Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull

But that's more a fault of modern Hollywood film making in general than IJatKotCS (I just realized how ungodly long that movie's title is by the acronym alone).

I have an inkling that Lucas is the one who said, "More! More! We need more stuff happening in this chase scene!" Y'know, the 60 mph chase scene in a dense jungle with two swordfighters balancing on top of trucks. That leaves us a lot of time to admire the scenery.

I only say it because the logic resembles that of the chase in AOTC. The film had no awareness of how lunatic cg detracts from our ability to tell what the characters are doing.

edited 30th Dec '11 10:02:52 PM by johnnyfog

I'm a skeptical squirrel

I liked the swordfight on top of cars.

It's the tarzan+monkeys bit that I felt didn't belong in that chase scene. The rest, I rather enjoyed.

But 1950's sci fi is not like 1930's jungle adventures and reflecting the content is no good if you're not going to reflect the genre. I'd love a George Lucas Throwback to the ilk of Invasion Of The Body Snatchers but I didn't get that.

What I got was somebody trying to surprise me with ,basically, Chariots of the Gods, an idea that is not only older than the original Indiana Jones movies but already had a movie and longrunning tv series dealing with it. The interdimensional nature of the aliens is rather terrible because, y'know, in the fifties we just had aliens and we were happy with it.

I think much of the failures in Crystal Skull lay in that they didn't go far enough with the premise and characters. You have an older Indy who's lost friends/family facing a new enemy with the Russians, dealing with the Red Scare, encountering a wholly different phenomena with aliens, reuniting with Marion, and discovering he has a son. Any one of those would have been an inherently interesting premise, and yet the whole thing feels so standard and flat. If all those are present, then use them thematically. Create a comeback story with Indy coming back from the quiet life he'd resigned himself to in order to prevent the rise of evil again.

Make Indy a Kirk esque figure circa Wrath of Khan, feeling alone and old in a different world, with the Russians seemingly out-thinking and outmaneuvering him at every turn. Acknowledge his age and experience as part of the broader story. Alien artifacts, relics he's completely unfamiliar with are at the center of a huge plot which he thinks he probably could have figured out years earlier. Finally the son he meets (Moving the reveal much earlier) is so different and seems far more on the ball about the world today and the dangers it possesses. Yet through his conversations with Marion, reminders of what Marcus/Henry Jones Sr brought out him, and the discovery that he and his son are far more alike gives him the realization he needed. The enemies may change, the climate may alter, the artifacts alien instead of supernatural, but Dr. Indiana Jones will still figure out a way to survive and save the day.

That's an Indy movie worth seeing I think.

I agree with you that CGI is getting over used and used in places where practical effects are possible. Even with as good as CGI is getting practical effects still tie in with the actors in a way that no CGI can. And I have to point out that the devil himself, Micheal Bay, utilizes practical effects as much as he possible can even in a CGI orgasm like the Transformers series.

I think the over use of CGI in I Jat Kot CS can be laid at Lucas' feet. I think the man would be happy if he could make his movies in a strip mall. One room with blue walls for his actors then send that off to ILM for them to make everything else.

"Tyyr's a necessary evil. " Spirit

I'd say that is hardly fair. It's not like Spielberg has never been seen indulging in abundant use of cgi (And I'm not even getting into Dreamworks or Tintin).

I know bashing George Lucas for ruining Star Wars is fun and all, but my point, Spielberg's never been known as someone who shy away from CGI. He's led several pioneering efforts into expanding the techniques & co-founded Dreamworks. I am pretty damn sure Spielberg could have taken the decision to fill the film with CGI on his own.

edited 3rd Jan '12 7:51:27 AM by Ghilz

As far as I'm concerned there's only Indiana Jones is a trilogy: Raiders Of The Lost Ark, The Last Crusade, and this film.

edited 3rd Jan '12 9:12:16 AM by Mattonymy

You are displaying abnormally high compulsions to over-analyze works of fiction and media. Diagnosis: TV Tropes Addiction.

Hardly fair? Have you seen how they shot the prequels? It's almost exclusively actors standing on blue sound stages waving day-glo rods in the air. Tell me the jungle chase scene doesn't look exactly like something that would be at home in his prequel trilogy. Hell, tell me it doesn't look the Obi-Wan Greivous chase scene.

"Tyyr's a necessary evil. " Spirit

I've always failed to see why people whine about CGI. It's a special effects technique that happens to allow more flexibility and freedom. What's the big deal? The only reason I can think of on why people hate it so much is the Nostalgia Filter.

And for the record, KOTCS had way less CGI than it could have. And the CGI in the jungle chase scene allowed a crazier action sequence than a set, so I have no problems with it.

The problem with CGI is that people overrely on it, to the point of where you can sit in the theater and immediately tell "Oh, that's fake, that was done in a computer." If you can immediately pinpoint CGI, something is wrong.

Always, somewhere, someone is fighting for you. As long as you remember them, you are not alone.

Practical effects from older movies haven't all aged well. Even Star Wars (unedited) and Back to the Future have the obvious matte lines. But that doesn't give new movies a license to look equally fake — minus twenty years hindsight.

This is what separates The Matrix, with its combo of solid practical effects, nice wirework, and good-looking CGI, with ham-fisted Lucas brand CGI.

edited 3rd Jan '12 7:04:57 PM by johnnyfog

I'm a skeptical squirrel

@Sporkaganza: And, say, stop-motion and many practical effects don't have the same problem? CGI is just the next way to use special effects. It's like complaining about color films when black-and-white films were slowly getting replaced by them.

Real problem with CGI is that its poorly used by those who think a blue screen and actors reacting to a tennis ball on a stick is all you need. The LOTR films used CGI brilliantly, because they mixed it with on location shooting and model work to create definitive objects for the actors to act against and the audience feel an emotional attachment to.

Computer generated imagery is fine when its not used lazily and is so blatant its insulting to the audience's intelligence to expect them to accept it as is. When Jurrasic Park's effects from 1993 look better than stuff in Attack of the Clones from 2002, there's a problem.

That right there. The CGI utilized in the jungle chase is blatantly obvious. It feels VERY fake when I'm watching it. I know they aren't zooming through the jungle, they're on a blue stage with a fan blowing in their faces.

Two more great examples of CGI mixed with practical effects that used them to wonderful impact.

I'm not against the use of CGI, I'm against the overuse of it. The characters in the SW prequel films just felt like they were floating through the scenery, just like in the jungle chase in Crystal Skull. There was no connection to it.

"Tyyr's a necessary evil. " Spirit

The CGI could be perfect but it also doesn't make what you are looking at interesting.

Blade Runner had matte paintings and some tricks with light effects and they get that beautiful shot of Tyrel's office window opening and the sun pouring in.

Star Wars Episodes 2 and 3 had some of the most boring backgrounds I have ever seen which is stunning considering how conceptually interesting they can be. They walk through some of the most lifeless uninspriging sets and then as Red Letter Media pointed out "Shot. Reaction Shot."- the most boring camera work in the world. There's this bit in Attack Of The Clones where they walk through the Jedi temple and ssssssssssssssss oh sorry I fell asleep just thinking about it. They made a CGI "50's diner". Why? I see plenty of those in real life.

In ...The Crystal Skull, the sets and locations just leave me cold. The stunts are barely worth calling stunts because it doesn't feel like anyone is actually moving around anything. Harrison Ford is on a box over here, now he's on a box over there. You know what was actually nice about the Nuking the Fridge scene? Right before the explosion, you are in a real set. It feels like somebody actually built a mock house in the middle of a desert and when Indy is piecing the picture together I go "Uh oh, I've realised what this is."

Then I go "Oh, how will he get out of this?!" and the answer is that he doesn't. Getting into the fridge just doesn't satisfy me. It's just too obviously not physically plausible and it is not a smart guy's move. When Jones Snr. used the birds to take out the place, it seemed like it would work and it was a smart move. When Indy got the giant gong in Temple Of Doom and then rolled it along with him to use as a shield, that was a smart move. When it's "Indiana Jones vs A Nuke" I want a solution worthy of the scenario. Or maybe you "shoot the swordsman" and the bomb doesn't actually hit that site. Indy ducks into the fridge then he hears an explosion and then he sees a mushroom cloud for the nuking of the next site over and then it's funny because he did something stupid in response to a scenario in which he wasn't actually in danger.

Too much CGI I can agree with. Everyone's made good points.

One problem I have is the climactic scenes like the motorcycle chase, or the two jeep vehicle chase through the jungle, they both happen either during the first half of the film, or in the middle. There really aren't any exciting or suspensful moments during the final 15 minutes.

A trivial complaint I have is, while Indy's reaction to Mutt being his son, "Why the hell didn't you make him finish school?" was kinda funny. I thought it would have been better if Indy hadn't said, a few seconds before "Lay off his back about school." It's like they were throwing that in to remind audiences that Indy and Mutt had a convo about not staying in school much earlier in the film, thus ruining a potentially good Brick Joke.