Temple of Doom VS Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

Excellent points.

The mystery in movies is a regular casualty these days, thanks to various factors including over PRing and too much "must program for the lowest demoninator so everyone must heff ze fun, okay?" thinking.

Same with personalities in music today.
No mystery about the people in music these days.
Back in the 30s and 50s, you would have had to wonder about the song or the person, yet in these days of multimedia and Magazines that exist to sell more magazines, you've probably known the inside leg measurements of an artist and read 8 interviews about the row they had with the wife last night or whatever before you've heard a tune. Their egotism counts secondarily to their music, if they are musicians imo. 😛

Same problem in J-Horror remakes in the US too.

The mystique and weirdness and unansweredness is forsaken for whatever glossy, neat, white-teethed, demographically constructed conclusion they can put an unrequited, generic, unsolicited orchestra burst at; Regardless of the impact on the meaning of the whole movie/genre like "The Eye".

Package Package Package.
Sell Sell Sell.

But what are we selling? Ahhhh who cares. We'll just market the f**** out of it, using its previous good name until every man, women and child on earth is terrified that they might miss something really special if they don't see the movie....and then its too late for them...

Temple of Doom didn't need the amount of multimedia hype that this movie got.

Cause it ruled.

Word of mouth got round that it was good, because it was.
It rocked. It was dark, it was genuinely suspenseful and action packed.

Not because we sat through half hour of the movie's own director telling you why he feels that its the second coming of the hero from the genuinely good originals...... when in fact its not and its primarily a launch pad for Shia LeBeouf and whatever CGI company is doing the job that week.

If the movie was a quality one, Speilberg coulda just released the movie, shut up about it and it'd have sold itself.

Oh well, like they say: "An empty can rattles the most."

Hehehe... Sadako really hates it.

😛

I'm reading The Making of Indiana Jones. Quite an entertaining read, of course I haven't gotten to the KOTCS bit. 😉

Well, if it has a section on KOTCS, then I'd say that that was mighty considerate of the publishers to include pages that double up as Lavatory paper...

Just in case you get caught paperless as you read upon the loo. 😛

Nah, it looks nice. Good read.

An interesting passage in the Raiders chapters is that during editing George Lucas removed a scene from Raiders he felt was over the top. It's when Indy and Marion climb out of the Well of Souls. An Arab sees them emerging from the tomb and faints. I'd say: good call, George. But then, isn't this the same guy that wrote all the poop jokes in TPM??? WTF happened?

he got infantile?

Yep. The Gophers and Monkees and Indy having to now be falling over with flailing arms, cartoon style ("He can't even stand straight now cuz hes old now...thats funny..... hyuck hyuck hyuck..."😉 saw it get worse.

Bizarre... he should read up on these Making Of... books of SW and Indy.

Id love to get those "The making of"s.

It will happen. ✅

They're great. Good inside info, not all glowing and positive. And great pics and print quality.

Sounds great from a balancist POV too then.

Even better. ✅

It's made in name of Lucasfilm, but that's how you get all the good pics, sketches and other goodies.

😄

I know... I'm a kid in a toy store.

are you sure of the "in a toy store" part? 😛

It is when it comes to these lovely books.

Temple of Doom was silly, but the silliness was a product of the character and whimsical style that the director chose for the movie. The movie always felt confident of itself and even when the whimsy fell flat, (which it did, often) the story was still rooted in character development and practical filmmaking. With a mature tone, interesting characters and good directing. Most people are able to overlook the extreme silliness because there is much more to enjoy in the movie other than a parody of it's characters and history.

The Crystal Skull, was not whimsical or silly, it was just bad. The movie has no redeeming qualities, not even for nostalgia sake. As a film and as a film fan. One cannot overlook how poorly made the movie is. The movie is almost insulting. From the beginning you can feel that the filmmakers had an over abundance of confidence in their work. I TRULY believe that it was not the quality of work they felt confident about, but the fact that they knew people were going to pay to see this movie on franchise status alone. It took a long time for the plot to work itself out. This is mainly due to horrible writing. The plot twist is revealed to us before the middle of the movie, leaving no intrigue or mystery. The scenario's they found for Indy felt like a parody of his previous adventures. There was no character connection or development. For about the first twenty minutes of the movie you were able to fool yourself into believing that the hysteria might work itself out into a refined story and kick into an actual indy adventure. This is, where i believe that Speilberg lost all influence what so ever. Because, the first and second half of the movie feel like two completely different concepts CRAMMED into one movie The Film felt like it was shot by amateurs. No other filmmakers would be allowed to get away with delivering such a poor quality film. Not even the special effects were worth while. Infact, the special effects, at times are on par with dragon wars. Isn't this supposed to be lucasfilms? Maybe, Lucas shouldn't have ditched his models and decided to work soley with CGI. Harrison fords attempts and shia lebeouf are the only two things worth watching in this sorry excuse for a movie.

I choose Temple of doom 😉

Me too.

Nicely summed up, Rages. 🙂