Indiana Jones And The Lost City Of Jaded Fans
POSTED BY: chrisisall
UPDATED: Wednesday, October 22, 2008 16:27
VIEWED: 6814
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I think - and this has pretty much already been said - that everybody has a different threshold for fantasticity, whimsy, etc. I find (not surprisingly) that as I grow older, my willing suspension of disbelief requires a lot more sucking-up to.
The thing about "Indy & Shia Go to Skull Castle" that I allowed to pretty much set the tone for the rest of the movie - before the prairie-dogs -as-Ewok-stand-ins, before the big Indestructible Fridge Ride - was the liberties taken with the principle of magnetism. I could've lived (I think) with chasing clouds of gun powder around the warehouse. What got me was the way some metallic objects - guns, bullets, etc. - seemed to be more (or less) affected by the magnetic dingus from one cut to the next. It was kinda like Steve and George were saying, "Hey - this franchise is so big we can get away with thumbing our noses at things like magnetism." By the time we got to the fridge and the Ewo - er, prairie dogs, I was damn near already a goner.
It was like my childlike sense of guileless wonder moved and left no forwarding address when we got here!
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Quote:
Originally posted by TheSomnambulist:
I must disagree with you about fantasty adhering to a rule. That's how it came to be in the first place. It conflicts with the rules. And it's those rules being broken that make a fantasy so enjoyable. In Toy Story we know toys don't move and talk, but that absurdity is what make it so charming. If you were sat with some person who leant over and they said to you: " This movie is dumb, toys don't speak!" ....You'd be incredulous!
You are missing my point. I didn't say fantasy has to adhere to "rules" in a general sense that apply across the board. But they do need to adhere to the rules of the world they themselves present. Toys talking in Toy Story isn't a problem, bvecause that's what the movie is about. But if they, in Toy Story 3, have a talking dog, after establishing that dogs act just like dogs in the first 2, then they'd be breaking their own rules.
In Back to the Future, we accept the time travel, but would question the suddenly introduction of aliens or vampires. We accept River having super-human skills in Firefly, but we'd balk if suddenly they introduced magic.
By the same token, Raiders was about a quest for a supernatural object, which turned out to have supernatural properties. But Indy was a man - nothing supernatural about him. And for that matter, the world around him played by hightened, but still fairly realistic rules. The MacGuffins all had supernatural properties, but the supernatural was limited to those objects. t was still a more or less normal world around those objects.
That is where I thought KOTCS failed. Indy surviving an absurd sitation in such a way is completely different from there being an Arc of the Covenant - totally different criteria. There was no longer a sense that the story was set in something that could be considered even a hightened version of the real world.
You can have things be as fantastical as you wish, but you need to stay within the bounds established by that fantasy. When you just start thowing things in willy-nilly, you loose any sense of internal logic.
"I thoroughly disapprove of duels. If a man should challenge me, I would take him kindly and forgivingly by the hand and lead him to a quiet place and kill him."
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Quote:
Originally posted by WASHnwear:
I think - and this has pretty much already been said - that everybody has a different threshold for fantasticity, whimsy, etc. I find (not surprisingly) that as I grow older, my willing suspension of disbelief requires a lot more sucking-up to.
The thing about "Indy & Shia Go to Skull Castle" that I allowed to pretty much set the tone for the rest of the movie - before the prairie-dogs -as-Ewok-stand-ins, before the big Indestructible Fridge Ride - was the liberties taken with the principle of magnetism. I could've lived (I think) with chasing clouds of gun powder around the warehouse. What got me was the way some metallic objects - guns, bullets, etc. - seemed to be more (or less) affected by the magnetic dingus from one cut to the next. It was kinda like Steve and George were saying, "Hey - this franchise is so big we can get away with thumbing our noses at things like magnetism." By the time we got to the fridge and the Ewo - er, prairie dogs, I was damn near already a goner.
It was like my childlike sense of guileless wonder moved and left no forwarding address when we got here!
The magnetism stuff bothered me after a while, as well. I liked the gunpowder scene and stuff, but the completely random nature of the magnetism - working when it suited the plot, basically - struck me as lazy writing. Especially later on, when somehow burlap would shut down the magnetism.
Which goes back, again, to my point about being true to the logic established by the movie. Setting aside it not adhering to the internal logic of the prior films, it couldn't even stay consistant within the one film itself.
"I thoroughly disapprove of duels. If a man should challenge me, I would take him kindly and forgivingly by the hand and lead him to a quiet place and kill him."
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Quote:
Originally posted by MSB:
and as for the uninvolved in the action.. he was no more uninvolved than Sean Connery was mainly because they're both too damn old to be the action and flash action hero... now they're more about the thought and the adventure
Sorry, but that's simply not true. Connery wasn't an active character because that's not who his character was. He wasn't the type to stick his neck out, he was a scholar, not an adventurer. That is not the case with Indy, even at that age.
Plus, Ford actually did more stuntwork in this one than the previous films, which can be seen in the special features. It had nothing to do with his age. It comes down to the writing.
"I thoroughly disapprove of duels. If a man should challenge me, I would take him kindly and forgivingly by the hand and lead him to a quiet place and kill him."
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Let me go out on a limb to say that the only Star Wars I enjoyed was the original and the only Indy was the original.
But, I will probably get the new Indy from Netflix and give it a go
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Storymark - you say it's breaking the rules of it's own fantasy but really it isn't. What Indy 4 has done is merely tie in the 50's paranoia of visitors from another world with that of the religious myth of the ancient Mayan's, who believed on the evidence of their folklore, in visitors from the heavens. Now this can be translated in many ways of course, but Lucas and Spielberg decided, given the era (50's) that Indy was in at that stage to link the two lores with the alien route. Just as they linked, the Nazi's with ancient occult/religion.
It took the preoccupation of both it's current timelines: Nazi's in the case of Raiders, and Aliens in the case of the Crystal Skull, and blended them with a relevant ancient history.
I'm not trying to convince you of anything particularly but just stating why it worked for me I guess.
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Quote:
Originally posted by TheSomnambulist:
Storymark - you say it's breaking the rules of it's own fantasy but really it isn't. What Indy 4 has done is merely tie in the 50's paranoia of visitors from another world with that of the religious myth of the ancient Mayan's, who believed on the evidence of their folklore, in visitors from the heavens. Now this can be translated in many ways of course, but Lucas and Spielberg decided, given the era (50's) that Indy was in at that stage to link the two lores with the alien route. Just as they linked, the Nazi's with ancient occult/religion.
It took the preoccupation of both it's current timelines: Nazi's in the case of Raiders, and Aliens in the case of the Crystal Skull, and blended them with a relevant ancient history.
I'm not trying to convince you of anything particularly but just stating why it worked for me I guess.
Uh, did you even read what I wrote? I said I had no problem with the alien angle. That is not in any way even related to my problems with the film.
I agree with you, that the alien stuff worked as a parallel to the Nazi's and religious artifacts.
Unfortunetly, none of what you wrote applies to anything I actually said....
"I thoroughly disapprove of duels. If a man should challenge me, I would take him kindly and forgivingly by the hand and lead him to a quiet place and kill him."
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Well, here's the deal - y'all got good points, every one of ya, but it seems to me that folks are missing the context.
Indy is pulp, flat out cheese recycled from golden age pulpmags of "high adventure" and is thus a B-movie with pretentions of grandeur to begin with.
That ain't to say it's bad, like I am fond of saying about other franchises, sure it's cheese, but yanno, it's some damn good cheese!
I got dragged to see this one - the only thing I wanna see of Lucas, by choice, is a public execution of the fan-screwing punk, but I digress...
So I got dragged to it, wasn't expecting to like it, wincing at the mere thought of Lucas's grimy hands ruining another franchise... and yet, I did feel that I got my moneys worth (for once) so I don't have any complaints.
I think you folk are expecting a bit much from the series given it's origin and context.
-F
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Quote:
Originally posted by Fremdfirma:
I think you folk are expecting a bit much from the series given it's origin and context.
-F
I tire of that rationelle, myself. Yes, it's inspired by pulp, but that doesn't mean it has to be dumb. There is good cheese, and bad. I still think Indy 4 is closer to good than bad, but that doesn't mean that flaws cannot be discussed.
I mean, Firefly is just a space western, right? What's the difference between it, and that Starhunter series with Michael Pare?
The answer: A Lot.
"I thoroughly disapprove of duels. If a man should challenge me, I would take him kindly and forgivingly by the hand and lead him to a quiet place and kill him."
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Originally posted by Storymark:
Quote:
Uh, did you even read what I wrote? I said I had no problem with the alien angle. That is not in any way even related to my problems with the film.
I agree with you, that the alien stuff worked as a parallel to the Nazi's and religious artifacts.
Unfortunetly, none of what you wrote applies to anything I actually said....
Well I read it - but clearly read the wrong thing into it. So be it. My bad.
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