys and a whole lot more.
If you see the movie this weekend After you see the movie this weekend, drop by the site and share your thoughts. You never know, your thoughts might just appear in the show.
Stephen Schleicher began his career writing for the Digital Media Online community of sites, including Digital Producer and Creative Mac covering all aspects of the digital content creation industry. He then moved on to consumer technology, and began the Coolness Roundup podcast. A writing fool, Stephen has freelanced for Sci-Fi Channel's Technology Blog, and Gizmodo. Still longing for the good ol' days, Stephen launched Major Spoilers in July 2006, because he is a glutton for punishment. You can follow him on Twitter @MajorSpoilers and tell him your darkest secrets...
19 Comments
++++++ warning, i will reveal MAJOR spoilers ++++++
i just came back from the theatre (and was late for work becaus of it). i have to say i’m a little disapointed. i just feel the whole alien angle was not in the mindset of indiana jones. and the ending when the flying saucer fly away was a bit too much, i was fine until that moment. spielberg should have ended the movie with some weird human meltdown like in raiders of the lost ark.
the whole movie feel like they’re trying too hard. on the technical side, i didn’t like the lighting of the movie. ray winston character is under-used and feel useless. shia lebouf should die, i hate the guy, they better not make him the next indiana jones. it was nice to see karen allen back. john hurt barelly have a role. cate blanchet is not the villain we were used to in the other movies.
maybe i was expecting too much, but don’t get me wrong, it’s not episode 3 bad, it’s just not good.
2.5/5 for me, because there is some nice action sequence.
oh, i never read any indiana jones comic book, and saw a couple of young indiana jones adventures. they were pretty cool.
So, in this Grafic adventure Indy is played by Eric Bana?
yes i’m Australian.
Hey I know that game! Loved it with its multiple story pathways! :D
I saw Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull today. It was a travesty. Here is a list of reasons.
*** Warning: SPOILERS ***
1. I knew it was going to be a bit rubbish from the very first frame, which was a CGI groundhog.
2. All of the other Indiana Jones films start with a short story about Indy collecting some artefact. They bear tangential relation to the main story, at most, usually to introduce a character who will be important later. This time, the opening story reveals that Indy is a spy, involves a Russian invasion of the US, and has Indy blown up in an atomic test. That’s not how the Indiana Jones formula works.
3. Yes, Indy was blown up in an atomic test, stops to admire the mushroom cloud, then walks away. And more CGI groundhogs.
4. We find out that Indiana Jones has been involved in some kind of alien autopsy in the past, and that the Russians want the alien corpses. Yes, that’s right: aliens.
5. The university scenes were actually pretty good, especially the chase. No complaints. In fact I was beginning to get over the groundhogs and the atomic test. But not quite over the aliens.
6. Shia LaBeouf is not a convincing greaser. He is more Grease than The Outsiders — and when one of the scenes is basically a fight between the Greasers and the Socs, it just isn’t right to have it kicked off by Danny Zucko.
7. Why did we have to have another CGI speeder-bike-style chase scene? Nick at phantomleap.com described it as “Shia doing the splits over two vehicles while fencing and getting whacked in the balls by underbrush”. That’s about it. And not very good CGI, either.
8. Shia LaBeouf tarzanning his way through the jungle with a pack of CGI monkeys? Blech.
9. The ants were cool, but using the crystal skull to ward them off was not. In the other Indiana Jones films, the relics are basically McGuffins; their powers are pretty much irrelevant to the unfolding of the plot and it’s only at the last minute that we see their power, just before the movie ends. This time, they wave the skulls around from pretty much the beginning.
10. CGI ruined the traps that Indy and the gang have to avoid when they get to El Dorado. It looks fake, fake, fake.
11. There’s no way they could have survived those waterfalls. None whatsoever. Sure, Indy has taken some big falls in the past, but while it was possible to suspend disbelief about the rubber raft going down the mountain, there’s no way four people in a steel dinghy can go off three massive waterfalls, land in knee-deep water, and walk away.
12. Aliens. Seriously, aliens. Aliens that look like ET’s daddy. Not space-aliens, either. *Interdimensional* aliens. And a freaking flying saucer. A flying saucer!
13. And then Shia LaBeouf nearly gets to put on Indy’s hat. That would have been lamer than when Joey Jeremiah passed on his hat in Degrassi: The Next Generation.
I’m going to pretend this movie never existed.
I enjoyed it. It paid homage to even more of the pulp comics/stories/serials it originally drew from. I would even say that it goes the Planetary route (everyone loves Planetary, right?). Plenetary draws it inspiration from the very same sources.
The biggest complaint I’ve heard is the aliens vs. mysticism angle. I don’t know why doing something different with an estbalished franchise is such a sin. I’m very glad they went for something new instead the religious artifact well yet again.
I think that setting the movie in the Cold War 50s allows them to go the alien/Roswell angle. They still embrace the archaeology aspect of it, but they allow the world of Indiana Jones to grow.
Was some of the movie overly cheesey? Yeah, but so were the first three.
what was the deal with the groundhog by the way, that was utterly useless. the first one right at the beginning was fine, but after that it was just rubbish
The best part of the whole movie was Shia LaBOOF getting whacked in the balls with the underbrush. You could just sit back and imagine you were kicking him in the groin yourself.
Beyond that, meh.
“Betrayal in the first five minutes…” “Check.”
“Aircraft engine peril…” “Check.”
“Snakes…” “Check.”
“Giant insects…” “Check.”
“Flashy swords…” “Check.”
“Swooshy special effects…” “Check.”
“Bad Guys Win But Don’t…” “Check.”
“‘Be Careful What You Wish For, You May Get It’ moral…” “Check.”
“Well that’s it, then — it’s definitely an Indiana Jones movie.” “Are you implying that they’re getting formulaic?”
Yep, the Best Beloved and I saw it yesterday. The bad news is, it has the same obvious tone of “handing off the franchise so that we can make more movies” that “Star Trek: Generations” did. The good news is, it’s a lot more entertaining than ST:G :-P I did enjoy it for what it was, a ‘handing off the franchise’ flick, and I did enjoy the post-war setting. There were some points where I found it difficult to suspend my disbelief without choking (the waterfalls, as previously pointed out, and the snake and the monkeys) and the Big Dramatic Moment was just plain silly. But OH what a RELIEF for the female sidekick (whom I shall not identify, despite this being Major Spoilers) NOT to be constantly screaming “INDYYYYYYYY!” I liked the kid (always wear your athletic cup when adventuring) but if he was meant to be a surprise, it failed, because we could see it coming a mile away. Not following just the Indy Formula, alas. But… and I say this as a life-long Harrison crush… Harrison, please keep your clothes on next time, m’kay? You’re looking good for your age but honey, not *that* good.
Not bad, three and a half stars.
This movie will be the worst movie of the summer! I am offended, to the deepest regions of my soul, by this movie. Lucas and Spielberg took all that was great about the Indiana Jones franchise and ruined it. Too much CG, lame Russian bad guys copying the M.O. of the Nazis, and aliens. There was an alien ON SCREEN in an Indiana Jones movie. W. T. F!
It seemed to me that Lucas took Indy and put him into the Stargate Universe. Aliens come to Earth and help build up a primitive society, if that’s not a direct rip off of the back ground of the first Stargate movie I don’t know what is.
George Lucas should have his fingers broken and his lips sown shut so that he can no longer communicate his stories to people. Luckily he doesn’t have any other beloved franchises that he can ruin!
crap……enough said
I just left the movie and it was just okay. It wasnt an Iron Man. Lucas and
Spielberg need to learn when to let stuff just die. Indiana Jones was great I loved it as a kid, i watched the cartoons and i watched all the movies. Some of the scenes were just…..blah. The damn gophers, the atomic bomb(it looked pretty cool) the flying monkeys. Shia La Crap, aliens. Aliens really. Its not Indiana, the world would have been the same had the bad guy actually won or lost. 2.8 for me, the ants were friggin awesome though.
I loved it what a great family film just what it was suppose to be .The whole alien part was weird but this is the world of indy anything goes from the ark to the death cult and the holy grail this fits .My only problem is they could have had a better bad guy i just felt it lacked a more better adversary .
I enjoyed the movie myself. True, it’s a hand off film and some of the scenes were over the top, but that’s par for an Indiana Jones flick. As for Shia Le Bouf being the new Jones, I’m cool with it.
Forget the movie. Lets talk about that video game poster at the top. One of my favorite games of all time! I’m just going to pretend that Fate of Atlantis was the fourth movie. In fact, why wasn’t it? Answer: Goerge Lucas is an egotist who couldn’t stand making a movie with a story someone else wrote.
Just as a general aside to everyone complaining about Indiana Jones being blown up by a nuclear test and about how he’d never survive it: You do remember the end of the last movie, right? Where he drank from the Holy Grail that made him pretty much immortal … ?
Jacin: Only as long as he stayed in the cave
I’m going to disagree based on two points:
One, it was in a temple, not a cave.
And, two, it’s never stated that they have to stay inside the temple to receive the everlasting life the Knight of the First Crusade promised. He stayed inside the temple to guard the Grail.
If that were a requirement for the immortality that drinking from the Grail promised, Donovan and Elsa wouldn’t have been so eager to find it and drink from it as they, no doubt, had no intention of living out the remainder of their endless days inside the temple.
And, Indy takes the Grail outside of the temple to use it to heal his father, and doing so causes the temple to begin its collapse, which eventually spells doom for Elsa (and nearly for Indy himself). If it only had power within the temple, his father wouldn’t have been healed and his own life wouldn’t have been saved.
and jacin thats why its called suspension of belief, and artistic license. they dont have to stick to the script especially when the past directly intervenes with the present or future.