Indy 4 still as infuriating as ever

You keep jumping to this as if it's a foregone conclusion. Yes, Crystal Skull pushed the envelope a lot more than the previous films did in terms of what's possible. But at it's core the film still has a basis in realism.

I know someone is going to bring up the fridge scene, I have no defense for that except to say that I enjoyed it.

 

Or the jungle swinging scene.
Or several other scenes I've blocked out from my memory but know they exist.

 

Don't forget the goofy expressions and weird shoulder shrugging when Indy first sees Marian again. I'm still not sure what that was about. Lol

 

Just within the INDIANA JONES franchise itself, what makes RAIDERS more "real" to me, I suppose ... is the passion. And that's something the sequels are lacking in.

The triad of Belloq, Ravenwood and Indy was really the driving force of this movie. Belloq was more than a rival, he might've even been better than Indy was, he just makes the mistake of siding with the wrong team. Ravenwood, of course, brings a lot of passion, both in who she is and how she feels about Indy. And when Jones believes (with cause) that Marion is dead, he's only too willing to destory the rest of the triad, when Belloq discovers him drinking alone.

The tension that these three characters create is palpable in RAIDERS and even though Irina Spalko seems to be there to kind of recreate that vibe in KINGDOM of the CRYSTAL SKULL, there is absolutely no tension there. And maybe that "passion" from before is what people are - at least partially - referring to when they talk about "realism," certainly as it applies to this last INDIANA JONES movie.

 

Yeah I think Raiders definitely has an intensity about it that the other movies lacked. And the story is much more sophisticated than the others as well, especially when it comes to the interaction between Indy and Marian, and Indy and Belloq.

They actually comes across and sound like mature, complex adults in that movie.

 

Indiana Jones plots are matched to the times they're set in. Kingdom was set in the fifties. The Fifties means Cold War, Red Scare, Duck and Cover and, oh yes, it was the heyday of UFO and alien stories! Everything that happened, ridiculous as all the whiners claim the events are, are exactly what you'd expect an adventure hero like Indy to face when you move him from fighting Nazis for artifacts in the thirties to fighting Soviets for artifacts in the Cold War. I don't see how this is so hard to grasp.

You couldn't make yet another thirties Indy fighting Nazis movie because the guy who plays him was in his sixties when the film was released. That's the only reality that needed to be faced. George Lucas had an aging star to work with so he did the right thing by advancing the narrative a couple of decades. The things that were prevalent in the popular culture at that time were not his fault. He just used them.

 

I would not say that was Spielberg's doing alone. Reconciliation between father and son--the running subplot of Last Crusade--stems more from Lucas, who not only had difficulty with his own father, but the heart of his original Star Wars trilogy featured such issues.

IJ4 was heartless, as it was the end result of producing something not because Lucas/Spielberg were fueled by the creative drive to do so (as in the case of Raiders), but producing because of the luxury / "getting off when you want to" nature of power. That luxury ignores reason in favor whim.

Like so many sequels, IJ4 was not a necessary, worthy story that needed to be told. It is no surprise to see it placing a distant 4th behind whichever Indy film lands in third.

 

I think that dynamic is vital to Crusade.

In Raiders, we hear that the army that controls the Ark will be invincible. Indy has to prevent the Nazis from getting it. It ends with the best kind of "twist": the kind that in retrospect is not a twist at all, but was nonetheless unexpected. Here, the hero fails in his mission, then we learn it doesn't matter: God is a big boy Who can take care of Himself and isn't going to let His infinite power be co-opted by the Nazis.

In Crusade, this isn't a twist because Raiders has set the rules of the universe. The Nazis are once again after an artifact that they think will help them conquer the world, but this time we know from the start that God isn't going to let them do it, so the Holy Grail is kind of an irrelevant McGuffin. Indy rescuing and reconciling with his father is the only thing that gives import to the hero's quest.

 

Indy was not just some random adventure hero though. He was an archaeologist. Who searched for religious artifacts. As was firmly established across the first three movies.

I know people like to use the excuse that the movies were inspired by serials, but they were also far more grounded and complex than those corny, simplistic serials EVER were. So to just ignore that difference, and say it doesn't matter anymore what setting you put him in, just makes no sense to me. Regardless of the time period.

To me that's like saying James Bond is just an "adventure hero" who you can plug into any story. No, he's a spy. Who belongs in spy-type stories (in fact we have a perfect example of what happens when you put Bond in a scifi setting in which he does not belong-- it's called Moonraker).

 

I have to disagree about Divine intervention preventing misuse of The Cup of Christ, according to the universe RAIDERS established. For one thing, the Ark is described by Belloq as being "a radio for talking to God." So, as you mentioned, God's in control. So it doesn't need a Holy Order protecting it, or strange limitations like a seal in the cement that the Ark can't be used past. Hitler, Ghandi, Roosevelt ... anyone can find the Ark and store it anywhere.

The Holy Grail's powers are automatically bestowed upon anyone, regardless. They will live forever - but conditionally. They have to be sequestered, for all eternity, basically guarding it, under House Arrest, all that time. Another condition, of course, is that you much "choose wisely," which is The Cup of Christ, from amongst the others, lest you will die ... somehow. Whose cups they are, I have no idea. Judas'? Goliath's? We just don't know. But to make this idiocy work, a Holy Order of volunteers who've sworn an oath to also protect it handles everything outside, in The Real World. Now, that's just Ludacris!

 

I think in the film, one would have to keep drinking from the grail in order to keep the immortality.

 

True, and to Admiral2's point about the stories matched to the times they are set in:there was more to the 50s (in terms of fantasy) than UFOs/aliens. A look at fantasy novels from that decade, and one can come away with more than little green men (and stuff in their closet). Something more in line with the best of previous adventures.

A little effort.

 

Dialogue seems to imply that all it takes is drinking once and then not leaving the temple. The grail restores you to perfect health for your age and though you continue to age afterward you no longer get sick or need to eat. It appears however that once you reach the age at which you wold normally die there is a stabilization effect, and you stop aging. If you leave you age normally from that point forward. Hence why the other 2 brothers died from extreme old age after leaving.

 

^ So since Indy's father left after drinking the holy water, he's not immortal?

 

Well, considering he's dead in "Crystal Skull," I'd say no.

 

Easy now. I never saw that film, so I have no idea what happened to him.

 

Ah. Well...he's dead.

 

Not to mention that people were still writing westerns and stories about adventurers chasing after treasure in the 50s (in fact it's widely considered the golden age of the western on TV). It's not like all that came to a stop and all anybody cared about anymore were aliens and UFOs.

And to be fair, I thought Indy 4 was perfectly right to update the villains to the Soviets, and to bring the Cold War into the mix. And even the idea of psychic warfare is a good one. I just think they could have chosen a better relic to sell the idea, and that was more appropriate to the world of Indiana Jones.

 

To many people on this forum coming up with out of the blue, extreme examples that don't really have a point to make a point....

My point had NOTHING to do with that. It had to do with century old Knights guarding a shit load of cups in a cave somewhere is AS realistic as a dimensional/alien craft buried in the jungle. People grabbing hearts through chests. Kalima, kalima. The Arc Of The Covenent is filled with angry spirits that melt Nazi's.

I LOVE Indiana Jones, but it has NEVER been realistic. So, saying that Kingdom is a bad movie because it isn't realistic is a falacy, a reason you created just to hate a movie, because you have a need to hate it. I'm sorry, but that's just how fandoms work these days. There's something established (TOS, the OT Star Wars, old Indiana movies) and people have come to love that for whatever reason. When something new is made in that universe, they hate it without ever giving it a change, because in their eyes, it can never live up to what has established their fandom. And that's a pity. Hate something all you want, but hate it for what it is, not for what you think it is not.

 

Kinda makes you wonder how that poor knight got stuck with that job in the first place. Seems like a pretty shitty deal.