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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   38490 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 5, 2023

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It's probably taken this long for audiences to forget how bad Crystal Skull was.

I'm pretty sure that Ford and Le Boeuf were never filmed together, probably at Ford's insistence. I haven't watched the whole thing, but every scene I watched had negative chemistry and gave of vibes of independent performances composited together.

I think it had plenty of good ideas with an on-paper plot/beat structure that could have worked but with some serious execution issues especially in terms of directing actors, dialog writing and CGI (very similar to StarWars prequels). The whole Aliens thing was apparently a George Lucas idea he really wanted to put in and there's no accounting for taste.

I watched the entire series for the first time a few years back and without the nostalgia or leaning on the cultural context of Sean Connery, I found each movie dramatically worse that the previous one, and about evenly. I thought the difference between 3 and 4 was about equal to the distance between 3 and 2, and then 2 and 1, quality wise.

Interesting, the 1 > 2 > 3 is a ranking that I've never encountered from anyone. Most people place 2 below 1 and 3, with a surprisingly high amount of people ranking 3 above 1. 4 seems to be universally far below any of the 1st 3 for most.

I'm one of the few people who loves 2 and thinks it's easily on par with 1 and 3, and I honestly can't rank-order them; they're all masterpieces in their own way, and I lack the ability to judge one as being better than another (I haven't seen 4 so can't comment on that one).

It's certainly a rare view, but I was quite disappointed with and bored by 3. A good deal of what makes it work is the subversion of Connery from his usual expectations, and that is very cultural moment in time referential that degrades the further away you are. I also generally don't like the 'old-timer' tagging along or the adult man reconnects with distanced dad plots so, the whole team up weighed it down for me, and the Holy Grail bit with associated deadly magic was just derivative at this point.

2 was quite surprising at the quality and tone downgrade from 1, but once you accepted and adjusted I thought it was a fine and unique movie that really only suffered from following up on 1. It being more of a bottle made it comparatively worse than 1's globe-trotting but better than being a shallow derivative, which 3 and 4 and likely 5 all are.

  1. Almost brilliant, only weighed down by the fact that Indy doesn't actually have any agency over the plot. IIRC, Nazis get the arc and die from opening it in a timeline where he didn't exist. (9/10)

  2. A fun romp. (7/10)

  3. Boring, derivative action movie with a few timeless visuals, but overall better left in the 80s (5/10)

  4. Bad reboot with a has-been protagonist, with some watchable bits and some cringe bits in equal parts. (3/10)

  5. ... Flaming Garbage? (1/10)?

IIRC, Nazis get the arc and die from opening it in a timeline where he didn't exist.

I think the difference he makes is that without him, the Nazis would keep possession of the Ark after the first group opened it and died. Instead, Jones was able to get it to the Americans somehow, who turned it over to their Top Men.

I have a slightly different view, but pretty similar: 1 is brilliant, 2 is bad, 3 is good, 4 was almost unwatchable. I think I would quite like 3 even without Sean Connery, though it would be only "average". 2 was saved from being terrible for me only by some memorable action scenes (like the bridge stuff at the end) and some great set design.

I didn't need to forget it. Didn't watch it in the first place.

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