General Indiana Jones Thread

I just found Old Indy scenes cheesy and boring personally. Though to be fair I haven't watched those scenes in years and could feel differently today.

Edit: Accidental page topper.

Edited by Bullman on May 20th 2023 at 3:39:49 AM

Also, Dial of Destiny will be released in quite a few European countries (including the U.K. and Middle East) between June 28 and 29.

Edited by gjjones on May 20th 2023 at 5:10:25 AM

Removing the Old Indy bookends had the odd knock on effect of canonizing Young Indy's fight with Dracula, which originally just a spooky story Old Indy told some neighborhood kids on Halloween.

Yikes, reviews sound bad for this one.

How bad? Is it a bomb?

This is what a friend on Discord showed me.

Actually reviews seem mixed leaning negative to me. For example on Rotten Tomatoes, as right now, it's this:

Which to be fair it's only like 29 reviews so who knows what others will think or what the audience score will be.

Edited by Bullman on May 21st 2023 at 8:34:57 AM

I imagine that unless something really dumb happens, the audience rating is going to be over 90%.

Well if Lucasfilm does the usual " old legacy hero gets belittled and replaced by snarky young British woman" trap, then I doubt audiences will react well.

But surely they won't do that again right?

Yeah, I can see how that would not be fun. People don't watch Indiana Jones to see him get belittled and upstaged by a "feminist" character.

I AM legit hoping they don't repeat that again but not holding my breath.

I very much doudt that the movie will do that. Why are we assuming that it will? Like it seems like doomsaying to assume that will or that the audiences will hate it. I say that as someone who thought the trailers made the film look average at best.

Edited by Bullman on May 21st 2023 at 11:50:59 AM

Well, would you like it if the movie actually did that?

And people are just speculating why it was received poorly. And given how other classic action heroes have been treated lately, it is not entirely unfounded.

Actually it depends on the exacution, because while I wouldn't do it personally it can work. Though again I don't think they are going to do that. Though I could be wrong. I agree though that it is not unfounded.

Either way I was wondering what everyone's ranking if the films. Heres mine:

1) The Last Crusade.

2) Raiders of the Lost Ark.

3) Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

4) The Tempel of Doom

Edited by Bullman on May 21st 2023 at 12:05:50 PM

Personally I always find it hard to rank the Indy movies, since I think Raiders and Last Crusade are both fantastic movies in their own right. But I'd say my ranking would be:

1) Raiders of the Lost Ark

2) The Last Crusade

3) The Temple of Doom

4) Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

My ranking is pretty much interchangeably Raiders and Last Crusade followed by a massive gulf of ">"s, then Crystal Skull, then Temple of Doom.

Last Crusade will always be second place to Raiders of the Lost Ark, but the interactions between Indy and Jones Sr. is some of the best stuff in the franchise. "I'm as human as the next guy." "I WAS the next guy!" I think I probably prefer Temple of Doom over Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, mostly because the imagery, set pieces and stunt work are still so striking. KOTCS never quite took off because it relied on the visual effects to drive the action rather than the sets and stunts, but I do like how Indy has been at this for a long time and how his past is creeping up on him.

It is kind of shocking hearing of the early reviews of Dial of Destiny, Variety in particular seems quite venomous to it. I've already been seeing a few ideas and conversations being tossed around about why it's being received this way, but I'll reserve discussion until actual release.

I'll rank them:

1)Last Crusade

2)Raiders of the Lost Ark

3)Temple of Doom

4)Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

But I actually enjoy all four quite a bit. What's curious to me about a lot of the negative Dial reviews is that they say it's better than Skull... which has a pretty respectable score of 77%.

The Temple of Doom is objectively a much better film in terms of action, originality, and characterization than Last Crusade or Crystal Skull (which I literally forget the title of at times).

And...

Man, the racism.

I... really don't think most of those are things that can possibly be quantified as being objectively true.

Like, what is "better" characterization? More? More consistent? More growth? More accuracy to the source? There's no such thing as being "objectively better characterization." Even if we thought there was, there are many characters, some of whom might get better or worse characterization.

People seem to remember Short Round fondly, at least.

Now they do, thanks to Ke Huy Quan’s Career Resurrection as of late. But back in the day the fans were as vehement about him as they were about young Anakin.

Honestly, I never minded young Anakin all that much, either.

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=14580644940A56652600&page=26#comment-637

I once saw someone presume that Thrawn would be emasculated just because he's set to appear on Ahsoka. That's the level of bad faith some people have cultivated within themselves.

Both Short Round and Willie Scott were generally regarded as unbearably annoying back in the day and were often cited as the main reason why people disliked the film.

And while Shorty has been reevaluated a bit in recent years, I have seen nothing among those lines for Willie.

Though of course the films portrayal of India has become its biggest criticism nowadays.