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Indiana Jones IV — Page 21

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I just got done watching this film again, (this time for free) and I guess if I had to sum up my biggest gripe is that this movie was so hum drum boring....at least it was for me. Starting with the first Indiana Jones, which was a fun exciting roller coaster ride filled with suspense and danger, the films one by one since then have dwindled in there pace and excitement/suspense. I know that some of that can't be helped but I tell you I almost fell asleep watching this movie......

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adywan said:

InfoDroid said:

Which ending do you guys think is worse? This one, or Tim Burton's Planet of the Apes?

Planet of the Apes was definitely the worse by a million miles


That isn't even a fair comparison. Planet of the Apes' ending was one of the biggest WTF moments in the history of cinema. :D

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I saw this last night. While watching it, I kept trying to remember the things that some of you say you didn't like. canofhumdingers is the post I remembered most vividly, so I'm going to use it to address my thoughts on what was liked/not liked.

canofhumdingers said:

The things that really ruined it for me were things like the stupid hot rod race at the beginning... what was that? it served no purpose but to look cool. ok, that happens sometimes in adventure films, but usually the "looking cool" sequences at least involve key characters or have SOME sort of relation to the story at large. This HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH ANYTHING ELSE IN THE MOVIE. It was just there b/c Lucas likes hotrod racing.


Apparently we both saw different movies. The hotrod race was their to introduce the Russians (or did that just completely go over your head?) as well as show the time period (am I the only one that figured out immediately that it was 1950's Nevada, somewhere outside Vegas?). Good God people. Yeah, it was a bit of a nod to American Graffiti courtesy of Lucas, but then again, so were a bunch of other scenes.

canofhumdingers said:

The gophers.... Oh my gosh, what the heck?!? Once again, totally pointless & out of place in the context of the movie itself, & definately in the context of the series.


Simple comic relief. The first gopher hole we see is in place of the Paramount mountain. Just like in Raiders when we see that mountain in place of the Paramount mountain. I'm pretty sure they did the same thing in ToD and Last Crusade. Do gophers usually live in the desert? I'm not sure, but it didn't bother me that much.

canofhumdingers said:

The way the gunpowder traveled in a perfectly level to the floor path that winded around the crates. This was just bizarre. The exact same thing could have been done in a much more beleiveable manner to the same (well, better) effect.


Uh, I don't know how you could've made this believable. My first thought was "Would that even work?". Looks to me like Mythbusters is going to have a lot of movie Myths to work on in the coming years. This was the first scene that I went "um, yeah, I don't think so".

canofhumdingers said:

The very inconsistent magnetic attraction of said crate. It pulls some guys' guns, but not the guns on the backs of the guys carrying the crate??? This, again was not a bad idea, just executed poorly & sloppily.


And I guess it wasn't possible that those guys tightened their gun straps? Give me a break. It was very obviously pulling on everything and there's no reason to believe that they didn't simply tighten the straps beforehand.

canofhumdingers said:

THE MONKEY SWINGING MUTT! UGH!! that was pure Lucas garbage at its worst.


Again, it was a little lame, but nothing that ruined the movie for me.

canofhumdingers said:

The monkeys themselves. Why did they need to be CGI? THEY DIDN'T. That little bit actually could have been ok if they used like monkeys for as much of the sequence as PETA would allow. & even the mutt swinging from the trees might've been ok if it were done with real stunt work, action set peices, etc like the stunts coreographed for the first three films.


Maybe because it was cheaper to have an animator do them in the computer than it would be to get permits for wild animals and deal with PETA. I know that if I had the choice between those two things, I'd go with the computer too.

canofhumdingers said:

Same goes for the sword fight. It was lame, but it didn't have to be. It could have been pretty cool & exciting if it wasn't blatantly blue screen CGI. Seriously, would the whole drug underneath the truck & crawling all over it, running from the boulder, fighting on the tank, fighting on the rope bridge, sequences have been half as exciting if they were'nt ACTUALLY happening, but filmed in a nice safe sound stage green screen & cgi'ed together?? NO. So why couldn't we get that kind of stuff in this one??


Wait, your problem with the sword fight is that it was blue screen? HAHAHAHAHA! How about the fact that a kid with some sword fighting experience was actually standing up to a woman that seemed to be an expert with a sword? My biggest gripe is that that sword fight would've ended in about two seconds. Have you ever seen real competitive sword fighters go at it? Even those fights last mere seconds and they've been doing it for years. To have this "greaser" stand up to her for that long was just a joke. But again, I can deal with it for the purposes of a movie. It seems to me that Spielberg wanted someone to fight a swordsman at some point in one of his movies and not run away. This was that fight.

canofhumdingers said:

The wedding. Not terrible, just doesn't really fit the Jones character very well imo.


I just didn't think this scene was needed.

canofhumdingers said:

The crystal skull's power was never explained in a way that we really understood why anybody wanted it so bad. a small bit of dialogue could've easily fixed this & made the adventure resonate a little more.


I think that's because everyone with a real knowledge of the skull believed it to be nothing more than a legend. The power is never explained because no one really knows what'll happen when someone gets it.

canofhumdingers said:

The nuclear explosion fridge survival was just too over the top. I might have bought it if the fridge didn't go flying hundreds of feet through the air. Indy is escapist adventure & he survives things no man really should, but that one was a bit extreme even for him.


Yeah, that was a bit extreme. This is probably the most extreme thing in the movie.

canofhumdingers said:

The way Indy & Mutt initially get away from the KGB in the diner. Indy getting mutt to start a fight between the greasers & the jocks made me laugh. Classic Indy using his wits to get out of something on the fly.


This was the other scene I mentioned before. This was a total American Graffiti moment that was probably more inspired by Lucas than anything else.

Personally, I found the shot of the ark unnecessary. Not because I didn't like the nod, but I felt it had been done effectively enough by the music when Indy walked into the warehouse. The moment the Ark theme played, you know the Ark is in the warehouse somewhere. Besides, didn't they put the Ark into a box and then put that box into a crate?

I forgot something until just now. What the hell was with Marion's damn smile? She seemed to be enjoying herself way to much. She was smiling for about the first half of her introduction (just about until they went over the falls). It was like the danger they were in didn't even dawn on her. Maybe she was high during filming or something. I can understand being happy to see Indy, she seemed overly happy to me.

I don't really know how I feel about this one yet. It was an ok movie. Definitely not up to Raiders or Last Crusade (I actually like Last Crusade the best of the original 3). I'd have to watch ToD again. Then again, I'm not a big fan of the dining sequence with the eyeballs and insects.

I think a lot of you are simply ripping this movie apart because Lucas was involved. I don't think Crystal Skull was nearly as bad as you're making it out to be ("it was aweful!"). Even the alien reveal at the end didn't bother me that much. It kind of reminded me of ET and Close Encounters, so I'm willing to bet it was Spielberg's idea to begin with.
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If you ask me, all the over the top stuff just made the movie more fun. I see so many movies anymore have to try to be realistic--even Narnia with its talking badgers and sword-wielding mice tries really hard to obey the laws of physics. It was nice to see a movie cut loose and totally give them the finger.

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zombie84 said:

Nothing could be worse than Burton's Planet of the Apes. But then the whole film was on that kind of level anyway. It was like a final dump in the toilet to a two-hour bowel movement.

Wow. You've put in to words exactly what I had been feeling about that film since the evening I saw it. To me, Burton's PotA and GL's AotC are the two worst films I have ever seen.

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lordjedi said:

Apparently we both saw different movies. The hotrod race was their to introduce the Russians (or did that just completely go over your head?) as well as show the time period (am I the only one that figured out immediately that it was 1950's Nevada, somewhere outside Vegas?). Good God people. Yeah, it was a bit of a nod to American Graffiti courtesy of Lucas,...


I agree.
As I mentioned in a post on another board; I thought that was a neat way to show the audience that it's now the rowdier, rock & roll, late 1950s - not the wartime 1930s anymore. And, as a gearhead for most of my youth, I dug the T-Bucket.

I also thought it was interesting to ponder the fact that a kidnapped Indiana Jones is in the trunk of that car while it's racing. Something seemingly so harmless and fun (the race) was actually a very serious situation being hidden from the teenagers.


I think a lot of you are simply ripping this movie apart because Lucas was involved.


I think you're right on the money with that assessment.
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auximenies said:

zombie84 said:

Nothing could be worse than Burton's Planet of the Apes. But then the whole film was on that kind of level anyway. It was like a final dump in the toilet to a two-hour bowel movement.

Wow. You've put in to words exactly what I had been feeling about that film since the evening I saw it. To me, Burton's PotA and GL's AotC are the two worst films I have ever seen.


If Planet of the Apes and Attack of the Clones are the worst you've seen, you're VEEEEERRRRY lucky... And for that matter, even those two movies aren't in the same league of badness.

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Okay, so I finally got to see the end of this movie, and I agree with what most people complained about it. Well, actually, the wedding didn't bother me. When Mutt was about to put on Indy's hat, I think I held my breath because I felt that could have pissed off a lot of the "hardcore" fans, especially those that have heard rumors of the torch passing to him for vague future films. So I thought they handled that well to have Indy himself quell that at the last second. But the concept of Indy and Marion getting married didn't bother me at all. What did bother me, like others have mentioned, was the ease in Indy getting his job back. Personally, I would have liked for it to have ended with Indy winding in Europe, where he was initially going to go when he got fired.

But I still don't see all the hate for this movie. I enjoyed it immensely and actually agree point-by-point with LordJedi's assessment of it. I also didn't know that the '80s sequels were so looked down upon here. I could understand Temple of Doom (even though I like it) for straying so far from the elements that made Raiders special, but what's the deal with Last Crusade? I sometimes consider it to be my favorite of the three.

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Darth Chaltab said:

auximenies said:

zombie84 said:

Nothing could be worse than Burton's Planet of the Apes. But then the whole film was on that kind of level anyway. It was like a final dump in the toilet to a two-hour bowel movement.

Wow. You've put in to words exactly what I had been feeling about that film since the evening I saw it. To me, Burton's PotA and GL's AotC are the two worst films I have ever seen.


If Planet of the Apes and Attack of the Clones are the worst you've seen, you're VEEEEERRRRY lucky... And for that matter, even those two movies aren't in the same league of badness.


I'm pretty good at steering away from bad movies. I mean, I'm sure if I watched something like What Happens in Vegas that would be a new candidate but why in the world would I want to do that? And it still probably has better acting and writing than Attack of the Clones. I watch a lot of low-budget horror stuff, so indeed I HAVE seen worse examples, but I think I can honestly say that AOTC has the worst acting and dialog I have ever witnessed in a mainstream motion picture in my life. I'm trying to think of stuff that comes close but its hard--stuff like Wing Commander and Battlefield Earth, though bad, is at least two or three times more convincing in that department. My argument has always been: if a high school student wrote and directed Attack of the Clone--what would be different about it? I can't think of anything.
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I never even bothered watching Tim Burton's Planet of the Apes. why butcher a classic?

the movies end is even more pathetic when you realise the ape lincoln idea was allegedly stolen from kevin smith, there was a lawsuit over this.

Even more Laughable the casting Marky Mark replacing Charleton Heston.

That there was a script for another classic apes movie and they went with this crap is beyond stupid.

I remember looking forward to that version when it was announced in sci fi universe magazine in 1994 premiere issue.

As for Attack of the Clones as if the title was not supposed to warn you this was a cheasy homage to the 1930's and 1940's universal serials starring buster crabbe as both flash gordon and buck rogers.

I am probably more guilty of this than most fans, but don't you think we are expecting far too much in indiana jones and star wars as they are saturday matinee serial fare that you are supposed to eat your candy and popcorn while watching. Lucas was dubbed the king of twerp cinema by Peter Biskind and it pretty much holds up.

Star Wars and Indiana Jones were never made to be marketed to 30 year or 40 something adults who want more adult fare.

If you want drama and all that go watch the godfather or taxi driver, lol. not star wars.

“Always loved Vader’s wordless self sacrifice. Another shitty, clueless, revision like Greedo and young Anakin’s ghost. What a fucking shame.” -Simon Pegg.

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The alien's angry face at the end made me literally cover my face with my hands. It looked like the main character from the "Destroy All Humans!" videogames; I half-expected it to say, "You're goin' down, comrade" in a Jack Nicholson voice.

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zombie84 said:

I'm trying to think of stuff that comes close but its hard--stuff like Wing Commander and Battlefield Earth, though bad, is at least two or three times more convincing in that department. My argument has always been: if a high school student wrote and directed Attack of the Clone--what would be different about it? I can't think of anything.


Wing Commander was one of the very movies I was thinking of. That movie is terrible. Attack of the Clones is a good story with bad acting and some cringeworthy dialogue. They're not even in the same stratosphere of suck.

And are you really serious? If a high school student wrote and directed Attack of the Clones, it wouldn't have had Ewan McGregor, Ian McDarmid, or a multi-million dollar special effects budget... need I go on? Yes, Padme and Anakin's dialogue is sophomorically bad, but the same can be said of Episode 3.

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Darth Chaltab said:

And are you really serious? If a high school student wrote and directed Attack of the Clones, it wouldn't have had Ewan McGregor, Ian McDarmid, or a multi-million dollar special effects budget... need I go on?

Yes it would, because thats not what I'm suggesting. If everything about AOTC was the same except a highschool kid wrote and directed it--if he had the same basic story, a $120 million budget, ILM, Ian McDiarmid, Ewan McGregor, etc, if everything was the same except for some reason there was a 15 year old boy who wrote the script and somehow was directing...I can't think of anything that would be different. Possibly, it would be better.
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BUT INDY 4 HAD ALIENS IN IT!!!
Not an arfifact with possibly alien origins, not a hint that the temple could maybe have been built by aliens... but actual aliens!! And a UFO!! Uuurrrghh!!

War does not make one great.

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So, what you saying Yoda man, Aliens don't exist or something??

;)



One thing that did put a smile on my face was hearing two 10 year olds thinking "How awesome that film was". Just the way I felt after watching Raiders and Doom.

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My assessment of Indy IV is that it totally lost its soul and traded it in for cheap sci-fi. Now, maybe that was intentional and it certainly fits the period. I thought the Reds were great Nazi alternatives and it really felt like Indy had grown old gracefully into the 1950s, he didn't seem out of place with the "medals" backstory.

But I have to say this is the first Indy to truly jump the shark. The gophers, the monkeys, the flying fridge, the waterfalls, the stilted unconvincing action sequences. Even my better half who knows nothing about filmmaking technique thought things looked "wrong".

I believe Indy IV was mediocre (in the dictionary definition). They may have pushed the envelope in post production but they sure didn't show me anything new in front of the camera.

And where was the James Bond-esque pre-title sequence? I didn't think the hot-rodding was that bad, but it was hardly "Indy escapes from giant boulder" or "Indy gets poisoned" or "Indy running along a train" --- it was Russians have a race and pull Indy out the boot of a car. Boring!

What happened to peril on every page? This movie was lazy lazy lazy. But of course it will be successful because there is a huge market for nostalgia. We buy it every time!
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HotRod said:

So, what you saying Yoda man, Aliens don't exist or something??

;)



Mate, I'm all for aliens and I totally believe in them. X-Files is my all-time favourite TV show. But I'm pretty sure that when X-Files 2 comes out Mulder won't be wearing a fedora and using a whip. Aliens in Indiana Jones? Doesn't fit. It could have possibly been pulled off if done right (i.e. don';t actually show the aliens in acheap raiders rip-off ending, just hint at the possibility of aliens giving technology to an ancient civilisation).

HotRod said:

One thing that did put a smile on my face was hearing two 10 year olds thinking "How awesome that film was". Just the way I felt after watching Raiders and Doom.



I have to admit that is pretty cool and has made me like the film a little bit more.

War does not make one great.

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I normally don't do the "reply to replies" thing (too much work getting all the quotes done properly), but I just had to respond to a few of these.


lordjedi said:

Apparently we both saw different movies. The hotrod race was their to introduce the Russians (or did that just completely go over your head?) as well as show the time period (am I the only one that figured out immediately that it was 1950's Nevada, somewhere outside Vegas?). Good God people. Yeah, it was a bit of a nod to American Graffiti courtesy of Lucas, but then again, so were a bunch of other scenes.

It didn't go over my head, i just didn't like it. Someone else mentioned the "in mission" opening sequences to all the Jones films as inspired by the Bond films & i get that. But this one DIDN'T have Jones in it! It felt like it didn't belong.

& I still don't like the gophers. Comic relief or not, they just made me roll my eyes.


And I guess it wasn't possible that those guys tightened their gun straps? Give me a break. It was very obviously pulling on everything and there's no reason to believe that they didn't simply tighten the straps beforehand.

But it wasn't pulling on everything. & i don't recall their straps being very tight. It was just a detail that stuck out & bugged me.


Maybe because it was cheaper to have an animator do them in the computer than it would be to get permits for wild animals and deal with PETA. I know that if I had the choice between those two things, I'd go with the computer too.

And i wouldn't go with the computer. this really comes down to personal taste & i strongly dislike using CGI for things that could very well be done in real life b/c i think it's lazy.


Wait, your problem with the sword fight is that it was blue screen? HAHAHAHAHA! How about the fact that a kid with some sword fighting experience was actually standing up to a woman that seemed to be an expert with a sword? My biggest gripe is that that sword fight would've ended in about two seconds. Have you ever seen real competitive sword fighters go at it? Even those fights last mere seconds and they've been doing it for years. To have this "greaser" stand up to her for that long was just a joke. But again, I can deal with it for the purposes of a movie. It seems to me that Spielberg wanted someone to fight a swordsman at some point in one of his movies and not run away. This was that fight.

While i know you probably didn't mean it, i actually found this rather insulting. I fenced for four years in college learning all three olympic weapons (foil, epee, & sabre). I've taken kendo (japanese fencing derived from samurai fighting techniques) for two years & still actively train with both the Minneapolis Kendo club & the Memphis Kendo club (when i'm in town down there). I know exactly how long a real sword fight would last. Sword fights in movies are almost never realistic b/c they wouldn't be very exciting to the general populace who has no idea that a real fight would last about 2 seconds once the opponents made a move. I can accept that & enjoy a good swashbuckling fight. The part of the scene that bugged me was not the sword fight, but the splits between moving vehicles while getting thumped in the nads. it wasn't an exciting sword fight, it was a childish circus act. It's possible to make a great movie that appeals to people of all ages without being childish & that's what i was hoping for. Unfortunately, it didn't happen, imo.


I think a lot of you are simply ripping this movie apart because Lucas was involved.

I can see why you might say that about my post, but it's really not the case. I went into this movie with fairly low expectations, but i still had high hopes. Like when i walked into the theater for each prequel, i WANTED to like this movie so much! I WANTED it to be as much fun as the others. But then it wasn't & that left me disappointed, just as i feared i would be but hoped i wouldn't.

the thing is, with some minor edits & tweaks & someone ballsy enough to tell them to stop using so much CGI, i think it could've been a really good IJ adventure. Not great like Raiders, but as good as any of the sequels. That just makes it even more disappointing to me.

i really don't hate lucas(he DID make some of the greatest films ever), it's just that all the things that really killed this movie for me just feel so much like his influence. The gophers? the car race opening? the tarzan swinging? the ridiculous amounts of unconvincing cgi? tell me you don't see Lucas in every one of those
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I'm totally with canofhumdingers on this.

Apparently one of the main reasons it took so long to make this film was that Ford and Spielberg were not interested in the unsubtle depiction of alien invaders. "No way am I being in a Steve Spielberg movie like that," Ford told Lucas. Lucas wanted to call the new film 'Indiana Jones and the Saucer Men From Mars' but had his idea firmly rejected by Ford and Spielberg as the three men struggled to reach an agreement for around 10 years.

So what the hell changed?! because the film we got is pretty much exactly the same as the original Saucer Men draft written in the nineties.

War does not make one great.

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The aliens were out of place. But I didn't think they ruined the film. They were only in the very end of the movie. They weren't in-your-face like "Saucer men from Mars" would of been. I would of liked something supernatual, instead of the aliens angle. Everything else we had in Indiana Jones was supernatural. And I could of lived without the CGI-fest that it was. But overall, I still liked the film, and thought it worked. Plus, it was good to see Indy back again.
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If they really wanted to do the whole 1950s ufo roswell thing they could have had the Russians believing what they were looking for was alien (some kind of artifact but not a lame plastic skull) but it turned out to be something else. Indy even said himself "Oh, c'mon! Saucer men from mars?!" I was really hoping the area 51/roswell angle would be a red herring and it would turn out to be something else that actually fitted into an indiana jones film but then they showed the alien corpse with it's head cut open in the tent and it was all over for me.

War does not make one great.

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I thought it was absolutely appropriate to have paranormal aliens. I mean look at X-Files, one episode they are chasing a spirit, the next episode they are chasing bigfoot, the next episode one of them is being abducted by aliens. I still don't really understand the apprehension to the extra-terrestrial plot. I thought the film suffered a bit by showing them too much, but the plot itself was very well done I thought, and appropriate to the Indy series.
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Yoda Is Your Father said:

I'm totally with canofhumdingers on this.

Apparently one of the main reasons it took so long to make this film was that Ford and Spielberg were not interested in the unsubtle depiction of alien invaders. "No way am I being in a Steve Spielberg movie like that," Ford told Lucas. Lucas wanted to call the new film 'Indiana Jones and the Saucer Men From Mars' but had his idea firmly rejected by Ford and Spielberg as the three men struggled to reach an agreement for around 10 years.

So what the hell changed?! because the film we got is pretty much exactly the same as the original Saucer Men draft written in the nineties.



Harrison Ford said if it wasn't made by 2008, he would never do a fourth one. Spielberg caved to Lucas because Lucas wouldn't budge on the storyline, and Ford wouldn't budge on his 2008 ultimatum. (Honestly, I can't remember where I read that, but I did somewhere)