Indiana Jones and the Temple of Obscene Profits
I saw the new Indiana Jones movie, and let's just say that it wasn't the greatest movie I've ever seen. I'd place it #3 or 4 out of the four Indiana Jones movies (with 1 being the best, and 3 being second best). There were just so many continuity problems with the movie that I was starting to get frustrated with it.
Now, this movie is put out by two of the most dedicated men in movies (Lucas and Spielberg), so I was seriously surprised at some of the blatant problems in both the movie and the script. Some of the banter between characters was extremely contrived to the point of absurdity. There was one scene where Indiana and Co. are in a military vehicle CHASING after the evil Nazi woman (okay, she was really a Soviet Natasha secret agent, but she was played as a typical Nazi), with Indie saying something like "Catch her!" The camera then switches perspective, and now the evil Nazi woman is BEHIND them trying to catch up to them.
Some of the plot twists were so obvious that I wondered if they were supposed to be tricks that they were going to cleverly turn on us, but no, they weren't. They were just badly scripted plot points. (spoiler alert----> Hey, Indie, if a woman you haven't seen for twenty years has a twenty year old kid who is as free-spirited as you are, perhaps you should think a little bit about the origins of that kid, especially when his "father" is mentioned as someone REALLY ambiguous).
There was one throw-away line that I think was put into the movie for Lucas/Harrison Ford fans where Indiana says: "I got a bad feeling about this." Kind of takes ya back to the good ole' days of Hans Solo when he was coasting towards that moon ("that's no moon").
There was some good old fashioned beat em up action in the movie, which should always be expected from an Indiana Jones movie. There were a couple of references to the practically unwatched television series about Indiana Jones that someone not having watched that series would have caused a question of "when did Indiana Jones fight with Pancho Villa?" That was sometimes a problem with the movie. It expected you to have more knowledge of the insider stuff, yet the asides to those insider moments went so fast that you ended up having to think about it while other things were happening, and you'd miss something else.
It was good seeing Karen Allen again. She's still as cute and bubbly as she was in the original Raiders of the Lost Ark. They also showed a picture of Indie's dad, Sean Connery, which made me wonder if Sir Sean got any actual money for having his picture in the movie, even though he, himself, didn't appear.
Two final comments:
1. This movie reminds me that we've pretty much run out of bad guys in movies these days. Nazis are overdone and too far removed from our reality. Terrorists are too present in today's reality that it makes it hard to use them. There is really no evil country that we have to present as the enemy, because even if there is one out there, we still want to sell tickets to people in that country, and you can't market a movie to Chinese people if the big bad enemy is China.
2. University of the Pacific shows up in the movie a few times. You can tell whenever you see Burns Tower, which is supposed to give people the idea that Indiana Jones teaches in some east coast Ivory Tower university. In reality, Burns Tower is in Stockton, California. I don't think they want to give the impression that Indiana Jones is teaching archaeology in the street crime capital of California.
Stumble It!
Now, this movie is put out by two of the most dedicated men in movies (Lucas and Spielberg), so I was seriously surprised at some of the blatant problems in both the movie and the script. Some of the banter between characters was extremely contrived to the point of absurdity. There was one scene where Indiana and Co. are in a military vehicle CHASING after the evil Nazi woman (okay, she was really a Soviet Natasha secret agent, but she was played as a typical Nazi), with Indie saying something like "Catch her!" The camera then switches perspective, and now the evil Nazi woman is BEHIND them trying to catch up to them.
Some of the plot twists were so obvious that I wondered if they were supposed to be tricks that they were going to cleverly turn on us, but no, they weren't. They were just badly scripted plot points. (spoiler alert----> Hey, Indie, if a woman you haven't seen for twenty years has a twenty year old kid who is as free-spirited as you are, perhaps you should think a little bit about the origins of that kid, especially when his "father" is mentioned as someone REALLY ambiguous).
There was one throw-away line that I think was put into the movie for Lucas/Harrison Ford fans where Indiana says: "I got a bad feeling about this." Kind of takes ya back to the good ole' days of Hans Solo when he was coasting towards that moon ("that's no moon").
There was some good old fashioned beat em up action in the movie, which should always be expected from an Indiana Jones movie. There were a couple of references to the practically unwatched television series about Indiana Jones that someone not having watched that series would have caused a question of "when did Indiana Jones fight with Pancho Villa?" That was sometimes a problem with the movie. It expected you to have more knowledge of the insider stuff, yet the asides to those insider moments went so fast that you ended up having to think about it while other things were happening, and you'd miss something else.
It was good seeing Karen Allen again. She's still as cute and bubbly as she was in the original Raiders of the Lost Ark. They also showed a picture of Indie's dad, Sean Connery, which made me wonder if Sir Sean got any actual money for having his picture in the movie, even though he, himself, didn't appear.
Two final comments:
1. This movie reminds me that we've pretty much run out of bad guys in movies these days. Nazis are overdone and too far removed from our reality. Terrorists are too present in today's reality that it makes it hard to use them. There is really no evil country that we have to present as the enemy, because even if there is one out there, we still want to sell tickets to people in that country, and you can't market a movie to Chinese people if the big bad enemy is China.
2. University of the Pacific shows up in the movie a few times. You can tell whenever you see Burns Tower, which is supposed to give people the idea that Indiana Jones teaches in some east coast Ivory Tower university. In reality, Burns Tower is in Stockton, California. I don't think they want to give the impression that Indiana Jones is teaching archaeology in the street crime capital of California.
Stumble It!
posted by Duane @ 12:21 AM
1 Comments:
At 9:12 AM,
inkyhack said…
Just a small correction - Burns Tower is not in the movie. They used stock footage of the Faye Spanos Concert Hall, located just south of Burns Tower. It's the same footage that was used in the "Raiders of the Lost Ark."
In Raiders, besides the exterior of Faye Spanos Concert Hall, the classroom at the start of the film is a classroom on the Pacific Campus and the room where Indiana explains what the Ark of the Covenant is to the federal agents is the inside of Faye Spanos.
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