Indy 4 still as infuriating as ever
- Thread starter davejames
- Start date
I was only responding to your claim that there was "never anything realistic" about Indiana Jones. Which to me is just as extreme and over the top a statement. I mean, we're not talking about a complete fantasy world or a Speed Racer-style cartoon where anything can happen. There were still established rules, and an attempt to ground the story as much as possible before throwing a bunch of crazy supernatural shit at us (even in Doom, with the bleak and poverty-stricken Indian village and the very real-life plight of kidnapped children helping quite a bit to ground that world).
I just have a need to hate a movie? Umm, okay. The idea that people only have issues with Indy 4 or the prequels because they're so "blindly attached" to the originals seems equally insulting to me. And for the record, I DO also hate the movie for what it is. Even for a standalone movie, the storytelling is sloppy, aimless, and poorly written. And the action scenes are still just as cartoony and ridiculous as ever.
Hell, most of my criticism would still apply even if the previous movies never existed! Lol
doubleohfive
Fleet Admiral
Perhaps the holy water in "Last Crusade" only makes you immortal if you continue to drink it. Indy clearly aged between "Last Crusade" and "KOCS." More than likely, the holy water from the grail worked to heal Henry Sr.'s gunshot wound, but that's it.
2) If you've never seen "KOCS" do you honestly expect that people in a thread titled "Indy 4 still as infuriating as ever" are REALLY going to be worried about spoilers?
doubleohfive
Fleet Admiral
It could be considered a spoiler by way of the fact that it's a story point revealed in the film about a major character from a previous film.
The point being: it was bound to come up in the discussion. The movie is 6 years old. In a thread about the film and why it's so poorly-received, why would anyone (who has actually bothered to see the film) tapdance around something so minor?
I mean, yeah, it's grasping at straws and walking a fine line... but Mr. Laser Beam can't possibly expect that by reading this thread, he wasn't bound to find out about stuff that actually happened or was referenced to in the film.
The point being: it was bound to come up in the discussion. The movie is 6 years old. In a thread about the film and why it's so poorly-received, why would anyone (who has actually bothered to see the film) tapdance around something so minor?
I mean, yeah, it's grasping at straws and walking a fine line... but Mr. Laser Beam can't possibly expect that by reading this thread, he wasn't bound to find out about stuff that actually happened or was referenced to in the film.
They crossed the seal; that's why it didn't make them immortal.
Mister Fandango
Fleet Captain
It's because all of those other things deal with, you know, "real" archaeological subjects shrouded in centuries upon centuries of our collective psyche.
Idiotic dimensional aliens that don't contribute to the story whatsoever and just prove to be an easy way to finish telling a story... well, not so much.
That's actually plausible. The Fridge would provide protection from the thermal pulse, much the same way people standing behind concrete structures will survive when people near by are burned to a crisp.
Distance is an issue, though. The closer the fridge is, the more energy it'll absorb. It would work if it was far enough away from the bomb. I do believe that the scene had the fridge a bit to close to be realistic.
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I might buy the fridge protecting him from the radiation or thermal pulse, but not from the enormous blast itself and the shockwave of debris hitting him at incredible speeds, which surely would have obliterated the fridge right along with everything else. Not to mention the hard crash landing later on...
Still though, like the raft escape in Doom, it was an inspired enough solution that I'm willing to go along with the idea. Unfortunately I can't really say the same about the action in the rest of the movie.
Still though, like the raft escape in Doom, it was an inspired enough solution that I'm willing to go along with the idea. Unfortunately I can't really say the same about the action in the rest of the movie.
It was pretty clear that the Grail didn't make you immortal, and that you had to frequently drink from it.
Imagine if, instead of a raft, they had jumped out of the plane in a refrigerator. That would have been cool.
An even better idea — jump out of the plane in the plane. Let it crash, and then just walk away. You'd probably have a better chance of walking away from a plane crash in the snow than walking away from that refrigerator stunt.
An even better idea — jump out of the plane in the plane. Let it crash, and then just walk away. You'd probably have a better chance of walking away from a plane crash in the snow than walking away from that refrigerator stunt.
As far as Irina Spalko goes, she didn't ever do anything onscreen that was horrible enough for her to be vaporized by a CGI alien. Her objective was to make the rest of the world Soviet, yes, but there's nothing in this movie to suggest that Soviets were as bad as - or worse than - the Nazis (which they were). In RAIDERS, we get to see Nazi sadism in practice, for example, and the deep concern everyone else in the movie has about them.
In CRYSTAL SKULL, the only ones who are really concerned are FBI agents who are portrayed as being completely clueless and misinformed. They are also doing a lot of shady deals, themselves, in Roswell. Worse than any of that, they don't like Indy, so you KNOW not to listen to them! The dynamics of this picture in that regard, just don't give the audience - as I remember it, at any rate - enough real cause to be concerned about the Russians, at all. They keep people prisoner, forcing them to stare at an alien skull, which doesn't often have an effect, anyway, but this seems to be the worst of their effrontery.
So ... when Spalko gets fried like that, it seems like overkill to me and robbed me of any satisfaction in seeing her get killed. She just didn't deserve it. If she'd at least killed - even accidentally - Marcus Brody, maybe, it would seem more justified - but just barely. I suppose she was bitchy, but she wasn't evil. And she was a woman in power who can kick butt, which seems to be a crowd pleaser AND she had a very dry wit about her, as well. Like when she's fencing with Mutt as they're both standing on seperate Ducks, she tells him with disregard, "you fight like a young man: Eager to begin. Quick to finish!" See? She's FUNNY!!! What a sweety and this CGI alien has to go and do something stupid like frown her into a dust devil.
In CRYSTAL SKULL, the only ones who are really concerned are FBI agents who are portrayed as being completely clueless and misinformed. They are also doing a lot of shady deals, themselves, in Roswell. Worse than any of that, they don't like Indy, so you KNOW not to listen to them! The dynamics of this picture in that regard, just don't give the audience - as I remember it, at any rate - enough real cause to be concerned about the Russians, at all. They keep people prisoner, forcing them to stare at an alien skull, which doesn't often have an effect, anyway, but this seems to be the worst of their effrontery.
So ... when Spalko gets fried like that, it seems like overkill to me and robbed me of any satisfaction in seeing her get killed. She just didn't deserve it. If she'd at least killed - even accidentally - Marcus Brody, maybe, it would seem more justified - but just barely. I suppose she was bitchy, but she wasn't evil. And she was a woman in power who can kick butt, which seems to be a crowd pleaser AND she had a very dry wit about her, as well. Like when she's fencing with Mutt as they're both standing on seperate Ducks, she tells him with disregard, "you fight like a young man: Eager to begin. Quick to finish!" See? She's FUNNY!!! What a sweety and this CGI alien has to go and do something stupid like frown her into a dust devil.
Well the russians DID kill all those soldiers guarding the Air Force hangar at the beginning, under her orders. Which is probably another reason I like the first 30 minutes-- the villains actually come across like credible, intimidating bad guys early on!
I do agree though that Spalko's death did just feel tacked on, and not really earned in any way. It only happened because it was the end of the movie, and they needed to kill off the villain in some big, flashy way.
I do agree though that Spalko's death did just feel tacked on, and not really earned in any way. It only happened because it was the end of the movie, and they needed to kill off the villain in some big, flashy way.
YES!!! That's it, exactly. It's "traditional" to kill off the bad guy in an over-the-top way in an Indiana Jones movie and we can't let the audience down! We'll just let them down with the rest of Indy 4's contents ...
Darth Vader is Luke's drunk uncle.
Keyser Söze was actually Keaton's girlfriend Edie Finneran.
John Doe placed Detective Mills' dick in the box.
The Planet of the Apes was the New York, New York Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas the whole time.
Rosebud was the name of his favorite testicle.
Tyler Durden is a fig newton of his imagination.
Bruce Willis was a backup singer for the Grateful Dead the whole time.
Snape kills Mr. Takagi.
The Village was a jar of modern day strawberry preserves.
Soylent Green is made of guacamole.
There, now you're all caught up with everything.
A better ending: She gets all the aliens' knowledge. Instead of turning the world Soviet, she loses interest in petty squabbles over this puny world and heads off to the interdimensional realm to find challenges worthy of her new powers.
I see what you did there.
As for the grail, my understanding is that Indy and his dad became immortal when they drank from the grail and then lost it when they crossed the seal. I don't recall anything about having to repeatedly drink the water and I don't think we were given enough to establish exactly how one ages once they're immortal.
Here's what the knight said...
"You have chosen wisely. But the Grail cannot pass beyond the great seal. That is the boundary, and the price of immortality."
Make of that what you will.
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