May 29th, 2008 at 9:09 am
I watched the new Indiana Jones movie last weekend. Here are some thoughts…
- they shouldn’t have mixed Science Fiction with Indy
Indiana Jones is traditionally known for mythical or biblical adventures, not SciFi. That is what makes him different. You’ll know what I mean when you go see it, there won’t be any spoilers here. Steven Spielberg has to learn to leave SciFi out of his movies especially one of this nature.
- good special effects, exciting scenes but the story seemed pretty light
- the villain looked more like a Nazi type German than Russian
- they should tried to bring back Jonathan Ke Quan (the little Asian boy from Temple of Doom)
- the villain died too easily
Is it worth watching? Definitely. But you might be a little disappointed if you went in with high expectations of it being like the previous three installments … it didn’t stick to a traditional Indy type adventure.
Interesting trivia: Tom Selleck was originally supposed to play Indiana Jones but backed out because he had commitments with the Magnum PI television show. I can’t imagine Indiana Jones with that moustache, can you?
4 Responses to “Thoughts on the new Indy movie”
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kristarella said: @ 8:13 pm
May 29th, 2008
The whole Sci-Fi element weirded me out at first, but then I remembered that the old movies were fairly supernatural too. Only two of them were biblical (or vaguely biblical origins), the other was ripping out still beating hearts to offer to Kali. Hardly normal. Science is the new religion…
(Just realised you said “mythical or biblical”)
What was up with the little burrowing mammals at the start and the monkeys?! Not in the Indie vein at all.
It was enjoyable though.
Janet said: @ 8:54 pm
May 29th, 2008
I thought that they got in and out of difficult situations too easily. Never heard of this crystal skull legend. Now had they searched for the fountain of youth, that one could have been interesting.
It was a decently entertaining matinee movie.
The Foo said: @ 8:57 am
May 30th, 2008
@kris
you are right, science is the new religion but i believe Spielberg took it that way because that particular part of SciFi (won’t give any spoilers out) is actually something he is pretty passionate about.
burrowing mammals? didn’t remember that one. yeah the monkeys were like it was put in there to add excitement. pretty disjointed.
i agree, despite the criticisms, it is still an entertaining movie.
@janet
it was as if they tried to create small *difficult* situations to spice up the movie and it ended up that they got in and out of those real easily (like you said).
yes he could have used a whole bunch of other religion or mythical stuff — dead sea scrolls, atlantis, philosopher’s stone, pandora’s box, Stonehenge etc.
oh, just remembered that the Tomb Raider movie did one on pandora’s box. philosopher’s stone was also one of indy’s book adventures.
the crystal skull legend is one of those open ended legends without a proper story behind it. that is why Spielberg could carve a story around it the way he did — with his own interpretation. the claim to it was that it was pre-columbian and had mythical powers. it is also one of the more widely used legends within science fiction — hence his inclination to use it in the movie.
kristarella said: @ 7:30 pm
May 30th, 2008
The burrowing mammal is the first thing you see in the movie and then one sticks it head up after Indie comes out on that rocket train thing… I call them mammals cos I have no idea what they otherwise are.
Actually I got a bit excited when Indie first spoke of the skulls because I like the cities of gold legends, but they didn’t really go very far with that, except for the big pictures on the ground.