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Saturday, June 14th, 2008
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10:58a - Indiana Jones - Movie Rant
****SPOILER ALERT**** ****SPOILER ALERT**** ****SPOILER ALERT**** ****SPOILER ALERT****
I have to give away details in the review because it is in the details that my anger towards this movie lies. Yes, I will start off by saying that this movie actually made me pissed off at it. Probably because I love the rest of the franchise so much. The problem is, the movie was just bad. Not even like Temple of Doom, "bad for an Indy movie" bad. It was just, on its own, a not very good film. It seemed like somebody described what an Indiana Jones movie was like to a person that had never seen it before and then they tried to recreate it.
First off, you have an opening scene of kids driving around that has literally nothing to do with the movie and doesn't even get used to "set tone" or "establish a character" outside of finding out that the commie driver apparently likes to race but we will never see this commie driver again for the rest of the movie and now we have caused what should have been an opening 20 second establishing intro for a military caravan into a several minute pointless opening scene. Also, CGI groundhogs for no fucking reason. Thanks for that guys. Your random CGI animals have added so much to this already pointless scene.
We then get the commies arriving on base and tricking/killing the gate guards and then removing Indy from a trunk at the base. This was actually pretty cool so far and I was ready to forgive the opening shenanigans. It is important to note that Cate Blanchett's soviet villain is psychic and apparently can only control her mind-reading through her bare hand, since she removes and then puts back on a glove when trying to mind-read Indy. The reason this is important to note is because the writer apparently ENTIRELY FORGOT that he put that in the movie because it will NEVER come up again in the movie. There will be talk about psionic power but the cool gimmick for our villainess will not show up again.
Once they get inside Area 51 (yes I know), which was apparently only being guarded by 4 gate keepers and a handful of guards inside being that there was no alarm, no resistance to speak of, and the weapon testing that was going on still occurred even after the based was invaded, but I'm getting ahead of myself. Ahem. Anyway, the Ruskies try to find a highly magnetic box in a warehouse. How magnetic? Why throwing gun powder into the air will cause the metal in the powder to fly towards the box, even when all the way across a giant storage facility. That's pretty powerful. And when they find it, even while in its container still, it causes things to leap out and stick to it. It will from then on only actually have a magnetic effect if it would be plot convenient. The soldiers' guns don't get tugged toward it. Random metal things are unaffected while something the exact same size right next to it flys toward it and so on. This is just my own pet peeve for things like this in movies though.
After this, Indiana Jones escapes and then survives a nuclear bomb by hiding in a refridgerator. Wait, did I actually just type that? Yes. This is going to set the tone for the film. Everything has gotten ridiculously overblown. In the first films, the escape scene would have been sufficient and then we could have skipped to the scene of his interrogation by the FBI. But not now! We have this huge budget! LET'S SET OFF AN A-BOMB! WOOOOOOOO! I realize I have spent a lot of time going over the beginning of the film but that's just to show you exactly how the rest of the film was. It actually follows the opening exactly. Pointless scene -> Maybe cool -> Throw away scene -> Roll Eyes -> Neat action -> Adding CGI and FX to the neat action to make it stupid.
I will quickly go over the things I did enjoy about the rest of the film and then finish off with more of the things I didn't. Like a hate sandwich. Anyway, all the supporting good guys were pretty much great. Shia LaBeowulf does a good job as Indy's kid. Karen Allen's return as Marian Ravenwood from the original Raiders of the Lost Ark movie is so well done and she does a great job. John Hurt plays a very convincing crazy dude. There were also some very Indy moments that I enjoyed, such as the graverobbing scene and the motorcycle chase. However, it was these scenes that caused me to hate the rest of it so much since there was still that glimmer of what was. If the whole movie had been stupid, I could have just written it off. Oh well.
Back to the hate. The double-triple crossing bad guy, Ray Winstone, can act but is given no motivation beyond being kind of greedy. His death at the end is like the rest of the film; pointless, stupid, and with a bunch of CGI. Anyway, the main plot is this. Aliens have magnetic, crystal skeletons that can still use psychic powers after they die. At some point, these aliens came down and taught some Amazonians how to farm and helped them build a super advanced society (which apparently degenerated after the aliens died into rock throwing savages). The soviets are trying to bring the skull back to where it was stolen because they think it will allow them to have super psychic awesomeness. The legend says that whoever returns the skull will be gifted with their power and/or treasure. Apparently, the gift is actually getting sucked into a portal or disintegrated by undead, psychic aliens from another dimension that have, I shit you not, an actual flying saucer.
I feel like I got tricked into seeing National Treasure 3: The Search for Spock. What the fuck? Seriously? Aliens? Indiana Jones has always been about religious artifacts and lower budget action scenes. If something blows up, it was probably a plane or a car or something. Now we have alien skulls, pseudo-science, Shia LaBeef swinging like Tarzan vine-to-vine in the jungle, and they can't even kill someone in an interesting way. We've seen melting nazis, guys getting their hearts ripped out and a guy aging hundreds of years in a matter of seconds. No such luck in this. I thought a guy was going to be eaten by ants at one point and was kind of hopeful but no, he gets carried off and dies off screen. The aliens seem to be contradictory. They were here to study our culture and help people and bring knowledge! Except they leave and destroy an entire treasure trove of historical artifacts (that they collected) and the entire region they helped to build. And their "gift" to the person that brought their friend's missing skull back? You get turned into dust (again, not in anyway awesome way just "poof"). Grats aliens.
I could say more but I have ranted enough. All-in-all, I give this movie a grade of D and my god have mercy on its soul.
current mood:  disappointed (2 comments |comment on this)
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