There may be 1 or 2 posters in this thread who "enjoyed the ride" but didn't overly like the movie.
Most of the complaints are due to one or two issues that punctuate their disdain. The fridge or Mutt as Tarzan for instance. DaveJames didn't get around to something I could at least agree with until he admitted the rose colored glasses aspect of the other 3. The dialogue is noticeably less enjoyable in places but as a structured film it follows the same improbabilities as the other films; ergo one shouldn't be taken out of KOTC anymore than the other 3.
No. I think
Gaith summed up a lot of what I didn't like about
Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. What I liked most about
Raiders of the Lost Ark was that rough-around-the-edges, gritty type of sensibility that has gradually dissolved throughout the series. The sense of real danger that was perpetrated by real locations and real stunts. Besides the university chase in
Crystal Skull, I couldn't buy into any of the action sequences because it felt far too fabricated and artificially staged.
One of the highlights of
Raiders and even the subsequent two films that followed was the lack of computer generated effects and an emphasis on practical and physical effects and stunts. It all felt very real and genuine and the stakes felt high because the tension and danger was palpable. I felt none of that with
Crystal Skull. Never did I feel like our characters were in any real sense of jeopardy or harm.
Plus, I think a big factor in separation from the rugged quality of
Raiders to the quality of
Crystal Skull was that everything seemed too polished and neat. The cinematography was way too polished and clean for an Indiana Jones movie. Even the locations and sets and special effects had this very pristine quality that felt totally out-of-place in an Indiana Jones film. It was jarring and noticeable in the first frame of the picture, when a CGI gofer popped out of the sand. From the way the shots were arranged and composed to the lighting, there was a deliberately artificial quality to
Crystal Skull that felt forced and contrived. Gone was the genuine spontaneity of the original films, replaced here with carefully choreographed stunts and well-formed special effects.
I attribute that to Steven Spielberg who is a different director today than he was 20 years ago. I mean, don't get me wrong, Spielberg is still a remarkable director who has made some of the best and most enjoyable films even in the past few years, but I feel like his style has gotten too stage-y and too polished, his shot compositions too ordinary and his cinematography too predictable and clean. This is the man behind such gritty, visually unpredictable movies such as
Duel, Jaws and
Raiders of the Lost Ark and compared those to some of his most recent films (
Minority Report, The Terminal, Catch Me If You Can, War of the Worlds) and you lose some of that spontaneous imagination that populated his earlier works.
I do enjoy those four films I just mentioned, but to me the biggest difference is how they are made and how Spielberg has changed as a filmmaker from his earlier days where he might've been more inclined to experiment to his more experienced discipline now where he has created a formula for himself. Nothing
quite wrong with formula, unless it becomes overly and needlessly formulaic and I think his recent films have devolved into a predictable sense of formula verses something genuinely unpredictable or remotely interesting.
It's weird, because I remember seeing the trailer for J.J. Abrams'
Super 8 recently and just from the cinematography to the way it was edited it seemed to have a vintage Spielberg vibe that was incredibly exciting. It was like I was watching a trailer for a Steven Spielberg movie that might've came out twenty years ago.
I think that's one of the primary reasons why I think it was wrong for Spielberg to have made another Indiana Jones film: he's a different filmmaker than he was when he made the first film and even the sequels, and I think it showed.
