Early Review Calls New Indiana Jones Film Dreadful 643
bowman9991 writes "Hope this one isn't true! An early negative review calls the upcoming "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull" movie predictable, lacking in tension, and a fan's worst nightmare. SFFMedia believes this new Indiana Jones movie could create a similar reaction a lot of people experienced after watching the first of the last three Star Wars movies, 'The Phantom Menace': you wait for years and years, the anticipation building, and then it's so awful it taints your view of the original movies. Of course George Lucas was involved with Star Wars too." The SFFMedia piece refers to this review on Ain't it Cool News. The trailer I saw (before Iron Man) actually looked great to me, so I'm taking this with a grain of salt.
This singular review on aintitcool needs to die. (Score:5, Interesting)
It's an odd phenomenon we're seeing: One original poor review, then it gets written *about* in several other places, now all of a sudden people think there are lots of bad reviews. Huh?
Re:A good trailer (Score:2, Interesting)
bah (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:This singular review on aintitcool needs to die (Score:5, Interesting)
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:That, my friends, is... (Score:4, Interesting)
I mean, how did the original Star Wars movie fare? Not well. How about Dirty Harry? Again, they hated it. The Terminator? Of course, if the movie turns out to make tons of money they somehow start giving it good reviews... funny, that.
If the reviewers gave this new movie kudos, I'd wait until a human being told me it was good before wasting my hard earned money on it. So hooray for the critics and their bad but predictable reviews! I'll probably be in line on opening day, thanks to the critics.
Re:complete BS (Score:3, Interesting)
A good critic is somebody capable of explaining what it is they're seeing, why they liked it and why they didn't. It's much more useful than "I liked it so you will to." Few reviewers even try. Most reviews are:
* 1 paragraph of introduction, usually with a "clever" hook to keep the reader reading
* N paragraphs of plot summary
* 1 paragraph of review for the actors, writer, and director.
* 1 paragraph of review for the tech
The N paragraphs of plot summary have no business in a critique. If there's any value, it's in the last two paragraphs, but few reviewers have the vaguest idea how a movie is made, so they can't tell you what it is they're looking at.
They regularly ding actors for bad dialogue or bad sound, and praise mediocre but flashy performances. They don't know how the music, lighting, editing, etc. interact to make a moment work or fail. They don't know how movies influence each other or the dialogue that creates between directors and intended audiences.
For a critic who can actually do all that, such as the late Pauline Kael, it hardly matters whether they recommend the film or not, and it certainly doesn't matter how many stars they give it. Read the review and you'll know if you're seeing skilled filmmaking, and whether it's likely to appeal to you.
And that's NEVER the guy in your local paper.
Highlander II: The Sickening (Score:3, Interesting)
I still haven't got over my disappointment at the utter pile of poo that was the second Highlander film, when the original was (and still is) one of my favourite films.
Creative people lose the original vision, the original enthusiasm, over time. It's difficult to do anything else. It doesn't make me happy, but it happens.
Re:Hold up (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:That, my friends, is... (Score:5, Interesting)
Spielberg in recent interviews repeatedly refers to these movies as "comedies," which I think is the root of the problem. Raiders was not a comedy, although it had some comedic elements (but they were occasional).
Your main argument seems to be that these movies didn't suck, but only paled in comparison to the vastly superior first installments. To rebut this (and strengthen my own point), I point to Empire Strikes Back. It is often considered BETTER than Star Wars, and is almost completely lacking in the unfunny "humor" that killed Temple, Last Crusade, and most of the Amazing Stories installments.
Re:A good trailer (Score:3, Interesting)
It's Easy to Spot The Stinker (Score:5, Interesting)
The wikipedia reference spells it out.
-The film was in development hell since the 1989 release of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, because Spielberg and Ford initially disagreed over Lucas's choice of the skull as the plot device.
You've got an actor with creative input into the movie plot. Very rarely does that ever work. Yes, the actors have input, it is most successful when it's improv within the filming of the movie.
-
Multiple treatments of the same premise, few of which actually materialize. This suggests the amount of vetting, oversized-personalities, and plain old stupidity was committee-style approval hell.
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:This singular review on aintitcool needs to die (Score:3, Interesting)
I had also heard that they were using an experimental new HD camera tech that allowed all object in frame to be in focus at all times unlike traditional cameras that have a set focal distance. So this aspect really intrigued me.
Basically I didn't know what to think and I was increadibly impressed by what I saw in the trailer. I didn't get any idea of what the plot was about (but all of 30 seconds on imdb fixed that.) Visually it looks stunning and after V for Vendetta I have faith in the creators to make it something worth watching...
Now if I could only find someone else who's interested in going to the theater to see it with me...
Re:Not a bit afraid (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:complete BS (Score:3, Interesting)
They had the balls to disagree with you? Wow, they really are douchebags.
How about instead of being a "populist snob," just find critics who you agree with. There are plenty of people out there writing about movies that judge movies based on "common people's" judgements. Some of us want to watch movies that are beautiful and express themselves eloquently about life, some of us just want mindless entertainment. And there are *gasp* people that actually like both and a little bit of everything in between.
Open your mind a little. Everyone that disagrees with you is not a moron. If you always disagree with Yahoo Movies, you should stop reading Yahoo Movies!
Re:A good trailer (Score:3, Interesting)
Strange that truth in advertising doesn't seem to apply to films.
AICN: A Bizarro Universe? (Score:5, Interesting)
What's wrong with Russians? (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't see that at all - Indy's "enemy", if you must put a definition to it, is someone seeking to use a powerful artifact for evil.
Well the Russians fit the bill quite well. Around that time they were doing some horrific things to their own people. Shipping people off to siberia, or forced labor camps mining uranium, etc. They also had similar fascinations with mysticism that Hitler had so they even keep that element alive.
The Russians of that time to me seem to be a fine stand-in for Nazis which just would not be practical for the time frame of this movie, at least not as such a major force.
Re:That, my friends, is... (Score:4, Interesting)
Um, without Star Wars, the reaction to Phantom Menace would have been a lambasting in the press, poor box office sales, and it quickly being forgotten among the huge pile of mediocre CGI drivel that has been produced at break neck speed in the last decade? It would have been to pop sci-fi what Eragon was for fantasy. Which is to say, not much.
Seriously, without the connection to Star Wars I wouldn't have given a rats ass about Phantom Menace at all. The only reason I could stand that annoying little prat Anakin was because I knew that someday he would grow up to be Darth Vader, and I was seeing how it happened. The only reason I could stand all the pointless and ham-fisted politics was knowing that it was all part of a plan to create The Empire. Hell would Obi-Wan have even been an interesting character if it didn't evoke memories of Sir Alec Guinness' performance in Star Wars?
No, PM isn't a victim of nostalgia. It leaned on nostalgia to make the audience care about the characters when otherwise they wouldn't have.
Temple of Doom without Raiders? B-grade comedy/action flick nobody remembers at best.
Re:That, my friends, is... (Score:2, Interesting)
Since we're doing sequels... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:My Answer: YOU'RE ALL TOO OLD!!!! (Score:5, Interesting)
Although the anecdote may be apocryphal, I feel compelled to jump in here with a story from the time when filmmaker Luis Bunuel [wikipedia.org] was working in the early days of Hollywood, circa 1940.
From what he describes in his autobiography, even way back then, things were so formulaic, he got disgusted. He then took this disgust to the next step, plotting out charts of characters, plot, era, etc., so that with this system and a few basic facts, the whole story could be told.
Then, a while later, he went to a premiere of a spy film where the heroine is shot at the end (I forget the title). Upon leaving the theater his companion was going on and on about how original the film was, so Bunuel simply states that he could tell what was going to happen from the opening shot. Naturally, the companion didn't believe him, so to prove his point, they went back to Bunuel's apartment to ask his roommate.
Upon describing some of the opening scenes, Bunuel's roommate just waved his hands, saying, "Don't bother - they shoot her in the end."
So, this past history when Hollywood had the ability to crank out thoughtful, meaningful, entertaining, and relevant films - when was that, exactly?
Re:A good trailer (Score:3, Interesting)
The release of Spider Man was delayed (it was supposed to come out very shortly after sept. 11th) specifically so they could re-write the ending involving the towers.
I think you're combining a few events here. First, Spider-Man was always intended for a May, 2002 release date. These dates are set over a year in advance, and the movie was not delayed due to the September 11 attacks, nor was the World Trade Center involved in the plotline. It was Men in Black 2 which had this problem. According to its IMDB trivia section: "The original ending of the film included a scene in which the World Trade Center towers opened up, releasing a swarm of UFOs into the air. Following the towers' destruction, the film's ending was changed." I've seen such mentions of this elsewhere as well.
Now, the Spider-Man producers needed to rework and yank some of their promotional material after Sept 11. One character-shot poster was yanked (Spider-Man looking at New York with the WTC reflected in his eye visors). The second was a teaser trailer (search for Spider-Man World Trade Center on Youtube) that showed scenes unrelated to the movie (very common for teaser trailers). It was created for the trailer, though Raimi had toyed with the idea of finding a place for the web between the WTC towers in the final movie. That never moved past the planning stages, though. You can probably blame screenwriter David Koepp for the mediocre ending.. he's written a number of action movies that haven't really been strong on plot or character (Spider-Man, the Lost World: Jurassic Park, The Shadow, War of the Worlds). Look forward to his work in the next Indiana Jones movie. I'm excited about Spielburg, so-so on Koepp, and bleh on Lucas.
A few months after September 11 I was watching a movie at a university shown by their Friday night campus cinema. One of the things they did was acquire trailers for films they were going to show soon, and Spider-Man was on the slate. The Campus Cinema folks acquired a Spider-Man trailer but apparently never viewed it. Most of the audience didn't recognize it off the bat, though I did. I knew the reaction would be ugly.. and it was! Probably the most entertainment I've gotten from a trailer though.
Re:Well.... (Score:3, Interesting)
It's not a secret, and once the first trilogy was out of the bag, it will never BE a secret ever again.
For people in the future who watch the films in order, they will know the truth. The implications of Obi-wan's lies in Ep. IV will strike a deeper chord with the audience, knowing the back story. The reveal in Ep. V will still have its effect on the characters and the story will still unfold. Viewers will relate to the dual impact of finding out this evil guy who has tried to kill you and your friends is your father, and the father-figure Jedi legend lied to you. These are the tradeoffs of an omniscient audience.
If Star Wars hadn't become a pop culture icon, then maybe a more ambiguous Episode III would have been called for.