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Early Review Calls New Indiana Jones Film Dreadful

Posted by timothy on Thu May 15, 2008 01:02 PM
from the yeah-that's-just-like-your-opinion-man dept.
Movies Entertainment
bowman9991 writes "Hope this one isn't true! An early negative review calls the upcoming "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull" movie predictable, lacking in tension, and a fan's worst nightmare. SFFMedia believes this new Indiana Jones movie could create a similar reaction a lot of people experienced after watching the first of the last three Star Wars movies, 'The Phantom Menace': you wait for years and years, the anticipation building, and then it's so awful it taints your view of the original movies. Of course George Lucas was involved with Star Wars too." The SFFMedia piece refers to this review on Ain't it Cool News. The trailer I saw (before Iron Man) actually looked great to me, so I'm taking this with a grain of salt.

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  • No lack of tension at all! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 15, @01:07PM (#23420100)
    The opening scene is a total heart attack. Indy barely escapes a huge stone ball despite being slowed by his walker. He pulls his colostomy bag out of the way just in time. It was a real heart pounding experience. But that was easily fixed with an emergency room visit and some clot-busting drugs.

  • A good trailer (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Rurik (113882) on Thursday May 15, @01:07PM (#23420104)
    The trailer I saw (before Iron Man) actually looked great to me, so I'm taking this with a grain of salt.

    Unfortunately, trailers have little to do with movies anymore. Trailer designers and technicians have made an art out of what they do: making the most boring movies look exciting and fun. Honestly, they're good at what they do! By just changing transition graphics, music score, sound clips, and some of the shots, they can make an action movie look like a: comedy, drama, or documentary.
  • This one guy rants about the movie, but there have been several other positive reviews. Just now media is picking up on this one aintitcool review and running with it. The original poster, ShogunMaster, just wanted a lot of attention and he got it.

    It's an odd phenomenon we're seeing: One original poor review, then it gets written *about* in several other places, now all of a sudden people think there are lots of bad reviews. Huh?
  • Well, this fits two patterns with the previous movies:

    (1) Odd numbers good, even numbers bad
    (2) PG good, PG-13 bad

    So I suppose now the question is -- how does Crystal Skull compare with the Temple of Doom?

      • Re:#4, PG-13.... (Score:5, Informative)

        by Cowclops (630818) on Thursday May 15, @01:38PM (#23420776)
        Temple of Doom is the reason PG-13 was created. There was no PG-13 rating at the time but the heart-ripping-out sequence was just a bit too gory for the PG rating so somebody yelled THINK OF THE CHILDREN and thus PG-13 was created. Which means Temple of Doom itself is, in fact, PG.

        Last Crusade is PG-13.

  • So far this has been the pattern:

    1st film: Groundbreaking
    2nd film: Great
    3rd film: Ok
    4th film: WTF was everyone thinking?

    So help me if one character utters something like "Me-sa gonna get the skull, Indy?", I'm going to have kill myself right there in the theater. Maybe I'll humanley spare some fellow movie patrons by taking them out first. :P

  • And? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Enahs (1606) on Thursday May 15, @01:18PM (#23420336) Journal
    The original three are "dreadful" by critics' standards. They're ALL predictable. Predictable is what made them funny, imho. They're supposed to be SERIALS, for Pete's sake.

    The second one is dreadful by MY standards.

  • Save us from crystal skulls!!! (Score:5, Funny)

    by FooAtWFU (699187) on Thursday May 15, @01:36PM (#23420728) Homepage

    There was also an episode of The A-Team towards the end of its run about a crystal skull. It, too, was widely regarded as the worst episode ever, a fan's nightmare, and such.

    The lesson: if it says "crystal skull" anywhere, avoid it like the plague.

  • It's only about money (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Raven737 (1084619) on Thursday May 15, @01:46PM (#23420936)
    Movies today are never made to make a (possibly small) fan base happy,
    they are only made to make a lot of money and for that it only has to be (mildly) appealing to the masses.
    All those 'fans' will see it anyhow and chances are 90% of them will hate it regardless how 'good' others think it is.

    Big Money means:
    • the movie is made so a 6 year old can watch it with his parents, nothing too brutal & funny scenes for kids (remember jar jar binks?)
    • nothing complicated, keep good and evil clearly separated, you have to know whos evil when you see them, otherwise the kids get confused
    • don't take any chances, avoid anything controversial, use the known formula (happy ending, nobody likable gets killed)
    • it doesn't have to be good as long as it has a well known name (sequel sequel sequel & why Bush got elected after all)
    • a mediocre movie made for the masses makes more money then a excellent movie for insiders
    So with that in mind, i expect it to be watchable but nothing special.

  • It's Easy to Spot The Stinker (Score:5, Interesting)

    by mpapet (761907) on Thursday May 15, @01:58PM (#23421212) Homepage
    Really, it is.

    The wikipedia reference spells it out.

    -The film was in development hell since the 1989 release of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, because Spielberg and Ford initially disagreed over Lucas's choice of the skull as the plot device.

    You've got an actor with creative input into the movie plot. Very rarely does that ever work. Yes, the actors have input, it is most successful when it's improv within the filming of the movie.

    - ...rom a story co-written by executive producer George Lucas..... Screenwriters Jeb Stuart, Jeffrey Boam, M. Night Shyamalan, Frank Darabont and Jeff Nathanson wrote drafts, before David Koepp's script satisfied all three men.

    Multiple treatments of the same premise, few of which actually materialize. This suggests the amount of vetting, oversized-personalities, and plain old stupidity was committee-style approval hell.

      • Re:complete BS (Score:5, Insightful)

        by vux984 (928602) on Thursday May 15, @02:01PM (#23421276)
        The people who write those reviews are almost always elitist movie snobs, who are missing the point that it's a *movie*, not high art.

        They aren't missing the point. You are. There's only so much information you can pack into a 'star rating'

        Movie Critics are rating movies by how good they are on a multitude of levels. A 4 star movie has to be entertaining, interesting, thought provoking, well written, well directed, well acted, etc, etc, etc.

        The Phantom Menace might hit the entertaining button but its a dismal fail on most other criteria. Its poorly acted, poorly written, poorly directed...

        People go to the movies to be entertained for 2 hours. A simple popcorn-muncher is sometimes all you really want.

        You are practically admitting it right here, that you KNOW and AGREE they are crappy movies!! But you like watching them anyway. That's fine... I do too... a one or two star rating doesn't mean you won't enjoy the movie and shouldn't go see it, but rather you shouldn't expect it be a 'Godfather II'.

        I'm personally looking forward to the new Indy.

        Me too. However I'm now expecting it to be 'summer popcorn fun' not 'groundbreaking brilliant'. (Which if you'd seen the previous 3, 'summer popcorn fun' is really what you should have been expecting all along.)

        The other thing that ruins reviews like this is a fanboy gets his crush on, and waits in anticipation for 10-20 years, and has all these grandiose ideas of what the movie should or shouldn't look/feel/smell like, and then there's no possible way for the movie to live up to that much internal-hype.

        To a point, but I don't think it affects the movie's rating overall as much as all that. The last crusade came out in 89. Anyone under 25 is pretty much immune to that effect and will see the movie for its own merit. A lot of people under 30 haven't even seen the first 3.

        That's what happened with the new Star Wars trilogy (although Jar-Jar made me want to stab Lucas in the throat...)

        No. The new Star Wars was just shit. The originals were defining movies for a generation. Most kids today have already forgotten the new trilogy. They had no pent up expectations, and they still couldn't care less about them. Face it, they just weren't that good.

        None of the new star wars movies made the imdb top 250. All 3 of the Lord of the Rings movies made the top 30. Both trilogies had MASSIVE fanboy followings and pent up expectations and both movies faced the wrath of the screaming fanboys. But at the end of it all Star Wars competely sucked. LotR didn't. It's just that simple.

    • Re:Well.... (Score:5, Informative)

      by Lord_Frederick (642312) on Thursday May 15, @01:28PM (#23420558)
      There just isn't any excuse for Jar-Jar.

    • Re:Well.... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Wylfing (144940) <.ten.gniflyw. .ta. .nairb.> on Thursday May 15, @01:31PM (#23420620) Homepage Journal

      I'm foregoing modding you up to reply. I completely agree with you. Although I really wish some things had been done differently for Phantom Menace, I found the movie quite enjoyable, and it's the film I like best among the three prequels.

      Veering off-topic: the things I wish had been different include having Obi-Wan first meet Anakin as a young adult hot-shot pilot during the Clone Wars (c.f. A New Hope, "When I met your father..."), never revealing the origins of C-3PO and R2-D2 nor revealing why they are always together, and an expanded/more intelligent role for Darth Maul (we never needed to see Sidious during that movie, Maul was all the villain we needed, just like we only needed Dooku in the 2nd movie -- actually both Maul and Dooku are FAR more interesting characters than Sidious and should have featured large in all 3 movies).

      (At this point you probably wish I had modded you instead. I'm sorry!)

    • Re:Not a bit afraid (Score:5, Insightful)

      by lilfields (961485) on Thursday May 15, @01:39PM (#23420800) Homepage
      I back this poster, as cowardice as he/she is...Spielberg has hardly ever made a film that was just completely awful...A.I. was kind of weird, but it was pretty good. Anyhow, I can't think of a single Spielberg film I didn't get some enjoyment from, so I doubt Indiana Jones 4 will be any different

      • Re:That, my friends, is... (Score:5, Funny)

        by mark72005 (1233572) on Thursday May 15, @01:39PM (#23420814)
        There is no standard in the universe by which the Phantom Menace can be judged a 'great movie'.
        • Indeed, I could almost guarantee that without the original Star Wars pedigree, Phantom Menace would never have been greenlit in the first place and would *certainly* not have been released in its existing form. It would have been reworked, re-shot and probably still eventually shelved, then dumped straight to DVD assuming it was greenlit in the first place.

          Can you see the pitch now?

          Lucas: "It's a film about trade disputes and tax reform... in space!"

          Studio: "Next!"

      • Re:That, my friends, is... (Score:5, Interesting)

        by uniquename72 (1169497) on Thursday May 15, @01:57PM (#23421166)
        You seem to be submitting your opinion as fact so I'll do the same. I thought Temple of Doom was a horrible, horrible piece of crap. Like too many Spielberg projects from the '80s, it tried was too hard to be funny, with the girl playing a slapstick character that didn't work at all in the context of the movie.

        Spielberg in recent interviews repeatedly refers to these movies as "comedies," which I think is the root of the problem. Raiders was not a comedy, although it had some comedic elements (but they were occasional).

        Your main argument seems to be that these movies didn't suck, but only paled in comparison to the vastly superior first installments. To rebut this (and strengthen my own point), I point to Empire Strikes Back. It is often considered BETTER than Star Wars, and is almost completely lacking in the unfunny "humor" that killed Temple, Last Crusade, and most of the Amazing Stories installments.

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