Finally got around to re-watching Last Crusade recently. Noticed there were quick, jokey references to Mickey Mouse and the Marx brothers (I had vaguely remembered the latter, but not the former) at almost the exact middle of the film. But that was pretty much it. And the references came in extremely quick, brief bits of dialogue, nothing visual or "iconic" in that sense.

Saw the film a few weeks ago and enjoyed it, although it probably ties at #3 with Last Crusade in my ranking of Indiana Jones films.

I have one question. In each film, Indiana either comes close to losing his whip or hat during one confrontation or another. In Raiders, it's near the start of the film where he almost loses the whip - Temple of Doom, he nearly loses the hat in the decending spiked roof sequence - in Crusade, the hat blows off his head during the tank chase. All 3 films show him recovering the hat or whip. Yet in Crystal Skull, Indy puts his hat on one of the tough guys involved in the diner fight, and then the motorcycle chase begins. My main concern during the entire chase was, "How's Indy gonna get the hat back?" The thing is, unless I blinked my eyes, they never show him retrieving it... he just has it in the next scene. Did I miss something that someone else may have caught? Or does my memory serve me correctly?

Don't recall that exactly, but I thought the hat retrieval took place during the Soviet/Area 51 escapade, on the rocket sled.

Baal_T'shuvah wrote:
: Yet in Crystal Skull, Indy puts his hat on one of the tough guys involved in the diner fight, and then the motorcycle chase begins. My main concern during the entire chase was, "How's Indy gonna get the hat back?" The thing is, unless I blinked my eyes, they never show him retrieving it... he just has it in the next scene.

Maybe the rules are different when Indy is in "Clark Kent" mode, rather than "Superman" mode.

Maybe... but Superman only has one cape... I'd be disappointed to learn that Indy has a closet full of hats.

Finally got around to seeing it a second time tonight. Four thoughts occurred to me that I don't think I have seen or heard anyone express, quite yet.

SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS

1. I missed the first few minutes the first time around, so this was the first time I saw the Russians shoot the border guards -- and correct me if I'm wrong, but it looked like the Russian leader was shown from a distance, from behind, walking up to the Americans, but then, when Spielberg cut to a closer shot from the front, the Russian ducked and revealed that there were several armed men standing behind him ready to shoot the Americans. Maybe I missed something, but the contrast between those two angles -- one WITHOUT troops behind the leader and one WITH troops behind the leader -- felt to me like a "cheat" on par with the alternating angles on that third test, the bridge one, in The Last Crusade. I mean, really, the leader may have been able to hide those guys if all you had was a single camera pointing at his face, but there were MULTIPLE American soldiers looking at these guys from MULTIPLE angles, so it would have been IMPOSSIBLE to hide the other Russkies behind the main guy, from THEIR points of view. This scene definitely signalled, right up front, that this movie would be somewhat cartoonish, which I personally find somewhat unfortunate. (BTW, would the nuclear test have gone ahead the next day if those border guards had been shot? I assume their deaths were discovered at SOME point, perhaps when other soldiers showed up to begin the next shift of guard duty.)

2. Has anybody else drawn a connection between the statues sitting in that "nuclear family" (ha! ha!) living room and the skeletons sitting in a circle at Akator? In both cases, the room goes kablooey within minutes of Indy showing up. I'm not sure what OTHER parallels can be drawn just yet (a contrast between a family of separate but inter-related individuals -- foreshadowing a trinity, as it were, of Indy and Marion and Mutt -- versus the seemingly more simplified and unified "hive mind" or "collective consciousness", singular, of the aliens?).

3. Sure, the Ark of the Covenant can kill a couple dozen Nazis, but if you REALLY want a mushroom cloud... No wonder the Americans didn't go back and "research" the Ark after the Second World War was over?

4. Someone asked why the Soviets could show up at the base of the waterfalls looking so dry. In the film, after they go down the first waterfall, Oxley says he came down the first time by LAND, not by water. Presumably the Soviets did the same.

More Spoilers

Has anyone gone back to look at the opening the Ark scene in Raiders and compared the Nazis looking at the glory and what happens to Blanchett as she sees all with the aliens?

Or can you, like me, just not get up the energy to care?

My wife said that this was like sitting down with an old friend and some wine for a couple of hours. I thought it was meeting an old friend after all these years and discovering they just weren't as interesting as we remember.

I noticed that the first time I saw it. The lightning pours out of their eyes in exactly the same way. I think this may have been Spielberg's nod to Darabont's idea... that the ark and God are really just part how we understand the world of "interdimensional beings," and that the angels are linked somehow to the aliens.



I sympathize. I had a lot of fun with this movie. but it already feels like a year ago, and when I rated my favorites of the year so far, it didn't even make the halfway-point top ten.

SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS

Darrel Manson wrote:
: Has anyone gone back to look at the opening the Ark scene in Raiders and compared the Nazis looking at the glory and what happens to Blanchett as she sees all with the aliens?
: Or can you, like me, just not get up the energy to care?

No need -- I remember Raiders too well, I've seen it too often, etc., etc. It's the sequels that I've needed refreshers on.

And yeah, there are elements of all the previous films here. Cate Blanchett is like Belloq, craving communion with the higher dimensions (God, aliens, whatever) -- and finding that the communion in question is so intense that lights come out of her eyes and eventually her body self-destructs. She is also like Mola Ram, hoping to control the entire world, and especially people's minds, with the help of these mystical objects. And the room with all the aliens, waiting for someone to make it through all the booby traps, is kind of like that room with the Knight and the Grail at the end of Last Crusade.

: My wife said that this was like sitting down with an old friend and some wine for a couple of hours. I thought it was meeting an old friend after all these years and discovering they just weren't as interesting as we remember.

Heh. Sigh. Yeah.

BTW, can anybody here with a better knowledge of Milton than me (which would be just about, um, anybody) illuminate what's going on with that passage about the "golden key" that opens the door to "eternity"? That's the passage that John Hurt's character keeps quoting all the time, and I'm wondering what it means in the context of the original poem, and how that may or may not relate to the context it is given in this film.

Hmmm, the Milton passage apparently comes from the opening lines of Comus, which is described by Wikipedia as "a masque in honour of chastity". The opening lines, delivered by the "attendant Spirit":

BEfore the starry threshold of Joves Court
My mansion is, where those immortal shapes
Of bright aëreal Spirits live insphear'd
In Regions milde of calm and serene Ayr,
Above the smoak and stirr of this dim spot, [ 5 ]
Which men call Earth, and with low-thoughted care
Confin'd, and pester'd in this pin-fold here,
Strive to keep up a frail, and Feaverish being
Unmindfull of the crown that Vertue gives
After this mortal change, to her true Servants [ 10 ]
Amongst the enthron'd gods on Sainted seats.
Yet som there be that by due steps aspire
To lay their just hands on that Golden Key
That ope's the Palace of Eternity:
To such my errand is, and but for such, [ 15 ]
I would not soil these pure Ambrosial weeds,
With the rank vapours of this Sin-worn mould.

Interesting reference there to how the virtuous are rewarded with crowns "amongst the enthroned gods on sainted seats". Does that remind us of anything that we see in this film?

Lesson not learned...

Indiana Jones star LaBeouf arrested for DUI

How many of these before Spielberg and Lucas decide Mutt's not needed for an Indy 5?

So I recently wrote an article on this movie, and in the draft I handed in, I referred to the people who worshipped these "gods" as Incas. Then I got the article back for proofing, and I double-checked that bit, and found myself increasingly confused.

The movie takes place in Peru, and perhaps in neighbouring territories as well, within the Amazon rainforests in SOUTH America. Incas lived there.

But the production notes contain no reference to the word "Inca". They do, however, contain a few references to the word "Mayan". Because, see, the "real" crystal skulls were found in Mexico and Belize and similar Mayan locations in CENTRAL America. And the production-design team based the extra-terrestrial temple on Mayan temples, etc.

Based on the maps at Wikipedia, there doesn't seem to have been any overlap between the Inca and Mayan territories.

So what this movie seems to give us is an exclusively Central American temple and phenomenon (well, except for the fact that the real-life phenomenon concerns human-shaped skulls allegedly MADE by aliens, whereas the movie phenomenon concerns ALIEN-shaped skulls, so who KNOWS where THESE skulls come from) in an exclusively South American location.

And what makes this even MORE complicated is that, on arriving in Peru, Indy tells Mutt that he picked up a local dialect when he was riding with Pancho Villa several decades earlier. And Pancho Villa, to judge from my very limited Googling, was based in ... Mexico. (Did the Young Indiana Jones Chronicles episode in question take place in Peru? That would at least suggest INTERNAL consistency, within the franchise, even if there is no EXTERNAL consistency with, y'know, the real world.)

I guess, from a Hollywood point of view, it's all "Latin America". Kind of like those movies where you see representatives from a whole bunch of European countries, plus one guy from "Africa".

This is annoying. Especially given Lucas's insistence that the background on all these movies is thoroughly researched.

Good grief!! Read this, and tell me if you aren't more frustrated with Lucas than ever:

If I were Spielberg, crap like that would really put a strain on our relationship.

Lucas forgot some names. Certainly, LaBeouf oughta have a say, too...no?. And what about ILM? And now that Marion is back, certainly Karen Allen has a say? Heck, we can even get Kate Capshaw in on this!

Hey, for that matter, let's bring Alison Doody back from the dead. THAT can be their supernatural hook this time!

IMHO there was enough doody in Crystal Skull to last me quite awhile.

I haven't read through the thread. I will later. For now, my reaction is one of disappointment. The biggest lacking element: joy. This movie is pretty mechanical, Spielberg's lamest effort maybe since Always, or Hook.

I didn't hate it, but I'm shocked that Speed Racer was so much more thrilling when it thrilled (it didn't always, but neither did this movie).

What will people remember from this movie years from now? What performances, or sequences? A day later, I think the nuclear explosion -- absurd but visually kind of exciting -- is all I'll remember about this film a few years from now. Heck, it's all I'll remember in a few weeks!

Temple of Doom is looking better all the time, isn't it?

Christian wrote:
: What will people remember from this movie years from now? What performances, or sequences? A day later, I think the nuclear explosion -- absurd but visually kind of exciting -- is all I'll remember about this film a few years from now. Heck, it's all I'll remember in a few weeks!

Well, there HAS been an effort to get the phrase "nuke the fridge" into the pop-culture vernacular (a la "jump the shark").

: Temple of Doom is looking better all the time, isn't it?

Heh. It is indeed.

I don't know - I'll remember

the man being taken head-first into the ant hill,
the jeep/boat being caught by a tree and gently launched, the over-the-falls impossible journey, the use of sand to create an entrance to the temple, etc.

Denny

Heh. The ants were definitely good for a "No, it is I who will eat you!" moment.

I wanted to make this comment back in June when I saw the film. Did anyone feel Lucas' hands on this movie more than the previous three? That may be a little vague, but let me explain. Just before seeing Crystal Skull, I caught a showing of Poltergeist on Turner Classic Movies. Now I hadn't seen Poltergeist since about 1984 (whenever it arrived on VHS). Back then, I had no idea how to tell one directors style over another. But when I rewatched Poltergeist, it just oozed of trademark Spielberg moments - the slow dolly-in close ups - the early Spielberg work with children (he really did know how to get precious moments out of kids) - all sorts of framing that can be traced from Duel through to Raiders of the Lost Ark - but Poltergeist had no real Tobe Hooper moments that you could point to and say "Hey, that's kinda like that moment in Texas Chainsaw Massacre, or The Funhouse." Now, having read about the production, I know that Spielberg was heavily involved throughout - almost to the point, IMHO, that it felt like he was just over Hooper's shoulder saying things like, "Here's how I want to see this shot, Tobe, but I'll let you yell "action" so you get the credit."

And that's kinda how I felt through most of Crystal Skull. I'm not saying that George was calling the shots on Crystal Skull, but the above article sure sheds a lot of light on what I felt to be Spielberg's most lackluster, take no risks directing job since Always. It's almost as if Lucas may gone about the project saying, "Do that dolly-in thing you do at this point, Steve. And then here you can have that uplight thing in the face type of lighting you seem to favor." And Spielberg just went along with it all, while thinking about how he'd like to finish this as fast he could and get on to something he really wants to invest some creativity in... like his Abe Lincoln film.

Lucas's presence was definitely bigger on the last film, and not in a good way. For one, some of the goofier elements of the story were pure Lucas. For another, there was just too much ILM in the new movie. One of the reasons the truck chase in Raiders worked so well is because it involved real trucks and a real road in a real desert. The reason the jeep chase in Crystal Skull was so lame was because much of it was computer generated, including the jungle itself. Many of the classic Spielberg techniques you mentioned were obsolete in the new movie because the computers had taken over.

The one exception would be the motorcycle/car chase on the college campus early in the film. That seemed to have a classic Spielberg/Indiana Jones feel to it. Especially when Indy jumps off the motorcyle, fights his way through the back seat of the car, and then jumps back onto the motorcyle on the other side. Awesome!

I agree with Morgan, and with the idea that Lucas' prints are all over the new installment, to its detriment.

Is the scene Morgan refers to an extension of the opening scene -- the one that begins with a game of "chicken" between two cars on a highway? That early sequence, with the young girls taunting the male driver to show 'em what he's got, was one of the movie's best moments. The movie starts with a bang, but ends with a whimper.

I did like Cate Blanchett, FWIW. Yes, her accent reminded me of Natasha in the "Rocky and Bullwinkle" cartoons, but I suppose some people really do sound like that. So no biggie.

Off-topic, but this got me wondering: Does the second, unnecessarily spoilered phrase above -- "No, it is I who will eat YOU!" -- have a history prior to the running gag at Jimmy Akin's blog?

If you Google it, it comes up in a few other places, but at least two of them attribute it to Jimmy. Other usages also suggest that the phrase may have spread out a bit from Jimmy's blog.

Having been in on the joke from the beginning, I find it inexplicably, indescribably hilarious. The thought of it living on after Jimmy's blog, possibly in a wider setting, is a strangely happy one.

morgan1098 wrote:
: Lucas's presence was definitely bigger on the last film, and not in a good way. . . .

Note also Indiana's use of the phrase "I have a bad feeling about this," a phrase that was used in all six Star Wars movies but none of the previous Indiana Jones movies.

And note also the drag race at the beginning, which clearly harks back to American Grafitti (coincidentally, or not, the first film of Lucas's that co-starred Ford). It's especially interesting when you recall the following bits from Dale Pollock's Lucas biography Skywalking (page 116, according to Amazon.com's "search inside!" feature):

The deal for American Graffiti almost fell apart when it came time to license the rock 'n' roll songs. The music cost almost $90,000, more than 10 percent of the entire budget, and Universal presurred Lucas to cut the sound track down to five or six songs. He refused. Lucas was aware that with the exception of thirty-two-year-old Tanen, he was up against an older generation of studio executives, to whom the idea of sitting through ninety minutes of rock music was unbearable. . . .

Lucas winnowed his original list of eighty songs to forty-five and eliminated the Elvis Presley tunes. . . . It was painful for Lucas to eliminate half of his original selections, but the sacrifice was hardly appreciated. Kurtz took the list to Universal's music department. "He just about had a heart attack," Kurtz remembers. The studio was nervous enough to make Coppola responsible for the music costs -- anything over the $90,000 budget had to come out of Francis's pocket. . . .

So what song do they use at the beginning of this film, during the drag race? Elvis Presley's 'Hound Dog'. Take THAT, Universal!

: The one exception would be the motorcycle/car chase on the college campus early in the film. That seemed to have a classic Spielberg/Indiana Jones feel to it. Especially when Indy jumps off the motorcyle, fights his way through the back seat of the car, and then jumps back onto the motorcyle on the other side. Awesome!

That was brilliant. It was one of the few scenes in the film that made me glad I was watching this with my dad; it had the feel of some of the old James Bond films that we used to watch together.

I was going to note this, although my love of that scene chafes against the idea that Lucas' involvement is a bad thing. However, I thought that scene was more Spielbergian in its camerwork (plus, it made me think of Duel, FWIW).

In an interview from TIME.com, Lucas says that Shia will not be taking over the mantle from Harrison Ford in future Indy projects.

That being said, I love this rather bizarre bit at the end of the article. Can anyone explain the point Lucas is trying to make here?



When has it been unnecessary to promote a film by talking to the press, $14 miilion dollar twins or not?

Baal_T'shuvah wrote:
: When has it been unecessary to promote a film by talking to the press, $14 miilion dollar twins or not?

I dunno, maybe when THX 1138 came out, no one wanted to talk about it and Lucas assumed that that was normal.

DVD and Blu-Ray coming October 14. No word on when the first three films will hit Blu-Ray, yet.

I've used the line at Flickr and I Can Has Cheezburger, though I don't credit Jimmy's blog in those instances.

Quoting myself:



Jeffrey Wells today calls it the "fastest fading movie of the year, death-button upon second viewing."

I'm not sure I'll ever get to a second viewing with this one.

Christian wrote:
: I'm not sure I'll ever get to a second viewing with this one.

I did, but only because I was writing a magazine article. Knowing how bad it will be in advance allows you to, um, enjoy? accept? it for what it is -- certainly compared to the first viewing, where I kept thinking, "This is taking forever... They aren't making me care about the storyline... These jokes are lame... I can't believe they actually went ahead with that plot twist..."

Indy does refer to the ancient tribe as the "Ucas," which seems to be a made-up term — maybe it's "Lucas" without the L. It might remind one, perhaps, of the "Aucas" of Ecuador made famous by Jim Elliott.



Skull-binding was a Mayan tradition IIRC.


Perhaps it was, but that doesn't mean Lucas paid any attention to his researchers.

FWIW, my article on the Indiana Jones series in Books & Culture, and the "extended cut" of the section where I talk about the evolution of the family theme over the course of the four movies.

Peter, great piece. I just today turned in a lengthy article that deals mostly with Raiders and Kingdom of the Crystal Skull; if I'd seen your piece one day sooner, I've have cited you (more than I already did) ... in fact, I may hafta see if I can do some additional edits...

Just have to say: I watched Kingdom of the Crystal Skull this weekend with Suz and the boys, and at Cate Blanchett's death scene, seven-year-old Jamie said, "Papa, why isn't her skull getting longer?"

That's my boy!

Heh. And now, suddenly, it occurs to me that if someone does someday pass along Nick's suggestion to Lucas and Spielberg, and they do have the reaction I imagined... Lucas may decide to make it happen in some future Special Edition.

I admit, i am a bit surprised that Speilberg and Lucas have not gone back and cosmetically touched up the series so far. Both creators have a penchant for it (Lucas, obviously, with the Star Wars Trilogy and Speilberg with E.T.). I guess I should be relieved that the swordsman doesn't throw a sword at Indy first, huh?

Heck, I'm relieved that Spielberg wasn't willing to take his title revisionism so far as to plaster Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark across the opening shot. I like the revisionist title where it is, on the DVD box. (Actually I don't like it there either, but if it's got to be somewhere...)

All things in proper time, friends. First, Ebert would have to include IJ@tKotCS in his "Great Movies" collection. Then, he would have to write a book about Spielberg, and include this review within its contents. Maybe this will take ten years, considering how it took twenty years for Last Temptation's most prominent defender to recognize the error of his ways, and we're living in faster times...

Nezpop wrote:
: I admit, i am a bit surprised that Speilberg and Lucas have not gone back and cosmetically touched up the series so far.

Well, they did erase the cobra's reflection from the invisible glass in Raiders.

As for "title revisionism", Spielberg has always said that he calls these movies "Raiders movies", rather than "Indiana Jones movies". I'm pretty sure it was Lucas, not Spielberg, who expanded the movie's title on the DVD case (and, before that, the VHS case, where it was known as episode 20-something of the entire franchise, which included the Young Indiana Jones Chronicles TV episodes).