There may be spoilers ahead... but the movie wasn't good enough for me to care about ruining it.
I made a concerted, sometimes rude effort to know nothing about this film going into the theatre. I wasn't completely successful, but I was close. And it just wasn't really worth the effort. To be fair the movie wasn't awful... it was competent. Competently staged. Competently acted. Competently filmed. It wasn't, however, a fitting entry into the series. It could be that the core story, referencing some of the most irksome, clichéd and annoying hoaxes and "theories", just biased me. I mean really... do we need ANOTHER interpretation of Roswell (about a single one that just honestly calls it a load of shit)? Area 51? Ancient astronauts and Nasca lines (who only seem to need those poor, primitive brown people)? Cold War psychic research (well... actually that one did happen, although nothing came of it)? I mean I could live with the references - I'm not a militant skeptic - but these are so trite. I was fine when I saw the Roswell incident spoofed in "Futurama" and in "Deep Space Nine" and in "Doctor Who" and "Stargate" and "Independence Day" and "X-Files" and "The Invisibles" and sooooo many others. Am I expecting too much for such an iconic movie to be just a little original? It was a great idea to bring Karen Allen back... then they propped her up like a cardboard cutout throughout the film. When they waved a fish in front of her she had to make a pixie-smile face. You expect unbelievable events in an Indy movie... but in this you get insults to intelligence. Surviving a nuclear blast in a fridge? Surviving that fridge being thrown several hundred yards? Having radiation washed off with brushes (well, we all know that actually works)? The duck gently placed in the river by the stream. If these feats were done with some irreverence, some style you might forgive them... but they just rang false. Retarded daydreaming rather than adventure fantasy. Perhaps most shamelessly (since all this takes is money, which they had a lot of) many of the effects were weak. The skull looked like a toy. The "magnetic" gun powder looked incredibly lame and many of the kinetic effects (the flying blades and such) just looked blurry and indistinct. The movie worked best when it presented the classic environments from the early films: ruins and jungles. As an aside this movie did renew my absolute love of the game "Uncharted: Drake's Fortune"... which looked about as good and had a MUCH better story than this. I AM being hard on this movie: if the words "Indiana Jones" weren't in the title I might have liked it more. A nice, throw away adventure movie like "The Mummy" or "National Treasure". But "Indiana Jones" IS in the title. We waited DECADES for this, they argued for YEARS about the "right movie" to make, we talked this up to our kids for MONTHS... and this is what we get? There is no chance that my son will remember this movie like I remembered "Raiders of the Lost Ark". George Lucas is killing my childhood one beloved franchise at a time. As another aside there were some great previews here: "Hancock" looks to be absolutely great, a movie made seemingly specifically for me. I also predict that "Wall-E" will replace "The Incredibles" as my favorite Pixar movie of all time. It just looks that good. Jim Davis ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| Adobe® ColdFusion® 8 software 8 is the most important and dramatic release to date Get the Free Trial http://ad.doubleclick.net/clk;192386516;25150098;k Archive: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/CF-Community/message.cfm/messageid:260814 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/CF-Community/subscribe.cfm Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/unsubscribe.cfm?user=89.70.5
