Indiana Jones IV plot holes
- Thread starter EJA
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This annoyed me so much. Marion in Raiders is one of my fave female leads in any adventure or fantasy movie. She can drink all day and never get drunk, punches Indy in her first scene and never turns into the shrieking female in distress (Willy in TOD, this means you). If I'd had my druthers, she would have been in all the Indy movies (he's not James Bond, does he need a new female lead for every movie?).
But all she did in KOTCS was simper and smile pointlessly. What a total waste of a long-awaited return.
Bingo. It was pretty much my first thought after watching the movie. You would have also had a nice little set up for any future Indy movies when the suits say that they're keeping an eye on him (Indy).
Well, I did like the bit with her driving off the cliff into the tree. That was the one moment where we saw how smart and resourceful she could be.
And yeah, it would've been great to see a whole trilogy or more of Indy and Marion having adventures side-by-side.
That was one of the worst moments in any Indiana Jones film.
My impression was that the saucer's occupants were alive and active for a considerable span of time after they landed there, travelling the Earth and influencing ancient civilizations as per standard ancient-astronaut mythology, and bringing back artifacts of the civilizations they mentored. It's not like they died as soon as they crashed. Naturally, they had to be around long enough to influence the cultures that preserved legends of them.
One of the problems I had with Indy 4 was that it was way too self referencial, and not very good at that, either. Henry Jones, Marion, the whole "Indiana Jones - Henry Jones Jr." name thing, all disconnected fragments from previous movies that served no or a much worse purpose than in the movies they originated from. When Williams reused the Holy Grail theme after the UFO vanished, I thought to myself "Did he run out of ideas?" Or when the scorpions appeared for a minute and were then totally forgotten about after that. I thought it would be leading to somewhere, but it didn't. It was just totally random and out of place.
I would have rather liked to see an Indiana Jones movie without any connections to the previous movies instead of the thing we got. An entirely new love interest would have been better than the shallow and hollow version of Marion.
And then eventually, the entire tone of the movie just didn't feel right. The humor was very bad, the over the top moments were far too over the top (nuking the fridge, jumping on a tree, three waterfalls, the Tarzan thing, fencing between two cars, etc...), and it just wasn't gritty enough. The fight scenes were totally harmless compared to the previous movies. It lacked that certain something in many regards.
Interestingly enough, except for the nuke, all of the really bad stuff seems to be in the second half. In fact, it appeared to me that after they found the skull and then ran into the Russians, a different person wrote the rest of the script.
I would have rather liked to see an Indiana Jones movie without any connections to the previous movies instead of the thing we got. An entirely new love interest would have been better than the shallow and hollow version of Marion.
And then eventually, the entire tone of the movie just didn't feel right. The humor was very bad, the over the top moments were far too over the top (nuking the fridge, jumping on a tree, three waterfalls, the Tarzan thing, fencing between two cars, etc...), and it just wasn't gritty enough. The fight scenes were totally harmless compared to the previous movies. It lacked that certain something in many regards.
Interestingly enough, except for the nuke, all of the really bad stuff seems to be in the second half. In fact, it appeared to me that after they found the skull and then ran into the Russians, a different person wrote the rest of the script.
I hardly ever see that issue brought up. Personally I thought Ford looked cool as hell in the costume again, and was glad to see him bring a bit of his old energy and humor back to the role.
From a historical stand point it had a huge flaw for me. It was mentioned Irina Spalko was top favorite scientist of Stalin. Stalin died in 1953 and he was debunked and criticized by Khrushchev in 1956. He also cleared most of Stalinist organization in Soviet Union by then. There is no way Spalko could survive anti-Stalin purges in Soviet Union much less conducting secret operations overseas
Agreed. It's actually a pretty decent and worthy Indy movie up until he and Mutt flies down to South America, and then.... suddenly it turns into freakin The Mummy Returns for some reason, with the same kind of cheesy CGI, cornball humor, and ridiculous stunts as in that movie.
Frankly I'm still amazed that Spielberg would let such a thing happen to his Indy series. With his instincts, he HAD to know how utterly ridiculous the second half of the movie was, and yet he apparently caved to Lucas and made it that way anyway.
Well, you said he cleared most of Stalin's organization by '56, not all of it. This is only a year after that, so maybe she was one of the last stragglers. Given that she had psychic abilities and a line on a source of potentially world-conquering power, Khrushchev may have been convinced that she was too valuable to purge and therefore spared her. Or maybe her pursuit of the crystal skull and its power was her bargaining chip to avoid being purged -- either she succeeded or she was dead. Which might be why, at the climax, she seemed more interested in going with the aliens than obtaining their power. After all, if she successfully brought the power back, Khrushchev might not need her alive anymore.
Well, the thing is, it's not Spielberg's series. George Lucas created Indiana Jones and owns the character. He offered it to Spielberg to direct, and the two collaborated on all the films, but make no mistake, Indy is Lucasfilm property, lock, stock, and bullwhip. That means if the film wasn't done in a way Lucas agreed with, it wouldn't get done, period.
Yeah, technically that's true. But most fans and critics have always regarded these as being "Spielberg movies" more than anything else (in fact most people have to be reminded that Lucas was even involved), and so I would think he would at least want to make sure he didn't let down his own fans, or tarnish a great legacy he helped create.
And surely he's got enough influence that he could have put his foot down if he wanted, but for some reason he didn't.
Or maybe, just maybe, Spielberg actually wanted to make it that way. I know I'm in the minority about this film, but on the flip side, Spielberg's track record hasn't been all that great in the past decade. Before Indy IV, the last Spielberg directed film I really enjoyed was A.I. Artificial Intelligence.
Yeah, I agree. I haven't liked any of Ford's performances since about The Fugitive and was dreading him reprise Indy as a grumpy old codger. But I was pleasantly surprised by how he played Indy in this movie. He was the best thing about it, for me.
I've seen lots of complaints about Spielberg's output after 2000, but I thought Minority Report, Catch Me if You Can, The Terminal, and War of the Worlds were all great movies. I also really enjoyed A.I. I didn't see Munich, but that was supposed to be good as well. Before Indy Jones 4, I thought the guy was really on a roll.
The problem is that all these movies are not the type of humurous adventure. Spielberg did in fact unlearn how to do a good Indiana Jones movie.
And then again, Spielberg was bound to the script, which was written by Koepp and Lucas (and Darabont, kinda). As a director, you have only so much freedom. If the script says "Mutt does vine swinging with a couple of monkeys", then he's got to film that.
^ Again, agreed here.
(Re Argus, not Jarod)
(Re Argus, not Jarod)
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