Precisely! :P

I actually think the "Mahabharata wars" WOULD provide cinema's best god chariots MacGuffin yet. Annoyingly, stylistic distinguishment from Doom would be nigh unattainable. Then also Skull pretty much covered paleocontact.

Fortunately, plenty 'o archaeological "holy grails" abound.

quote:

I actually think the "Mahabharata wars" WOULD provide cinema's best god chariots MacGuffin yet. Annoyingly, stylistic distinguishment from Doom would be nigh unattainable. Then also Skull pretty much covered paleocontact.

Fortunately, plenty 'o archaeological "holy grails" abound.

Paleocontact is a broad concept. Currently, et-mythology posits, what, ten different et species?

Lots of room. However, one can run a riff only so many times before variations on its theme pale

Still, I think there's room for a few more Heir to the Fedora&Whip movies to be made. They could buy right from Neal Stepehensen and redo the whole Babel riff he did in Snowcrash.

Eventually, Indy will be another icon as are the aged heroes in The League of Extraordinary gentlemen. Cool thing about Indy is that his icon carries an entire subpulp genre with it. With Indy you get Terry & the Pirates, fu Manchu, Charlie Chan, and Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon dropping in periodically.

Indy himself is a divine object of immense pulp powers. It is without a doubt he could kick James Bond's ass, get the girl, and neutralize the rogue nuke not by guessing which wire to cut but by chanting ancient Sanskrit.

Indy rules, Bond drools.

Immensely readable post, as per usual, Kenmeer.

I'm pathologically averse to Abrahamic artifacts after Raiders and Crusade (one exception: Koranic, kaaba, Topkapi reliquary, etc). So the Etemenanki never entered my head. It's a great suggestion for the grandiose title possibilities alone!

One icon I've been vulture-circling -- not as MacGuffin but "big subplot", everything bound up in the climax -- is the mystery of Akhenaten's tomb, disputedly KV-55. It offers at least this striking image:



His(?) effaced golden coffin, stripped of eternity.

I tabled Assyriological Euhemerism ever so fleetingly until deciding we'd seen enough Near East (for a while). Indy's yet to "go Norse", so to speak. Still, a Babylonian odyssey could be made sufficiently different . . .

I'll e-mail you what I sent our friend UberDog.

Norse to Alaska, and the Valley of a Thousand Smokes.

Lest we forget, the South Pacific was once the realm of witchy doctored mystery.

The Antarctic Atlantis.

Oh, a lad could spend a month of weekend camping trips lost in the state park's anaconda-infested jungles of southern Wisconsin, seeking the Riddle of the Towering Totems...

And in the end. . .



Our revels now are ended. These, our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits, and
Are melted into air. Into thin air --
And like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great Globe itself
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve
And like this insubstantial pageant faded
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on; and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.



PROSPERO, The Tempest

Remember how Pirates of the Carribean was based on an amusement ride in Disneyland? I have the same suspicion about the Indiana Jones flick. Somewhere in Disneyland is an Indy ride where you get to swing through trees, ride waterfalls that should break your neck, travel through Mayan temples and stare into the skulls of aliens.

The whole movie was based not on an actual story but on a succession of sfx, with an alibi scriptwriter who got hired for a few bucks to glom all the effects together.

Honestly, that was the worst plot I've seen since "Pirates". It's fucking awful! The things people do are either incredibly stupid or incredibly inspired to the point of just being a shortcut. The whole movie is people running about hysterically from one studio set to the next.

From what I can see it steals shamelessly from The Mummy, the X-Files and some inevitable termite horror movie.

Also, Cate! What have they done to Cate!

However, I did get a lot of laughs out of it - most of them unintended - so I wouldn't call it a waste of money. It's preserved a dry sense of humor, mostly through Harrison Ford's deadpan acting. I particularly liked the motorcycle chase scene and the one with the rocket right at the beginning.

So.
Plot: 0/10
SFXand chase scenes: 8/10
Characters: 4/10
Indy's "not again" face: 10/10

quote:

Originally posted by Babylon the Bride:
Remember how Pirates of the Carribean was based on an amusement ride in Disneyland? I have the same suspicion about the Indiana Jones flick.

I just saw it last night at the drive-in. I had never been to a drive-in befor but it is a fun way to see a movie you don't care about.

I have to agree with the brides opinion though. I dislike effects movies as a rule and this reaffirms that opinion.

I also think Lucas should be ashamed of himself for managing to fuck up both star wars and now the indy films.

I mean really how can you be this bad at moviemaking?

quote:

Honestly, that was the worst plot I've seen since "Pirates".

really? that had a plot?

You might prefer the purer exercise, Indiana Jones and the Saucer Men from Mars, by Die Hard scribe Jeb Stuart.

Source of at least three of the better Indy 4 set pieces. Jones Sr. returns rather memorably in two sequences vestigially referenced by the final film (considered among the best "unproduced" Indy moments).

I've seen the movie a few times now and I think
I've finally settled in on how I feel about it.
In short, it's better than Last Crusade, but
contains some of the worst moments of the Indy
films.

All of the movies tried to follow conventions of
older film styles and I think IV (scifi) worked
better than III (Steve McQueen-style behind
enemy lines war movie). They really got the look
down for that, especially at the beginning. Ok,
the plot and subject was straight out of
Chariots of the Gods, but I think they actually
managed to make it work. At least, once you
remember that this is supposed to be a scifi
movie and not the pulp-action of Raiders.
Really, expect aliens. Expect zombies. I'm
surprised there wasn't an alien robot. There
should have been an alien robot.

Kate did an excellent job. I thought the mentor
angle (before they met Marion) was nicely done.
They were careful to address both the idea that
the Mitchell-Hedges skull wasn't an alien
artifact and that Indy has been drifting towards
a more respectable archaeology (though not quite
getting there). I very much enjoyed the opening
action sequence including the fighting. A nice
blend of traditional Indy with cold war-era
James Bond.

Points against it:
The tacked on sand-pit scene. Really, it's
obvious that they couldn't figure out any other
way to release the big secret. It broke the
rhythm. It was poorly acted. There was a lot of
dead air. It was just teeth-grindingly bad.

Ham-handed foreshadowing. "Mutt"? Really? "What
kind of name is that?"

Lack of tension. I still hold my breath during
scenes in Raiders. Excellent use of timing there
and totally absent in IV.

Goofy. When the movie opened, looking like a
scene from Caddyshack, I knew I was in for
trouble. Nothing makes for a good movie like
some guy getting hit in the crotch. Again,
Raiders, while it has lighthearted scenes, never
gets so goofy as that. And lets not forget the
"wookie scene". Always with the fucking Wookies.

Reunion. Honestly, it felt in some scenes that
they were having so much fun getting back
together that they forgot to actually do work.

Then there are parts that aren't bad so much as
they conflicted with certain political feelings
I have. I was stunned at the jingoistic dialog
coming from Indy. Oh yes, praise V. Gordon
Childe, but you realize he was a Marxist, yes?
In fact, many (I would actually say most)
archaeologists of the era were. Indy being so
anti-communist is somewhat unlikely.

I also had a problem with the idea of Indy
spying. Yeah, it happened during WWII, but in
the current political wake of Project Minerva,
it's a touchy issue.

No probots, either.

quote:

Originally posted by Metro Dynamics:
Precisely! :P

I actually think the "Mahabharata wars" WOULD provide cinema's best god chariots MacGuffin yet. Annoyingly, stylistic distinguishment from Doom would be nigh unattainable. Then also Skull pretty much covered paleocontact.

Fortunately, plenty 'o archaeological "holy grails" abound.

I was thinking about that the other day as well, but it seems a bit over-the-top for Indy.

quote:

Originally posted by Marshdrifter:

Points against it:
The tacked on sand-pit scene. Really, it's
obvious that they couldn't figure out any other
way to release the big secret. It broke the
rhythm. It was poorly acted. There was a lot of
dead air. It was just teeth-grindingly bad.

I thought this scene worked for the most part. I liked the snake bit more than the rest.

quote:

Ham-handed foreshadowing. "Mutt"? Really? "What
kind of name is that?"

I saw this as a decent wink to the obviousness of the plot device.

quote:

Goofy. When the movie opened, looking like a
scene from Caddyshack, I knew I was in for
trouble. Nothing makes for a good movie like
some guy getting hit in the crotch. Again,
Raiders, while it has lighthearted scenes, never
gets so goofy as that. And lets not forget the
"wookie scene". Always with the fucking Wookies.

i didn't get the groundhogs either.

Where are the wookies? I am going to see it again Monday, please tell me where to look for wookies, or is this a reference to Kashyyk in Episode 3?

quote:

I also had a problem with the idea of Indy
spying. Yeah, it happened during WWII, but in
the current political wake of Project Minerva,
it's a touchy issue.

The spy angle was appropriate to the history of archaeologists as spies though. There have been a few of them after all.

As for anti-Communist? I did't get the idea he was anti-communism so much as he was tired of totalitarianism.

Also, after fighting the Nazi's in two films with such gusto, hoc could he not have been involved in World War II? As a spy makes perfect sense aside from the fact that the Nazi already know who he is and hate him.

The movie has problems, no doubt about it, but, overall, it has way more going for it in my mind. The action, characters and Indy tags were essentially all there without me feeling like it was a cloying attempt to get me to approve of the film by said standard.

I'm including a strange way to get India obliquely back in my reply email.

Marsh (fellow MD!), without Indy's nationalism, we wouldn't get the line, "I like Ike."

("Wookiee scene": I think this is a Tarzan euphemism. As in: the Mutt + capuchin vine-ride set piece).

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Metro Dynamics,

quote:

I thought this scene worked for the most part. I liked the snake bit more than the rest.

The snake bit was my least favorite part of the
movie. The movie made Indy a parody of himself.

Holy Fucking Irony George Lucas, You asshole...

http://www.secrethistoryofstarwars.com/

quote:

Originally posted by Metro Dynamics:
No probots, either.

quote:

Originally posted by martin:
Holy Fucking Irony George Lucas, You asshole...

If it were me and my property, I'd wear the
t-shirt too.

quote:

Originally posted by Marshdrifter:

quote:

I thought this scene worked for the most part. I liked the snake bit more than the rest.

The snake bit was my least favorite part of the
movie. The movie made Indy a parody of himself.

I don't think he did, he came off as he always does around snakes, most like in Temple of Doom.

quote:

Originally posted by Marshdrifter:

quote:

Originally posted by martin:
Holy Fucking Irony George Lucas, You asshole...

If it were me and my property, I'd wear the
t-shirt too.

I mean, it is true that Han shot first, but GL is the revisionist filmmaker that ...


...Blah, blah, you know all the this anyhow.

quote:

Originally posted by martin:
I mean, it is true that Han shot first, but GL is the revisionist filmmaker that ...

Exactly. I probably wouldn't go back and revise my
own work like that (my opinion of editing posts
here should be well known by now), but if I did
and somebody made a t-shirt complaining about said
changes, I'd totally wear the shirt. In public. A
lot.

But Indy is a parody of himself.

"If it were me and my property" is a good general point. It's natural to rebel against one's elders. We should remember good moviemaking isn't easy, and we'd each of us have to gargle gallons of pride if Steven handed us the megaphone and shrugged.

Check IMDb. Check "So, what IS the pinnacle?" thread. As Ringo once sang,

"Y'know it don't come easy."

Thus I endorse gracious gratitude. And I did love the picture.