Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of Suckiness
May 24th, 2008
Me thinks that I spoke too soon with the top five movie let-downs because we have a new contender. Actually not a contender, we have a clear and present winner of the title.
I actually didn’t want to look forward to Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull in the first place, when it was announced my initial reaction was an issue about the age of Harrison Ford (which is completely unfounded I might add) tinged with memories of the new Star Wars and War of the Worlds.
But then the trailer came out and I began to slightly hold out hope that it was going to be as fun as the previous ones. Actually over the last week or so after coming down off the high that was Iron Man I was downright excited and rushed out to see the film this morning.
It’s not to say that there isn’t some great stuff in the film, it’s just really thin on the ground and outweighed by the other crap. The actors are all great with what they’ve got and I blame two men, Spielberg and Lucas.
Now there are going to be some spoilers, I’m not going to give the major plot out but I will elude to it, let me just say that the trailers for this film have completely ignored the plot and not focused one little second to the actual theme running through the film.
Now the spoilers will begin, if you are really excited to see this film and don’t wish to be tainted by my negative take then I suggest you come back tomorrow.
You see it is hard not to discuss plot points directly in order to explain the problems this film faces and how wrong it is. Please believe me when I say I desperately wanted to love this film!!!
Here goes…
Last chance…
Spoilers begin now…
- Unnecessary gophers. If you seen the film, you’ll know what I mean and if you like them I can’t help you.
- Unnecessary car sequence.
- Area 51 is guarded by five guys in total?
- Area 51 seems to store a lot of empty boxes, or boxes full of saw dust.
- Area 51 is a very unimpressive matte painting.
- Magnetism is not selective by object
- Where was the smoking man?
- Unnecessary nuclear explosion
- Completely bullshit way of surviving a nuclear explosion
- Unnecessary subplot about FBI that just goes away
- More effing gophers?!?!!?
- Forced introduction to Marcus Brody replacement
- Bad production stills from previous films being passed off as ‘photos’
- Statues heads don’t fall off so easily even for a joke
- Indy loses his hat! No he doesn’t go back and get it, he cold loses it and then it shows up again
- Bad Australian/Russian accent
- Wildly comic bookish main villain
- Indy trusts the guy who double crossed him again and then is double crossed again like an idiot
- Plot stolen from Chariots of the Gods and the X-Files
- Crystal skull obviously plastic as it seems to weigh nothing despite being supposedly solid crystal
- Forget the gophers we now have monkeys
- Unnecessary and stupid swinging on vines scene
- CGI ants that give up for no reason
- Completely and utterly ridiculous falls over waterfalls in car/boat three times
- Villains would be unable to follow heroes through to the end but did somehow, which was handy because otherwise they would have missed the;
- end of X-Files Fight the Future with less snow
- horribly done doors blowing open
- finally I was annoyed that the Close Encounters greeting tones weren’t played
Ok that list is longer than I expected and frankly I’m sure I can add some more to it but I’m kind of feeling a little betrayed because they took a character from my childhood and put him in an awful movie. And it didn’t have to be that way because like I mentioned the actors are all fine except for the villain and I have no idea what happened to her!!
It also makes me kind of sad that this is getting such good reviews that don’t address any of the problems, or the plot, like they’re being cautious because no one says bad things about Indiana Jones.
I hope they make a fifth and they make it better to wash the taste of this one out of my mouth.
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Categories: Movies | Tags: Indiana Jones, Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
Yeah. We both agree the ridiculousness outweighs any good parts of the movie.
/* Possible spoiler below */
I did like how his class no longer full of adoring girls though.
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I agree with every single one of those points.
My good not great verdict probably comes from lower expectations and an enjoyment of the action sequences.
But those gophers and monkeys? Awful. Lucas it seems just never learns (ok it could be Spielberg, but I prefer to blame lucas)
Dans last blog post..Saturday Review: Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
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Garth - I was disappointed with the lack of face melting. The ending doesn’t quite qualify. Actually another gripe is the titles for the film not being the Indy font?
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one to wait to come out on dvd then obviously.
thanks for the warning.
Bettinas last blog post..Scaring the Salesmen.
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I’m actually really sorry to say but yes that’s right Bettina, at the very least wait until tight-arse-tuesday - there are some cool visuals that look great on the big screen and there is a very cool (if not in parts silly) car chase that is at least some fun.
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Dan - you went into my spam trap again? Someone thinks you’re unsavoury :).
Yeah I guess I’m really slamming the film because I feel quite cheated because Indy was such a huge part of my childhood.
It’s a real shame.
But the more I think about the fridge scene, the more implausible it is!
Cool music though.
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Want to talk about implausible? How about that snake being still allive after it had been used as a rope to pull people out of the quicksand
Dans last blog post..Saturday Review: Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
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ARRRRG yup, forgot to put that one on the list actually, Tracey and I talked about that one last night.
Why did they have the TV on in the explosion test site? Or milk in the fridge for that matter?
Were they hoping to test what a nuclear explosion does to a litre of milk at ground zero?
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I did like the image of indie standing in front of the atomic mushroom though, very symbolic.
Dans last blog post..Saturday Review: Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
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Oh Lee, I have missed you! First of all, I have missed your drawings. Second of all, I have missed talking sci-fi. You will have to tell me what you thought of the Stargate movie. I have not seen Indiana Jones yet, but I am so bummed you didnt like it. Ofcourse, I am not big on when they come out with movies 10 years later. I always feel like they should leave well enough alone. I loved all of the original ones and was looking forward to the new one, but never completely convinced that it would be any better than those done before. Did you hear they are coming out with a new X-Files movie? My fingers are crossed on that one.
Anyways, I’ve been gone a while now. Started blogging again recently and looking up old blog friends. Speaking of…where in the world is Nav?
See you around!
Joanna (aka Luckysnap)
Joanna (aka Luckysnap)s last blog post..….And Now, The Rest of The Story.
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Wow, the disappointment must have hit hard for you to put this much content in the post.
I’m pretty sure I can wait the 6 months to watch this on DVD.
Thanks for the review.
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Dan - he was still far to close to the explosion in my opinion, I just think they had a really cool mushroom cloud effect (I admit it looked pretty cool) sitting around that they wanted to use.
But in fairness I wonder if it wasn’t a symbol of the innocence of the past being swept away and a comment on the US government becoming as bad as those they call enemy…
A bloody fridge!?!?!!?
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Ian - it should have been so much better because all the pieces were there, Ford looks great, the effects are all pretty cool (except for a couple - CGI Gophers).
It may still be worth it on tight-arse-tuesday but only if there isn’t anything else on!
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OMG Joanna!!! I’m kind of freaked out, because I had your previous blog in my feedreader for so long and only just removed it maybe a month or so ago so you must have moved blog addresses because I see you’ve been posting for a while!!
I can’t believe you were out there all this time!?
I’ll email you as soon as I get the chance to catch up.
I’m not sure with Nav - he moved blog addresses and then I got a couple of not found errors when I went to visit - he pops in here very occasionally so he may read this and let us know.
Tisha went off the radar too, I believe though that I read somewhere that she went and had herself a child so I wonder if we’ll see her join the ranks of mommy bloggers.
Great to see you round though!!
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Wow.
I can’t believe I liked it as much as I did.
Rols last blog post..Indiana Jones & The Sequel Of Doom?
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LOL @ Rol no, I can’t believe it either
Had they removed several scenes that weren’t needed and only served to undermine my opinion of the film I wouldn’t have as much a problem either and probably would have defended it more.
But it’s good that you could enjoy it though!
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I’m gonna write my own review of this (as is everyone else on the planet with a blog, probably) that will go into more detail, but here’s my short version: I agree with every point on your list, but still enjoyed it. But I was also able to dampen my expectation significantly before going in, so that probably helped. It’s odd, because I could come up with a list of complaints longer than yours, but I still think it was worthwhile to see in the theater - just a fun ride, though, not a great Indy movie.
Jeffs last blog post..Star Wars: Clone Wars videos (and an Obi-Wan debate settled)
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[...] get past all the other stuff I didn’t like (and Lee covers most of those pretty well over at Quit Your Day Job) but once you remove the necessity of faith as a theme, you’ve lost the essence of the films [...]
I expand upon this in my own review, but basically… I’m with Rol. Despite it’s overwhelming stench of problems, I still enjoyed it.
(btw… I posted a comment here a couple days ago, but it doesn’t seem to have taken…)
Jeffs last blog post..Double Review: Narnian royalty return to take down Indiana Jones
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Jeff - thanks for drawing it to my attention - for some reason my spam filter (Akismet) had dropped you in its bin.
It’s been doing that to a few people so don’t feel like it’s picking on you!
The absolute last thing I want to do is make someone not like the film because I’ve got a list of things that bug me too much for me to like it.
I feel like there was a lack of respect of the character because of those ridiculous things that I listed which in turn is a lack of respect for the fans.
But that’s not to say that there aren’t bits in that film that I liked, it’s just hard with such big expectations I guess.
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Quite surprising. Even I wanted to jot down bulleted points of why this one sucked so much. Its such a let down.
Here’s my take on it.
http://oneknightstands.net/movie-review-indiana-jones-and-the-kingdom-of-the-crystal-skull/
What happened to mr.Lucas and Spielberg?
Sujoys last blog post..Movie Review:Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
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