When the excellent (!) The Mummy" was released and friends asked me how good it was, I always replied: Better than Tomb Raider" but of course can't compete with Indy3." Within that grid one must sort Indy 4" on one step with Tom Raider" now! Many people I know, consider "Temple" the worst of the series. I never agreed because even though it wasn't as excellent as "Ark/Crusade", it was still terrific!
This one is far, far ... farfarfarfarfarfarfar worse than "Temple"! Bottom line.
"Crystal-Skull" is the continuation of "Van Helsing" by ... well, unfortunately by the same means. The jungle race and the sequence along the cliff was identically in "VH" and sucked already there. They should have avoided CGI! It's the Dark Side of adventure-movies. And even though there was lots of it in "The Mummy", it's makers accomplished it better to integrate and sublime it to the story and characters.
What made "The Mummy" as well as the other "Indy"-films better than this was also scenes when the heroes fail or get caught in a mess and their facial expressions then. To shoot straight: the dumb look on their faces! They have spared that too here. Now "our" heroes can do everything! Booooring *ZAPP*.
It's the same problem as the leap between Carpenter's "Escape from..."-films: Snake Plissken is a nihilistic streetfighter in "NY" and all of a sudden an omnipotent Superman in "LA" which spoiled the character and the spirit of the film.
Some dialogues and conceivable funny scenes in "Skull" like the quicksand-confession- simply weren't comic but clumsy.
The spirit of the first three movies went gone. I remember after "Crusade" I've read an interview with Steven were he told about and praised his crew, specifically his chief-editor. Spielberg said, he always asked his editor something like "How many panels? What cutrate do you use?", and that old chap always replied: "I don't know, it just FEELS right!" Sorry I can't recall the source, but I definitively read it like that. Here's the dilemma: "Skull" doesn't FEEL right! In another note before the release of "Phantom Menace", Spielberg claimed he already got a private screening in Lucas' homecinema and "...it was so good that I will avoid to compete with that for quite a while...". It's plain obvious that both fellas would better consult fan-advice before their next eventual sequels.
It's not understandable why and how Spielberg, who even mastered to emotionalize issues like WWII without getting pathetic or euphemistic, but therefor highly emphatic, could now fail about that in a "simple" adventureflick after doing it right at least two times before with that franchise.
In fact the best scene is the one with the Marcus Brody statue, which reprises the father-son-eye-contact-take from Crusade" during the motorcycle-chase. Also the following library-exit-dialog from Indy which refers to his study-advise from Crusade" was the best reference.
It's also quaint -but actually could have been predicted- that the attempt to introduce an extraterrestrial background couldn't be accomplished as credible as even the spiritual ones from all earlier flicks. Actually not credible at all. Besides, it's only attractive for X-Files"-fans who understand all the Area51" references too. And for those -my former roommate is one of those- it's just amateur-stuff.
Another odd thing is, that the idol looks crappy. Even the "Sankara"-stones were more impressive even though there wasn't'anything spectacular about them. So were the sets. The graveyard was a studio, right? They'd better found a real one. Everybody who loved the first movies just KNOWS that this is studio.
And the freezer-scene... aw, c'mon! It left me cold, to cone a phrase.
The good point is, that now they have to do a fourth part - right now! They can't shelf the franchise like that! Little advise to Steven and George: "The Amber-Room" and "Odessa"; let's fight some Nazis again. PLEASE!
Oh, at least in my theater, "Skull" featured a trailer for the next "The Mummy"; looked cool. We'll see...
This one is far, far ... farfarfarfarfarfarfar worse than "Temple"! Bottom line.
"Crystal-Skull" is the continuation of "Van Helsing" by ... well, unfortunately by the same means. The jungle race and the sequence along the cliff was identically in "VH" and sucked already there. They should have avoided CGI! It's the Dark Side of adventure-movies. And even though there was lots of it in "The Mummy", it's makers accomplished it better to integrate and sublime it to the story and characters.
What made "The Mummy" as well as the other "Indy"-films better than this was also scenes when the heroes fail or get caught in a mess and their facial expressions then. To shoot straight: the dumb look on their faces! They have spared that too here. Now "our" heroes can do everything! Booooring *ZAPP*.
It's the same problem as the leap between Carpenter's "Escape from..."-films: Snake Plissken is a nihilistic streetfighter in "NY" and all of a sudden an omnipotent Superman in "LA" which spoiled the character and the spirit of the film.
Some dialogues and conceivable funny scenes in "Skull" like the quicksand-confession- simply weren't comic but clumsy.
The spirit of the first three movies went gone. I remember after "Crusade" I've read an interview with Steven were he told about and praised his crew, specifically his chief-editor. Spielberg said, he always asked his editor something like "How many panels? What cutrate do you use?", and that old chap always replied: "I don't know, it just FEELS right!" Sorry I can't recall the source, but I definitively read it like that. Here's the dilemma: "Skull" doesn't FEEL right! In another note before the release of "Phantom Menace", Spielberg claimed he already got a private screening in Lucas' homecinema and "...it was so good that I will avoid to compete with that for quite a while...". It's plain obvious that both fellas would better consult fan-advice before their next eventual sequels.
It's not understandable why and how Spielberg, who even mastered to emotionalize issues like WWII without getting pathetic or euphemistic, but therefor highly emphatic, could now fail about that in a "simple" adventureflick after doing it right at least two times before with that franchise.
In fact the best scene is the one with the Marcus Brody statue, which reprises the father-son-eye-contact-take from Crusade" during the motorcycle-chase. Also the following library-exit-dialog from Indy which refers to his study-advise from Crusade" was the best reference.
It's also quaint -but actually could have been predicted- that the attempt to introduce an extraterrestrial background couldn't be accomplished as credible as even the spiritual ones from all earlier flicks. Actually not credible at all. Besides, it's only attractive for X-Files"-fans who understand all the Area51" references too. And for those -my former roommate is one of those- it's just amateur-stuff.
Another odd thing is, that the idol looks crappy. Even the "Sankara"-stones were more impressive even though there wasn't'anything spectacular about them. So were the sets. The graveyard was a studio, right? They'd better found a real one. Everybody who loved the first movies just KNOWS that this is studio.
And the freezer-scene... aw, c'mon! It left me cold, to cone a phrase.
The good point is, that now they have to do a fourth part - right now! They can't shelf the franchise like that! Little advise to Steven and George: "The Amber-Room" and "Odessa"; let's fight some Nazis again. PLEASE!
Oh, at least in my theater, "Skull" featured a trailer for the next "The Mummy"; looked cool. We'll see...