John and I finally broke down and saw the new Indiana Jones movie. We had decided to wait until it came out on DVD because we knew it would be disappointing. But we figured, why not just get it over with.
I don't know why there aren't more bad reviews of this movie. Here's a bit of one.
All I have to say is WHY?! It was totally unnecessary to destroy something like this. And so avoidable.
Cate Blanchett as a Russian= funny good
Peru as a setting= awesome good (I want to go to Peru!!)
Harrison Ford, even if he's old now=still good with a whip
And then there were aliens and flying refrigerators, neither of which equals good of any kind. Oh yeah, and we're going to fire Dr. Jones because he's a communist? Whatever.
I have no problem believing that water from the Holy Grail has healing powers or a man can live through something as crazy as having his heart ribbed out of his chest. But this movie didn't have this same believability factor. And it wasn't just the aliens. But honestly, I can rewrite this script 10 different ways, still maintaining most of what happened, and have a good movie. Why can people who do this every day not have that same ability.
I mean, Peru offers an insane amount of legend. There could have been any number of things that could have brought Indiana there. There could even have been a crystal skull with crazy magical powers. There could have been insane jungle adventures and insane Peruvian natives. It could have been amazing!
As I've pointed out, we were all able to believe in the Holy Grail. That was God's power. So why not just have a "god" in Peru with the same kind of thing. Why did those "gods" have to be aliens? They didn't. The Temple of Doom was all insane people, and it was great. Why even take it there? Oh yeah, it's the 50s and that's the only thing we can think about when we think of the 50s-Aliens! We Americans are just that stupid.
We're not even going to go into the fact that there are countless things that are left unresolved at the end of the movie.
And we're just going to pretend that the last 30 minutes of the movie just never happened.
George Lucas, I officially have zero respect for you.
1 comment:
I totally warned you! But did you listen? No. ;)
I think Lucas's first fundamental failing was deciding that the new time period meant having to emulate a different kind of movie. The first Indiana Jones movies took the adventure serials of the 30s and 40s to new heights. Lucas himself has said that he decided that the 50s setting meant that this movie had to emulate the monster/alien movies of that time period. And I really don't think it works with this character at ALL. Indiana Jones isn't purely about archaeology, but there's so much awesome mysticism and theology mixed in. And as you said, it's actually rather believable. And this totally wasn't either of those things. I would've been happier if there had been a mystical or even scientific reason for this. And, really, this feels like well-trodden ground. So many other movies have tried to explain why ancient cultures had more advanced technology than they should've, from The Fifth Element to Stargate and beyond.
And I really didn't feel this thing had an epic scale to it. Not at all. The first movie... the ark of the covenant. The third movie... the holy grail. Even though the second movie didn't have as recognizable an artifact, it still felt epic. The journey and the quest felt epic. And there was a great evil to conquer in ALL of them.
But this didn't have that at all. And it was all very predictable. And I know what you mean about the last 30 minutes. Ugh. I saw everything coming well before it did. Gee, d'ya think the bad lady is going to get exactly what she wants, only it won't be what she expects? Wow! Didn't see THAT coming.
I felt like it was a poor imitation of all the poor imitations of Indiana Jones movies that have come out in the interim. It was like watching National Treasure, only worse because, deep down, I really wanted more. I wasn't expecting much, but I WANTED more.
Grrrrr...
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