I grew up with Indiana Jones or "Banana Jones" as I once called him before my years of adolescent awkwardness. His numerous quests to find seemingly mythological treasures were a large piece of kindling for the fire of my imagination. And who doesn’t enjoy seeing Nazi’s melting under the fire of the wrath of God? It’s great stuff, back in the age when a lack of technology and money forced movie makers to push their limits and work out of a small box. And keep in mind that’s a good thing. I’ll get to that in a minute. I’m sure you’ve guessed by my title that I am about to start griping about the latest edition of George Lucas’s fecal matter- I mean the latest Indiana Jones movie.
Back in 1980 when The Raiders of the Lost Ark was being filmed, computers were pretty homely little things. Bill Gates was still working out of his garage and the Apple II-E hadn’t hit the consumer yet. So this also meant that special effects were not what they are today. You see back in those days, if you wanted to see a spaceship or monster in your movie, you had to BUILD one. Puppets, models, and other such things were the methods of the day. There was not the CG that we have today. Additionally, you didn’t have all these movie studios throwing out hundreds of millions of dollars to make a “guaranteed blockbuster.” Nobody was sure anything would be a blockbuster in those days. If your movie sucked, people let you know and you lost money, a lot of money.
I guess I should quote Mr. Plinkett here, “Art from Adversity.” You see when people have this really great idea that they want to get onto the big screen, they are willing to go to great lengths to get it done. A great example of this is Robert Zemekis, director of Back to the Future. He didn’t have an unlimited source of money to film his movie, but he didn’t grip about that to the studio. He just worked with what he had and got the job done. He actually recast the role of Marty McFly over a month into shooting. He knew his choice of actor was wrong, and the studio reminded him he was on a timetable he had to meet. But he recast with Michael J. Fox and moved quickly to make up for lost time. BECAUSE HE KNEW IT WAS THE RIGHT THING TO DO. When you don’t have all the money in the world, you have to come up with creative ways of making something happen. And from this we often get higher quality material coming out of Hollywood. Money nowadays has a tendency to make filmmakers lazy. See Transformers 2 or the Star Wars Prequels for a reference point.
So enter Indiana Jones 4 on stage. What is the problem here? Well now that I have warmed up let me tell you my thoughts on the issue. There are 4 things that poisoned this movie. They are categorized as the following:
-Fake CGI
-Pointless or Wordy Dialogue
-Superfluous Action Sequences
-George Lucas
Let’s start with the fake CGI. I attended a midnight showing of this movie, and I got a bad feeling from the very first scene. The paramount logo fades into a heap of dirt that at first looked like a mountain. I chuckled a bit, until this fake, computer generated prairie dog appeared and ran for his life before a car destroyed his home. From this very first scene I knew there was something terribly wrong with the movie. But it didn’t stop there. The viewer is forced to endure several scenes with fake looking prairie dogs. What is the point, humor? If so I was not amused. Plus this was the Nevada desert. I thought Prairie dogs lived out on the PRAIRIE, you know by the Mississippi river? But I digress; there might be other species that live in the desert too.
This habit of computer generated graphics continues throughout the movie, like a crazed meth addict who just couldn’t stop using Photoshop. This annoys me because about a year before the movie came out, Steven Spielberg himself said that he would be using “traditional” special effects. My young heart took courage at this, still remembering the Star Wars Prequel debacles. But I wonder what he meant by traditional. I guess it didn’t mean what I thought it would mean: no crappy special effects. It would seem that Steven forgot about old Georgie. Guess he forgot to take him out of the special effects department. Oops.
Pointless dialogue? Yep, it’s here. Take this scene for instance:
What did Indy say when the Russians drove off? “Sure, great don’t wait for me?” Would Indiana Jones really say something like that? To me it seemed out of character, as did his comment, “That can’t be good at all.” Even if you don’t think it was out of character (and you’re wrong by the way) it was still pointless. We all know what nuclear weapons do. We don’t need a stupid comment like that to further impress the situation on our minds. I don’t like swearing for the most part, but if Indy would have just said something like: “Oh sh$%!” when he saw the bomb, it would have been a lot more humorous. I’m sure it would be anyone’s natural response when they found they were on a nuclear testing ground. And would the Russians really have given him a ride? No, because they were too worried about saving their own skins. So that dialogue that Indy spoke was unnecessary and stupid, because George Lucas wrote the screen play.
Superfluous action sequences? Oh heck yes. Watch this stupid scene and try to tell me you were excited or worried our heroes were in danger:
And excuse the crudity of the clip; it was the only thing I could find on YouTube. But seriously, a sword fight across two jeeps? That’s not something that normal people do. The Indiana Jones movies certainly have their share of the supernatural, but this kind of crap does not belong in a movie like this. Remember the creepy dude that pulled people’s hearts out of their chests in The Temple of Doom? It’s the same kind of ludicrous here, and frankly it is insulting to the audience. Hey! Remember the awesome truck scene from Raiders of the Lost Ark? Let me refresh your memory:
Isn’t this great? Indy has this grin whenever he wipes out a Nazi car. You see this whole scene was incredibly simple. The situation was this: the ark is on a truck getting away. Indy must catch up to said truck and stop the Nazi’s from getting away with it. How will he do it? Well you saw how he did it, the same way any logical person would. Like I said, it was simple, but wasn’t it awesome? It was awesome because it was totally believable and well directed. Ask yourself this question, what was the point of the sword fight? THERE WAS NO POINT AT ALL. It was something stupid that was crammed into the movie to make it more “extreme.” It served no purpose whatsoever. The term “over the top” is perfectly applicable here. Action sequences don’t have to be this complicated to be enjoyable. Little, simple, things like this make us laugh:
So what has happened to Indiana Jones? The first and third movies were epics in their own time. A winning formula was found, but was ignored for this latest movie. Why? This brings me to my final point: GEORGE LUCAS.
I don’t want to rag too much on George. He did bring us the original Star Wars Trilogy. But through the late 80’s and into the 90’s he got stupid. He became addicted to computer graphics and has all the money in the world. I think this has made him complacent and lazy in some respects. These problems I have mentioned can all be traced to him. The proof I have is once again the Star Wars Prequels. They look fake, there is too much pointless dialogue, and they are not very exciting when you sum it up. I don’t have to go into depth anymore. If you want to go trash those movies, look up “redlettermedia” on YouTube. Mr. Plinkett did a fine job of that.
And I hear they are doing a fifth movie! How can they avoid the disaster of the last one? Simple, don’t let George write the screenplay or handle the effects department. He has shown a unique level of incompetence over the last few years in these areas. Steven Spielberg knows what makes a good movie, he just needs to step back to his roots. If he does that, the next one will be a hit. Time will tell.
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