I didn't mind the over-the-top, though the
"Tarzan" routine
almost made me get up and leave. But, come on...
ALIENS?! Even "interdimensional" aliens?! What the...?
It's always been a staple of Indy flicks that he deals with
magic. The Ark of the Covenant, the Stones of Whateverthefuck, the Holy Grail. To switch that to super-science just felt...like a big ol' WTF? Ancient Astronauts? Really? The whole Van Daaniken thing just put me off and the giant 1950's cheap ass flying saucer at the end just made me wanna spit.
Why not go back to the
magical relics bit? What's wrong with the Lance of Longinus? Excalibur? The Commies wouldn't want those? A magical sword that would make Stalin invincible? You know?
It just felt like horseshit to me. The whole
chase through the jungle was "speeder-bikes" redux, the plot...okay, let me get this straight. Ox finds the grave of what's-his-nut, gets the skull, *takes it to the temple*, somehow fails to open the door so he puts it back where he found it, goes batshit and gets locked away so he can conveniently scratch psedo-mad-dribble all over his cell and lead Indy to find the skull that he, Ox, *already found*? Buh-whuh?
Meh, I say. Meh.
t smooches on sumi
$10 says the HPHBP trailer is tied to Dark Knight.
I can't remember, what movies were the trailers tied to before?
Why not go back to the magical relics bit?
I was fine with the
alien stuff because in the 50's it was all. about. aliens. And Commies. But, it was all. about. aliens. And flying saucers. Superscience *is* magic. Any science beyond the knowledge of a civilization is magic. We may be more aware that there are scientific reasons behind it, but if we can't recreate it, it's magic. I had less problem with that aspect than I did the "swinging through the jungle", a side comment may have popped out of my mouth at that about about George of the Jungle during that scene, and the "drops three times" and they all survive.
Still, I enjoyed myself. Probably because folks already said not to expect it to be too much like the first three, so I went into it without a lot of expectations.
The
refrigerator scene
was priceless.
See, for me, my biggest problem
was the refrigerator thing. That's where I almost walked out. Especially since it ended up having no point.
MM, that worked for me because, instead of being a '30s pulp serial, this film was clearly a '50s pulp drive-in movie. It had all the tropes from that era
angry teens, radiation, aliens, and evil commies.
and that worked for me.
I got Feast, the result of the last season of Project Greenlight, as my weekend movie from Netflix. I watched it so you don't have to. I think the people behind it wanted to make a sick horror-comedy like Dead Alive or Slither, but with no writing or acting talent to bring to bear (seriously, they spent half the commentary raving about how good Eric Dane was in his two minutes of screentime!) were doomed to failure.
I think I had the same problems MM did. As I said leaving the theater, it was entertaining, but ridiculous. I get what people are saying, but it just wasn't believable to me in the way that the other ones were. Which is crazy in a way, because, really, it's Indiana Jones. I had a similar problem with Ratatouille--even though the whole movie was fantasy, I couldn't really get past the fact that the moving the arms via the hair was not "believable" to me.
