OMG! Indy and the Crystal Skulls! OMG! WOW! ***SPOILERS***

Shellhead wrote:

Internet Groupthink has declared that Matrix: Reloaded sucked, but that's a retcon.

That doesn't make it false. If they remake Revolutions with the plot that it should have had then Reloaded will be good again. As it stands it's pointless.

WHY couldn't they have just made it a Matrix-in-the-Matrix like we wanted!?!

-MMM

Oh give me a fucking break. "Internet groupthink" had nothing to do with it - both sequels were pretty fucking shit, that's why they were panned.
For all the mystical mumbo jumbo bullshit the films had NOTHING to say. The action scenes were utterly pointless. "Oh lets fight so we can know each other." "Really?" "No, we actually need to fight to break up the boring exposition we are loading the audience with."

The problem was the Matrix wasn't built to have sequels. Once Neo discovered the truth of his digital existance, and his brain accepted that nothing was real, the story was over. At the end of matrix one Neo was essentially a god within the Matrix, and could do whatever he wants. How can you do a follow up story involving that?
You can't, as seen in the matrix sequels.
Burly brawl? Freeway chase? etc etc? All bullshit, as Neo's understanding meant that he could have wished it all away as he accepted none of it was real.

The Matrix was a great film because it had a great (if stolen) premise and combined that with great action and special effects. The sequels were blatantly just made because there was money to be made in making them. They had great action scenes but they weren't as fresh a second and third time around and the writers couldn't think of anything new so the stories were bollocks.

I'll go a step further and say that the original Matrix was better because the action sequences were part of the story rather than gratuitous eye-candy. There's nothing wrong with the latter, but when an action sequence can be awe inspiring AND help the storytelling? That's just a whole other level.

That's a good point and I wonder if it doesn't apply to all action movies. All the great action films I can think of the action is integral to the story - beyond the trivial, here come the bad guys, let's get 'em. Since comupters have become so involved in film making, it seems like having action scenes that top last year's blockbusters and show something people haven't seen before has become too important. It is like the big action scenes often come first and the plot is an afterthought coming below booking the rights to the franchise, the money making big names and seven CGI studios.

I saw it this evening. Meh. Not that bad but could have been excellent, which is the real shame.

I think CGI has ruined the type of action movie I prefer. Forever. There will never be another movie like Die Hard nor could there be a movie like Raiders and its reliance on pure stunt work without the ability to make it absurd with CGI. It makes me feel like an old man to say shit like that--"these talkies have ruined cinema!"

I'm shocked an appalled that Barnes STILL hasn't seen Indy 4. I want to get in on a spoiler thread too, so I can really lay into the bullshit surrounding the entire Crystal Skull concept itself, and the monstrousity that was Shia LeBouf's character (anyone who's seen it knows what I mean).

I utterly despise the Temple of Doom, and quite frankly, I consider it worse than the Crystal Skull, and that's saying a lot. This fourth instalment was bad on many, many levels. 50s nostalgia doesn't hold a candle to 30s nostalgia. Seeing Indy old is depressing. The way they took the story of Indiana Jones was depressing. The way they handled the supernatural element was pathetic. Commies are the poor man's Nazis. Everything about the movie was "Meh". Showing Karen Allen in the previews gave away a major plot line for me some 45 minutes before I was supposed to know it. Post-Prequel-Lucas wrote the story, and it really shows. My hopes were up, and dashed miserably. Like someone else said, the further away from the viewing I get, the more I dislike it.

I have come to the conclusion that they should make another (/more) Indiana Jones movies, but not until both Spielberg and Lucas are dead, so they can't ruin it. They should get a new guy and renew the series, like Batman and James Bond, and they should pay tribute to the good old movies not by ham-fisted tongue-in-cheek references, but by remaining true to what is really the unavoidable classic Indiana Jones setting.

Also, all the SW Prequels blew chunks, the Matrix sequels blew chunks, and I was more excited after seeing Indy 4 about the Hellboy 2 and Batman 2 previews I saw before it than I was about IJATKOTCS.

Fuck Barnes. Thread now marked with spoilers. Go nuts.

If you think this was better than Temple of Doom you are a metrosexual.

Mr Skeletor wrote:

Fuck Barnes. Thread now marked with spoilers. Go nuts.

If you think this was better than Temple of Doom you are a metrosexual.

Temple of Doom was great - I don't get all the hate for that movie. I liked Indy 4, but it definitely ranks 4th of the 4 films for me. It didn't really feel like an Indy movie until about 45-60 minutes in, but from there on out it was very fun. The jungle chase scene was fantastic.

Temple wasn't very good. This wasn't very good. Anyone who is trying to rank them above one another is just wasting time on two not very good movies.

Gary Sax wrote:

Temple wasn't very good. This wasn't very good. Anyone who is trying to rank them above one another is just wasting time on two not very good movies.

Wasting time is one of my great passions.

Michael Barnes wrote:

Oh, and then there's those ol' Space Chinamen...good god, people thought the Gungans were racist caricatures.

Haven't seen Indy yet [Katharine is returning from a business trip in Pakistan in a week with a freshly pressed DVD copy; love those chinese "imports"....], but I couldn't let this one pass without comment. The Space Chinamen had *nothing* on the hook-nosed bat-winged money-changing pawnbroker "I'm not a bad 1930s Protocols of the Elders of Zion stereotype of a Jew" thing to which the young Skywalker was indentured. It was so bad I was genuinely surprised they didn't insert something in there about how his race captured and slaughtered Jedi "younglings" to use their blood for ceremonies on some holiday. That, without question, beat out the Stepin Fetchit Gungans in my book for most ill-advised characterization in those films...

I'll echo the "kinda worse the further removed from it you are" sentiments. I went in with realistic expectations that I'd just kinda turn my brain off and enjoy it for whatever it was, but there were a few scenes that I just had to go too far in that direction. Since I feel weird being the first to drop any real spoilers, I'll just say that I felt like the Soviet introduction was kinda half hearted, the monkey scene was retardedly unnecessary, the climax left both my wife and me feeling "all that for what?", and after the climax the dénouement was horrible, horrible, horribly UN-Indy.

That said, I liked the movie. A solid 6. Some really good action and H. Ford one liners. I liked Indy Jr. but I'd never seen that guy before (yeah, I still get crap from my geek friends about missing Transformers) so I didnt know what to expect. Great action scenes and the jungle chase probably being at the top.

So, yeah - a 6.

the Soviet introduction was kinda half hearted, the monkey scene was retardedly unnecessary

Totally agree on those. The vine-swinging with the monkeys...just stupefyingly bad.

On the whole I thought the movie was decent. Not deserving of the derision it's getting in some quarters, but well below the series' high water mark.

I liked it. I thought the chase scenes were great and the nuclear bomb test part was entertaining. The CG prairie dog things were horrible, though, as were the monkeys. I thought there would be more traps, too. I thought it was pretty good, though, overall. (way better than the star wars prequels)

I felt like the overall message the movie was conveying is:
"Monkeys and aliens hate communists" or something like that.