zombie84 said:
...[I]ts just a fun adventure that entertains for 2 hours but is flawed and not a classic the way the other 3 were. If you didn't expect that then I think you had unrealistic expectations here.
...[I]ts just a fun adventure that entertains for 2 hours but is flawed and not a classic the way the other 3 were. If you didn't expect that then I think you had unrealistic expectations here.
Zombie, I track with you on a lot of your posts, but I gotta disagree here. Spielberg and Lucas just didn't pull this off. Now, I didn't walk out of the theater wanting my money back, but there was SO much that just wasn't up to Indy standards. The movie wasn't as kinetic as the others.
I had read that Spielberg was conciously going to try to emulate the directorial style he had back when he did the original movies and that his current director of photography was going to try to emulate the style of the original DP. The movie failed on both accounts.
Especially in the beginning of the movie, character scenes were sluggish with a lack of crisp cuts during dialogue. In the diner scene, it felt as if the production hadn't had time to go in for the tighter shots in the Indy/Mutt coversation. The character action/interaction also didn't seem to have that same flow/connection that Spielberg gave them in the originals.
The look of the film matched pretty closely with the vibrancy of the previous films in certain scenes, but in many scenes, especially those with large outdoor vistas, the movie looked "artificial", for lack of a better term. The colors were too clean, while the overall shots looked a bit washed-out.
I could've over-looked those things more, but the script didn't really come through either. It didn't go into enough scholarly detail to make the pursuit of the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull a deserving Indy pursuit. It was that and the lack of character emotion coming through. Indy and his enemies weren't cast in high enough relief to make his adventure and ensuing plights a lot of fun to watch as the good guy overcomes the bad guys. And unlike the other movies, the characters were largely thrown together with very little in the way of character development.
To my point of disagreement with you, Zombie, if you can't expect a great deal from a legendary franchise helmed by legends like Spielberg, Lucas, and Harrison Ford coupled with Academy-Award-winning director of photography Janusz Kaminsky, who can you expect great things from? Much like the Star Wars prequels, I wonder if a more worthy installment couldn't have been made by fans of the originals.