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.
I'd like to make up my own mind (Score:4, Funny)
No lack of tension at all! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:No lack of tension at all! (Score:5, Funny)
A good trailer (Score:5, Insightful)
Unfortunately, trailers have little to do with movies anymore. Trailer designers and technicians have made an art out of what they do: making the most boring movies look exciting and fun. Honestly, they're good at what they do! By just changing transition graphics, music score, sound clips, and some of the shots, they can make an action movie look like a: comedy, drama, or documentary.
Re:A good trailer (Score:5, Funny)
Re:A good trailer (Score:4, Informative)
Yes, that's the brilliant recut "Shining" trailer [youtube.com]. If you haven't see it yet, go click now.
Here's an interview [tatteredcoat.com] with the guy behind it.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Excellent job, indeed. Here are some more great recuts:
THE ORIGINAL Scary 'Mary Poppins' Recut Trailer [youtube.com]
Must Love Jaws [youtube.com]
10 Things I Hate About Commandments [youtube.com]
These would make pretty interesting movies! But seriously, though, pimpified trailers are one of the reasons I don't go to the theaters so often. It really infuriates me to be deceived that way. Nowadays, I either rent or ________...
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
The plot thickens!
Re:A good trailer (Score:5, Funny)
Re:A good trailer (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:A good trailer (Score:5, Insightful)
BTW that new Mike Myers movie looks horrible! In this case I'm glad they gave the whole movie away so I know not to see it.
Re:A good trailer (Score:5, Insightful)
He basically makes a stupid quip, pulls a rocket launcher out of the back seat of the truck he's in (he's in the back seat) makes another stupid quip, then fires the rocket through the front wind shield at the bad guys - all with bad timing.
If it was old style Indiana, he would have skipped the quips, scrambled frantically for something that would get them out of their predicament, found the rocket laungher, gotten dragged out of the window of the truck, losing the rocket launcher in the process, used the elephant (they were in a jungle) running next to the truck from 3 scenes earlier to help kick himself back onto the roof of the truck, grabbed the rocket launcher, lost the rocket launcher to the nazi, and had the nazi accidentally shoot the rocket at the bad guys after he got knocked off the truck by a tree branch or a vine or something. Then after it was all done, Indiana would have had some kind of one liner to seal the deal.
This movie is going to be bad.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Strange that truth in advertising doesn't seem to apply to films.
Re:A good trailer (Score:5, Informative)
Re:A good trailer (Score:4, Informative)
Re:A good trailer (Score:5, Informative)
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. It was quite a conversation topic for New Yorkers at the time. Myself and quite a lot of people were pissed at the idea of changing the ending as we saw it as a sort of memorial for the towers.
Instead we got the mediocre ending that exists for the movie now. That explains the trailer though.
I would have loved to see the original ending. And of course, I'd love to live in a country where big corporate entities don't pander to every little politically correct agenda and maintain some sort of integrity.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:A good trailer (Score:4, Insightful)
Great idea! Movies would be only 3 minutes long and completely filled with explosions. You would of course, charge full price.
Then think of all the trailers you could put on the DVD!
Brilliant!
Re:A good trailer (Score:5, Funny)
Re:A good trailer (Score:5, Funny)
I wish Michael Bay movies were only three minutes long!
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: (Score:3, Insightful)
But then again, my favourite Matrix movie was the second one, so what do I know... For what it's worth, Ebert [suntimes.com] agrees with me.
Re: (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
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Simple. People get successful and it goes to their heads. When they start out, they have to break their backs, to fight, to compromise, to take criticism... and then they get successful, and they take away the wrong less from that. Instead of crediting hard work, com
Re:This singular review on aintitcool needs to die (Score:5, Interesting)
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
complete BS (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:complete BS (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:complete BS (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
It also looks like he didn't even review Beerfest. It's not on his written review pages, and the review on the show is done by Roeper and some chick [go.com].
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:complete BS (Score:5, Insightful)
They aren't missing the point. You are. There's only so much information you can pack into a 'star rating'
Movie Critics are rating movies by how good they are on a multitude of levels. A 4 star movie has to be entertaining, interesting, thought provoking, well written, well directed, well acted, etc, etc, etc.
The Phantom Menace might hit the entertaining button but its a dismal fail on most other criteria. Its poorly acted, poorly written, poorly directed...
People go to the movies to be entertained for 2 hours. A simple popcorn-muncher is sometimes all you really want.
You are practically admitting it right here, that you KNOW and AGREE they are crappy movies!! But you like watching them anyway. That's fine... I do too... a one or two star rating doesn't mean you won't enjoy the movie and shouldn't go see it, but rather you shouldn't expect it be a 'Godfather II'.
I'm personally looking forward to the new Indy.
Me too. However I'm now expecting it to be 'summer popcorn fun' not 'groundbreaking brilliant'. (Which if you'd seen the previous 3, 'summer popcorn fun' is really what you should have been expecting all along.)
The other thing that ruins reviews like this is a fanboy gets his crush on, and waits in anticipation for 10-20 years, and has all these grandiose ideas of what the movie should or shouldn't look/feel/smell like, and then there's no possible way for the movie to live up to that much internal-hype.
To a point, but I don't think it affects the movie's rating overall as much as all that. The last crusade came out in 89. Anyone under 25 is pretty much immune to that effect and will see the movie for its own merit. A lot of people under 30 haven't even seen the first 3.
That's what happened with the new Star Wars trilogy (although Jar-Jar made me want to stab Lucas in the throat...)
No. The new Star Wars was just shit. The originals were defining movies for a generation. Most kids today have already forgotten the new trilogy. They had no pent up expectations, and they still couldn't care less about them. Face it, they just weren't that good.
None of the new star wars movies made the imdb top 250. All 3 of the Lord of the Rings movies made the top 30. Both trilogies had MASSIVE fanboy followings and pent up expectations and both movies faced the wrath of the screaming fanboys. But at the end of it all Star Wars competely sucked. LotR didn't. It's just that simple.
Re:complete BS (Score:4, Insightful)
I wouldn't say that Half-Baked presented a milestone in script writing, or was an acting disaster...I would say that it was hilarious and a well done stoner-movie. I wouldn't say Shawshank Redemption sucked because there wasn't enough comedy in it, or because it was insanely slow paced...I would say that it was amazing because the actors truly were the characters and even though nothing much really happens throughout it, somehow they manage to keep you very pulled in to the story for hours on end.
It's just like Speed Racer. SO many critics have said Speed Racer is dull, empty, devoid of meaning...ARE YOU SERIOUS? It's a movie based on a series that practically INVENTED the word cheesy...it isn't supposed to be Citizen Cane. It's just supposed to be entertaining. And you know what? It did a damn fine job of entertaining me. I wasn't looking for some underlying reasoning behind it, or for Oscar winning performances, or for some new level of thinking...I was looking to simply be entertained by a bunch of crazy coloured race tracks with cars slamming into each other.
You can't judge all movies by the same metric. That is, unfortunately, why so many critics hate so many movies. You shouldn't expect Dumb and Dumber to have the same nuance and impact as Jane Eyre. It doesn't work that way.
Re: (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 ha
Re: (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 betwee
#4, PG-13.... (Score:5, Insightful)
(1) Odd numbers good, even numbers bad
(2) PG good, PG-13 bad
So I suppose now the question is -- how does Crystal Skull compare with the Temple of Doom?
Re:#4, PG-13.... (Score:5, Informative)
Last Crusade is PG-13.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I doubt that.. (Score:3, Funny)
Of course it will be true... (Score:3, Insightful)
If it makes money, the studio will do it. This movie will make money. If you want this nonsense to stop, we need to get people to stop going to see them. I pretty much flat out refuse to see anything with less than a 50% on the tomato meter (in the theater, I'll probably watch it when it comes on TNT).
As a man who... (Score:4, Funny)
NOOOOOOOOOO!!!
Re:As a man who... (Score:4, Funny)
NOOOOOOOOOO!!!
Your choices should have been:
(a) Do not want!!!!!
or
(b) Sequels, why did it have to be sequels?
or honorable mention:
(c) I have had it with these motherfucking sequels to these motherfucking classics!
Hold up (Score:3, Insightful)
Who listens to critics, anyway?
Re:Hold up (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
No, The Phantom Menace sucked on it's own merits (yes, that's a double, maybe triple, entendre).
The streak continues. (Score:5, Funny)
So far this has been the pattern:
:P
1st film: Groundbreaking
2nd film: Great
3rd film: Ok
4th film: WTF was everyone thinking?
So help me if one character utters something like "Me-sa gonna get the skull, Indy?", I'm going to have kill myself right there in the theater. Maybe I'll humanley spare some fellow movie patrons by taking them out first.
Well.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Well.... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Well.... (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm foregoing modding you up to reply. I completely agree with you. Although I really wish some things had been done differently for Phantom Menace, I found the movie quite enjoyable, and it's the film I like best among the three prequels.
Veering off-topic: the things I wish had been different include having Obi-Wan first meet Anakin as a young adult hot-shot pilot during the Clone Wars (c.f. A New Hope, "When I met your father..."), never revealing the origins of C-3PO and R2-D2 nor revealing why they are always together, and an expanded/more intelligent role for Darth Maul (we never needed to see Sidious during that movie, Maul was all the villain we needed, just like we only needed Dooku in the 2nd movie -- actually both Maul and Dooku are FAR more interesting characters than Sidious and should have featured large in all 3 movies).
(At this point you probably wish I had modded you instead. I'm sorry!)
Re:Well.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Aside from the fact that we, the fans, know Anakin = Vader, what should have been done is have Anakin turn to the Dark Side, Kenobi fights the duel with him and he's left for dead. He should be left for dead in such a fashion that we can all assume he's dead and gone. Then when Palpatine is moving openly, his new lieutenant is 6'5" of scary black menace, this Vader dude. We are left to assume he'd been in the wings all the while but, being the titanic cloud of scary-ass doom that he is, Palpy couldn't have afforded to have him out in the open so easily. All we should have seen of Vader is leading the Jedi slaughter in III. Then we see IV and can assume that Kenobi's explanation of Anakin's seduction to the Dark Side is selectively edited. Kenobi doesn't know who the true Dark Side master was, assumes that there's Palpy, Vader, maybe a few others, knows Vader lead the slaughter of the Jedi and that Anakin turned at some point and it was probably through contact with the Sith, however many there actually were. While it was Kenobi who killed Anakin (or so he thought), Anakin was sent on that path by the Sith so it was convenient to say that Vader seduced and killed Anakin. So through all this, the big reveal at the end of V becomes so shocking. Anakin ain't dead? He's Vader? Oh, shit!
Reading back over that, it does seem overly convoluted but that's the corner Lucas wrote himself into with the constantly morphing background of the original trilogy.
And? (Score:5, Insightful)
The second one is dreadful by MY standards.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
If it's not a success... (Score:4, Funny)
media hype versus reality (Score:4, Informative)
OMFG there's a negative review of indy 4!
reality:
negative [aintitcool.com]
neutral [aintitcool.com]
neutral [aintitcool.com]
positive [aintitcool.com]
the nyt has the real story [nytimes.com]: studios are required by law to show movies to exhibitors before they buy films (which is how the party pooper reviewer shogunmaster got to see it), which in today's internet age means that studios (especially control-freak spielberg on this specific issue) are losing the ability to control pre-release media buzz
Modern Cash-In of Classic Film Series "Dreadful"? (Score:4, Funny)
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Say what? They made several tongue-in-cheek references on how Doc ("thank god I've still got my hair") and Strickland ("didn't that guy ever have hair") looked exactly the same. Especially in the 2nd movie where Doc shows Marty that he had plastic surgery...except he looks exactly the same.
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 so
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I disagree. I mean, come on, Indy got Hilter to sign his book last time. What's next? The trope would be overused (and given Spielberg's history, the Nazis are overused).
Fear not... (Score:3, Insightful)
Seriously though, anyone with high expectations of this movie hasn't seen a movie made by George Lucas in the past 20 years. It'll make a ton of cash, regardless -- that's the really tragic thing.
For all the money spent on this movie you could fast-track the careers of at least one thousand, really talented, new filmmakers.
Save us from crystal skulls!!! (Score:5, Funny)
There was also an episode of The A-Team towards the end of its run about a crystal skull. It, too, was widely regarded as the worst episode ever, a fan's nightmare, and such.
The lesson: if it says "crystal skull" anywhere, avoid it like the plague.
Why... (Score:4, Insightful)
does anyone pretend that the critics matter?
Anyone who takes any critic's word for it deserves what he gets.
As for me, I can't really nail down my decision criteria for what movies I want to see, but I can assure you that the words "critic review" don't enter into it in the slightest.
You Can't Satisfy Nostalgia (Score:4, Insightful)
Nothing can match the feeling of seeing the movie with friends and family who may be gone now, or remembering a time in your life when things were better, we tend to forget the bad and remember the good, anything current simply can't compete with your memories all else being equal.
It's only about money (Score:5, Insightful)
they are only made to make a lot of money and for that it only has to be (mildly) appealing to the masses.
All those 'fans' will see it anyhow and chances are 90% of them will hate it regardless how 'good' others think it is.
Big Money means:
- the movie is made so a 6 year old can watch it with his parents, nothing too brutal & funny scenes for kids (remember jar jar binks?)
- nothing complicated, keep good and evil clearly separated, you have to know whos evil when you see them, otherwise the kids get confused
- don't take any chances, avoid anything controversial, use the known formula (happy ending, nobody likable gets killed)
- it doesn't have to be good as long as it has a well known name (sequel sequel sequel & why Bush got elected after all)
- a mediocre movie made for the masses makes more money then a excellent movie for insiders
So with that in mind, i expect it to be watchable but nothing special.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.
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.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The kiss of death. I still haven't forgiven him for having aliens that are allergic to water attempt to invade a planet whose surface is 70% water.
cluelessness (Score:4, Informative)
At any rate, take AICN stuff as you would with any critic. For those that have never visited the site, read only the first paragraph or two and then skip to the last paragraph or two of Harry's reviews. In between, he's going to expound about a recent mundane task he did which has no bearing on the review, such as his numerous trips to take his grandma to the vet or whatever. STFU, Harry, and get on the with the review. Sheesh.
-fragbait
More rehashes (Score:5, Insightful)
In 2007, as Harper's points out, most of the top 10 movies were not only sequels, but sequels where "version > 2". Since Hollywood management does fads, we have to expect a run of more such sequels. Hence Indy #4.
As I've remarked before, Hollywood has a major idea shortage. History has been mined out. Comic book resources have been drained; the big franchises are done, and productions are digging deep into obscure comics for material. Hollywood is now down to recycling 1960s TV shows. Are there any up and coming directors with new ideas? Who's the next Spielberg?
Incidentally, the trailer for "Clone Wars" looks like a video game ad for a bad video game, one with a low poly and keyframe budget.
Entertainment may be a depletable resource. When everything ever made is easily available, anything new has to be better than anything done before. Everybody has already seen the best of everything. This makes it hard to excel. Consider music. Nobody has done a major new symphony for decades. Rock music peaked decades ago. House music is stuck. Rap doesn't shock anybody any more. No wonder the RIAA is in trouble.
Film got a "midlife kicker" - computer graphics. At last, you could film anything you could imagine. After about a decade, most of the backlog of things directors always wanted to do, but couldn't afford, have been done. Big shots of alien or historical cities, nonhuman actors, and massive war scenes, have all been competently put on the big screen. Viewers are no longer impressed.
Desperate hacks, like playing with color saturation, have been tried. There's the under-saturated look ("Sky Captain") and the over-saturated look ("Speed Racer"). There's the high-contrast black and white look ("Sin City"). There's the high-contrast black and white look with a bit of color ("The Shadow"). OK, been there, done that.
Finally, there's the trick the movie industry tried the last time things got really desperate, back in the 1950s - stereoscopic 3D. It didn't work last time.
AICN: A Bizarro Universe? (Score:5, Interesting)
An era gone by... (Score:4, Insightful)
Now, those guys ARE the establishment. They are offering pretty much the same production values they originally brought to us but we, as the audience, are, dare I say, bored with their filmmaking. If not bored, we have very high expectations because of the impression the original movies left on us.
It's kind of like going back to a place you haven't been to since you were a kid and it's much smaller and less interesting than you had it in your mind.
This isn't to say that these guys are terrible filmmakers or that their craft is not up to par. I'm saying that the hype created by the media in ourselves only makes one feel disappointed when the movie is just that--another movie.
I think the industry itself is in a pretty bad place right now. Movies are made that really shouldn't have been made so the overall quality from the corporate movie studios is just abysmal.
Story is king. Unfortunately, visual effects and spectacle have become the story supported by the script. They keep trying to make blockbusters instead of focusing on the craft of filmmaking. The indie films are doing so well because they have to have good scripts--there's no budget for Michael Bay/Brett Ratner/Roland Emerich epically expensive multi-million dollar set pieces.
Unfortunately, like all corporations, the studios are most interested in delivering profits to shareholders. The just don't understand that if you "build it, they will come"--a good movie with good special and visual effects that serve the story will do well. They just want to make gimmicky pieces that will turn into money makers.
So, don't be surprised if Raiders is disappointing. It's just a cog in the wheel of the dark machine that is Hollywood.
Since we're doing sequels... (Score:4, Interesting)
no (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
Old Movie - Krull (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:That, my friends, is... (Score:4, Insightful)
I saw temple of doom, hoping it would be as good, if not better, than raiders. It didn't even come close. But it didn't "suck", it wasn't heartbreaking, it just wasn't as good as Raiders. How exactly could it have been? Raiders, and Star Wars (yes, just Star Wars. that was what was on the theater marquee when I sat through it 6 times on the weekend it came out), are Masterpieces; expecting a sequel to even be a tenth as good would be silly.
Taken by itself, if Raiders or Star Wars had never been made, what do you think the worlds reaction to Temple of Doom would have been? or the Phantom Menace? they surely are not in the same league as the prior 2, but they are still great movies.
So, I'll watch Indy at the theater on May 22nd, my Birthday, and I really, really, really doubt it will be as good as Raiders. or even Last Crusade. if it's as good as Temple of Doom, I'll consider myself lucky.
Re:That, my friends, is... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:That, my friends, is... (Score:5, Funny)
Can you see the pitch now?
Lucas: "It's a film about trade disputes and tax reform... in space!"
Studio: "Next!"
Re: (Score:3)
You haven't seen many movies lately, have you? I suspect it would have gone more like this:
Lucas: It's a film about trade disputes and tax reform..
Re:That, my friends, is... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Just about the exact same thing occurred to me (Score:5, Insightful)
There was a pall in the theater you could sense. Everyone knew it was crap, but there was still light applause at the end. Why? Because we hoped we hadn't seen what we'd just seen. And because for some reason the franchise got credit for having been good once.
That doesn't make it Episode 1 into anything other than it was, however. A big, stupid, pointless special effects debacle.
JarJar would have said... "theesa movie suuuuucks ballce!"
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
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:That, my friends, is... (Score:5, Insightful)
If you consider Temple of Doom to be the first movie, Indiana Jones is playing more of the mercenary lifestyle, digging up treasure for a Shanghai mobster. After the events of Temple occurs Raiders and Crusade - both of which are similar in style and formula (globetrotting adventure).
After Indy's experience in India and becoming a believer of Hinduism, he goes back to the states and alternates between teaching and rescuing artifacts for the museum (which happens in Raiders, which proves Judaism, and Crusade, which proves Christianity).
It doesn't make Temple a better movie, but for me, it made it fit better in the grand scheme.
Re:That, my friends, is... (Score:5, Insightful)
"Too bad the Hovitos don't know you the way I do, Belloq" - That's right, Indy and Belloq used to be fellow travelers, then after the events of Temple, they developed a "difference of opinion". Belloq is Indy five years before.
This also ties in the Crusade teaser, in a broader sense. See Indy the idealist in full force, living the first experience that will turn him cynical. Then back to Raiders, look at the way Marion receives him, with a sucker punch to the mouth - Indiana the cynical bastard we see at the beginning of Temple getting a taste of his just desserts.
As for personal taste, I found the action in Temple to be more than passable, while I found myself grimacing during several points in Crusade, a wholly unsatisfactory experience, as compared to the monumental achievement that was Raiders.
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: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:That, my friends, is... (Score:5, Informative)
Who hated these movies? Neither film was recognized as the classic that they'd eventually become - most future classics aren't at the time they're released - but I don't recall many scathingly bad reviews and I can't find many at the moment either. Star Wars was considered an exciting popcorn movie - ineffectual, but fun. Dirty Harry was criticized a bit for its politics but was still called an effective thriller.
Here are Rottentomatoes' "top critics" pages on both of these films, you can read some of the original reviews there (ignore the dates, most of these were written on the movies' release):
Dirty Harry [rottentomatoes.com]
Star Wars [rottentomatoes.com]
I mean, I dunno what your standards are, but an 88% positive rating from the top critics in the land seems pretty good to me for a film that was never intended to be anything but a light-hearted space romp.
I think you need to re-evaluate what you think of movie critics. Your stance is similar to one that I think a lot of people take, and it's based on this false premise that critics like bad movies and hate good ones. I would bet that 90% of the time, critics like the same movies you do. Where I think this idea that critics are somehow out of touch with the public comes from is the fact that they do not buy into hype. If a summer blockbuster has a $100 million marketing budget, a lot of people are going to be excited about that. Some of those people will even try to convince themselves that they liked the final product, so as not to feel they've wasted all this time and energy on anticipation. (This is the same phenomenon that's been observed in studies whereby the longer someone stands in line, the longer they're willing to keep standing in line, so as not to have wasted their time standing in line.)
Critics are trained specifically to ignore hype and judge a film purely on its merits. That means *good* blockbuster films, like the original Star Wars, do get good reviews. It also means *bad* blockbuster films, like, say, Wild Wild West [rottentomatoes.com], get bad reviews - even if they make hundreds of millions of dollars in box office and garner their share of fans at the time of their release. We all know that film's crap now, but the critics were ahead of the public in figuring it out. That's their job.
I'd also argue that not all classic films are really great films by any objective or even most subjective measures - go watch Dirty Harry again and tell me what's good about it. I'll tell you what's good about it: Clint Eastwood and the character that he creates. That's why the film endures today. Without him and without that character, the film would be just another cookie-cutter thriller. But critics don't review characters; they review films.
Anyway, enough of my rant. You should listen to critics if they don't like the latest Indiana Jones film, because they're looking past how cool it is to have Indiana Jones back on screen and instead reviewing the film. And they've generally got pretty much the same tastes as everybody else.
Re:That, my friends, is... (Score:4, Insightful)
Or the longer a country fights a war (and the more people die) the longer they must continue to fight that war so that the dead will not have "died in vain".
My Answer: YOU'RE ALL TOO OLD!!!! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:My Answer: YOU'RE ALL TOO OLD!!!! (Score:5, Funny)
Now you damn kids GET OFF MY LAWN!!
Re:My Answer: YOU'RE ALL TOO OLD!!!! (Score:5, Funny)
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?
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Way to steal Patton Oswalt's bit without citiation (Score:4, Informative)
To the mods: That whole bit is by Patton Oswalt, not the anonymous coward.
Re:Not a bit afraid (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Oh, come on... I admit it should've been done sooner. But even Spielberg isn't good enough to be able to release the fourth installment before the third!