Indiana Jones 5 - TTLG Forums

Thirith on 19/6/2009 at 06:23

One of my problems is that Spielberg, while he's still a great craftsman, has lost the ruthlessness he had in the late '70s/early '80s. Part of what makes Raiders my favourite Indy movie is that it's pretty rough at times: Satipo's death, the Nazi who gets run over by the truck, Mr Propellerhead, the melty-face ending. By comparison, Last Crusade is much more 'domesticated'. It's already some way towards the Spielberg who swapped the guns for walkie-talkies. I don't see this Spielberg doing something with the rough freshness of Raiders any more. (I'm wondering what directors nowadays could pull that off.)

Edit: To me, Raiders felt like I was on a ride. Sure, I couldn't really get hurt myself, but boy, did it get the adrenaline going! Some parts of Last Crusade and especially Crystal Skull felt like I was watching someone else on a ride - quite possibly a cool ride, but how can I tell if I'm not on it myself?

Morte on 19/6/2009 at 06:33

Yeah, they should probably call it Indiana Jones and the Tea Party Where Someone Said A Rude Word for all the danger and distress the characters will be in.

nicked on 19/6/2009 at 06:47

Quote Posted by heywood

But just think, Temple of Doom was the weakest of the original three films and had some of the same flaws as Crystal Skull. But they recovered to produce Last Crusade. Maybe they can recover similarly for #5.

It could be like the curse of Star Trek only for even numbers... :weird:

Vivian on 19/6/2009 at 08:53

Oh fucking awesome more sequels. If you timewarped someone from the 80's to now they'd think you were taking the piss. NEW FILMS INSTEAD, PLS and oh good lord don't (http://www.empireonline.com/news/story.asp?NID=24916) remake Alien.

Thirith on 19/6/2009 at 09:04

Because the '80s had fewer sequels? That's now how I remember them...

Vivian on 19/6/2009 at 09:19

Yeah, one or two - not five. But these are all franchises that were the cinematic highlights of 80's cinema. Why the high holy fuck are they turning the noughties into some kind of 80's ghola instead of doing the decent thing and actually making some of the (I'm sure) hundreds of interesting, intelligent scripts they must have lying around? It's 20 years later!

I know the answer is money, but it's still annoying. What the hell is going to happen in a new indiana jones film except a diminished retread of it's 80's heighday? Is humanity so incapable of making up new stories about killer robot apocalypses that we need to suffer a fourth terminator film? Was Batman 6 really necessary?

Thirith on 19/6/2009 at 09:33

Well, I think that Batman Begins and The Dark Knight had tons more creative/artistic credibility than any number of non-sequelly summer blockbusters. As far as I'm concerned, the issue isn't about sequels or remakes but about the people who pull the strings. I don't care if a film about the robot apocalypse is called Terminator 4 or When Robots Ruled the Earth: as long as the latter doesn't bring anything new, interesting and/or worthwhile to the table (to be honest, a fun movie doesn't need to be original - that's a bonus - but it needs to be well written and well crafted) it's in no way better than the former.

Vivian on 19/6/2009 at 09:43

I guess you're right - multiple sequels don't have to be... uh... suckquels (sorry). But sequels bring fanboys, and fanboys bring terrible, tedious attention to detail in lieu of creative thought, so that it actually becomes pretty difficult to do something original with a sequel because of all the mind-numbing neckbeard scrotes insisting that it'd better be more of the same, or else, and all of the market research showing that doing something different might earn less money.
People start to bandy about phrases like 'respecting the mythology' (i.e. doing the same scenes again and again, terminator steps on a skull, someone stares slowly upwards at the alien before getting shafted, Indy has snakes poured on him, Batman stands on a roof etc), executives shovel money into it and hire either some hack who doesn't give two shits or some up-and-comer who is going to be bullied into toeing the franchise line anyway, and you end up with 'terminator vs. the crystal skull' etc

Thirith on 19/6/2009 at 09:50

That too, though, depends entirely on execution IMO. A well done call-back to earlier films can be a great moment - and used effectively to surprise the audience by making them expect something and then doing something else. I also thought that Star Trek did some clever shout-outs to fans without being slavishly devoted to them.

My point is this: if the producers care about making a good movie as much as they care about money, they'll get someone with talent and a style of their own, and then you might end up with a result that covers both "respect to the mythology" and bringing in new impulses. Case in point IMO: Christopher Nolan on Batman Begins and The Dark Knight. Neither of these was shackled by the Batman mythology, yet they were clearly Batman films. Good Batman films.

If you're a producer who doesn't care about talent or quality, you get McG. You get a crappy script. You start thinking, "Okay, what would make the target audience go 'Fuck, yeah!'?" And you usually get this terribly wrong, unless your target audience happens to be braindead males aged 16-25.

Renault on 19/6/2009 at 19:32

Quote Posted by Thirith

Couldn't agree more. I think some of these guys get rich, get married and have kids, and then just go soft. Lucas suffered the same thing - just compare the two Star Wars trilogies. You never would have seen a slapstick scene (like the one in Attack of the Clones where 3PO's head is attached to a clone trooper and he's busting out one liners) in the original Star Wars movie. Even in the cheesiest movie of the original 3 (ROTJ), you still had Ewoks getting stepped on, burned, and beaten up. The original two Star Wars movies both just had a serious tone that made them almost more drama than pure action movies.