well, its actually the same thing as raiders when you think about it. The nazis thought that they could rule the world with the ark and the russians thought that with the skull. In the end though, they both wound up dying... the only real difference is that the ark got stored in a never ending warehouse, while the skull just got destroyed
The Skull itself was used poorly. At least the Ark, and the holy grail you had the anticipation of finding out how they work and it happened towards the end of the movie, at the climax of the movie. TOD and KOTCS found theirs too early and made it partially pointless to watch afterwards which is probably why I found the first half up to the point where they found the Skull better than the second half.
__________________
When the darkness comes, keep an eye on the light no matter how far away it seems.
But then in ToD Indy had more difficulties getting it out. they found the Skull Temple fairly easy. Heck, mumbling Hurt had all teh answers. Henry Sr. also had ansers except he didn't know what they meant. Indy had to find out the hard way. Again, the ot's work better.
True, personally though Raiders and Last Crusade worked better. It wraped up the story more efficiently. I did enjoy the "escape" in ToD though, much better than the race to get to the temple in KOTCS
__________________
When the darkness comes, keep an eye on the light no matter how far away it seems.
Gender: Female Location: at the second star to the right
First of all, nothing is subtle about Jar Jar. Nothing. The "highlights" of TPM you mentioned all describe the other movies. It's a new galaxy filled with foreign spacecraft, planets, weapons, and creatures. It doesn't matter that TPM is a beginning factor. Even though AOTC and ROTS are better, TPM should be able to hold its own against the other movies and it just doesn't, not imo.
Okay, I'll give you the fact that the monkeys were stupid. But they were no more stupid than the eyeball soup in TOD, or the fact that from the clue "name of God," Indy will not only conclude the word to spell is "Jehovah" but to spell it with an "I" in TLC.
TPM made the Force too scientific, relied so much on CGI it forgot about everything else, and gave the highest-anticipated character (Darth Maul) next to nothing to do. Oh, and if a movie is going to show a Force-created "Christ-child," it should be someone a little less annoying than Jake Lloyd.
Hey I didn't say TPM was perfect, just a better movie than KOTCS.
Those things annoyed me too, yes. The positioning of the movie in the saga did dictate pace as it was all being about beginnings to a six episodic arc intended by Lucas to be viewed from 1-6 order..
No truly great saga blows its load on the 1st movie.
(Hence my disregard of the Matrix saga and the Indy saga-as-it-now- stands)
And yes they had the elements I listed in the other films.
It was the Star Wars universe, after all, you expected it to be set in New York...? Its a pity that the successful elements from the Indy movies werent applied well in this latest movie, it might then have not sucked so hard..
I hate Jar Jar more than anyone should 9 years on.
(Just ask Queeq how much posting time I lovingly devoted to tearing that mother a new one onthis very forum.)
But Jar Jar was rapier-like, merely "only-just-detectable" in terms of subtlety and quality when faced in the smackdown against John Hurt (The real actor successor to Binks) and his gangs of pixelated rodents and simians. And after all those years of expectation, it took me months of rewatches to be as disappointed as I was with it.
With KOTCS, it took me one watching.
'Nuff Said.
__________________
"Van Zan is the Pinocchio of feces." - Lestov16
Last edited by Sadako of Girth on Jun 10th, 2008 at 04:14 PM
Gender: Female Location: at the second star to the right
I think it's hard for any series' sequels to live up to the original. When you're watching a movie for the first time, everything is new. You're introduced to a new world and don't know what to expect. When you hear that a second movie is going to be made, there's a lot of hype, whether it's Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, Indy, SW, or POTC, etc. But you're already familiar with the universe of it. You know the characters. So this time around, you're a little more used to things and usually even very good sequels aren't considered on par with the original movie.
That said, I really enjoyed Die Hard 4.0 though. I mean, it had a bit of an bsurd scene with a fighter jet, but it was all good fun and they managed to both enhance McClane's character, avoid clichés (not one complete yippekayee mofo) and bring him up to date to the times. It kinda showed: it can be done.