I believe he was just saying that Stiffler'd make a less effective Villian than Palpatine, which is true.
And that the Russians, instead of being portrayed in any particularly effective threatening way come off as relatively harmless dicks (like stiffler) when compared with the forces of evil in the previous films (Almost a Palps levels of evil), but thats all I got from that...
I dont think humour was the guys point.
Man your Emporer's Mum vision is the most twisted image you've ever created in my mind...!!!!
Gender: Unspecified Location: With Cinderella and the 9 Dwarves
Re: Nazis make better villains than Soviets.
Are you crazy? This movie was the most horrible waste of my time ever. I'd rather had my face punched into a heap of cowshit for 3 hours than ever have to watch this travesty again.
Well, I don't think the general concept of nazi's vs. russians is miscontrued. James Bond did very nicely with Russian baddies for a long long time. But maybe it's not politically correct to portray them as the embodiments of evil anymore. The nazi's can't sue, throw atomic bombs or diplomatically bother you.
And lets face it, the villians in Indy IV were no Blofeld or Goldfinger.
If they had been in a Bond movie, they'd only have attained the rank of "Unmemorable henchmen". And would be dispatched with customary ease.
Heres the thing you just reminded me of in the other thread....
Now Im no expert in Russian history, but some of the things you suggested as crudentials of their villiany, the Russkies sounded like they had their shit together in this regard, and your case was convincing.
Yet they didnt show much believeable villiany. (Just flashy sword fights and Kate Blanchett staring at people at lot while mind reading and stuff.)
But Rambo IV was a great example of how the villiany should be done on screen.
Now I knew f*** all whatsoever about the situation in the movies set location, knew nothing of the people or history at all.
Yet after the 1st ten minutes of that movie, after seeing that "Ladyboy c***" sergant (lol) playing those death games with innocent families...?
I knew instantly that these guys were scum and I couldnt wait for Rambo to inviscerate him with extreme prejudice.
But a tad over the top. I think historically it's all bogus anyway. A villain should be both cruel and sympathetic if you ask me. That's why Belloq is great.
Yeah but not sympathetic to the point where Indy and pals are working together with them....
How less scary would Jaws be if he was one of Brody's freindly beach team...?
Good Villians must never sacrifice their evil/scary sides for the sake of that 'sympathetic to their plight on some level' aspect.
Even the Nazis in Raiders wouldnt have worked if they we could see what they were up to at every given moment, hanging with Indy.
They appear in the movie very suddenly as very bad news for indy and then they disapper. Indy at no point hung out with them at their camp, at no point did he help them find the macguffin he fought them all the way.
I actually sometimes want Gruber to pull that raid off when I watch Die Hard, but he was a memorable villian that along with Khan, Emporer Palpatine will live on in my memory til I die.
Could they not have had Javier Bardhem reprise his "No country for old men" role for the Soviets..? There was barely one memorable thing about the villians this time. He'd have sorted that out though..
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"Van Zan is the Pinocchio of feces." - Lestov16
Last edited by Sadako of Girth on Jan 17th, 2009 at 04:44 PM
With sympathetic I don't mean buddies, but that you can kinda understand them. Raiders has a wonderful pallet of baddies though, which makes the script so clever. There is not one baddies, it's a group of baddies. There's Belloq, but also Toht and Dietrich. Now Toth is just plain evil, but Belloq and Dietrich are portrayed with more humanity. Belloq with his double agenda, one of whic is similar to Indy's. Dietrich has doubts about Belloq's strategy and fears the Fuhrer. I thought that was quite wonderful.
Even ToD has the ambiguous characters like Chatter Lal (first very friendly and slightly understandably defensive, then his other side shows up: he's a baddie) and the young Sultan (bad but not wanting to be bad) and then there is one real baddie in the form of Mola Ram.
Even in TLC, where they villains get more stereotyped like the nazi officer (that's how we say goodbye in Germany), there's Elsa and Donovan...
Compare that to Indy 5, there's an attempt to a similar pallet but it doesn't work at all.
I agree with your group of baddies. Gruber is unsuspassed in many respects. A sympthetic side makes them more dangerous if you ask me.
In fact Ive adopted from this moment onwards, a policy of dropping the "Indiana Jones and the..." part of the movie's title.
TAOMFS, KOTCS or simply "That goddamned awful, shitty movie" will have to suffice.
'A metaphorical orgasm caused by that first cup of Tetleys first thing in the morning.'
TAOS has been upgraded to a TAOS as "The Aliens of mother f**king shit."
Due to my being foolish enough to try watching it again this week.
Needless to say I never made it past the bit where Indy is depressively reflecting on everybody being gone.
"Yeah...along with the writing talent behind his previous adventures"
was the thought that 'caused the termination of that sitting.
But I had watched long enough to be annoyed already by the impending involvement of the aliens.
I feel unclean. It wont come off! It wont come offffffffffffffff....!!!!!!!!!
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Jul 24th, 2008 09:26 PM
