Thanks for an honest and spoiler free review George. Like most I was upset at how bad crystal skull turned out, but it is with some trepidation that I also want to see this one. From your review it sounds like it might be entertaining, albeit not the best in the series 👍
that’s the thing mate, there are some issues, and some things i didn’t want to touch on that i didn’t like as i did feel they were way into spoiler territory, but ultimately it’s an okay watch and is quite fun in parts. it has a bit of the old spirit, unlike crystal skull which was absolute dogshit and had none of it.
Good to hear 😊 in crystal skull I found the mutt character in particular just awful and an unnecessary addition overall. I’m glad they’ve written him out of the new one 👌
yes mate he was fucking terrible. just a really, really bad choice of character and actor for the role. i suppose at the end of the day, those two things aside, the main issue with crystal skull was the plot and the writing and that can all be laid at george lucas’s door as he was responsible for that gubbins !
Crystal skull was proper dog bin shit, although my memory of it is pretty hazy now.
I do recall there being a load of emphasis on things early on in the film which don’t go anywhere. I seem to recall Kate blanchett having physic powers at the army base – never to be used again. And a big deal was made about getting Indy’s motorbike on the plane – to never see it again in the film.
yes, i think there’s more of an established mystical aspect to classic religious artefacts etc, i think you’re right mate. this one was okay though the device was an acceptable item to be chasing after. the crystal skull, however, was fucking ridiculous.
They felt like they could mix in sci-fi elements and it would be fine. The fridge scene is completely pointless, that was thrown in because it was an unused idea for time travel in Back to the Future.
indeed mate but it was also really stupid in terms of making the film unbelievable. hit a fridge with a nuclear blast and send it flying into the air and you’re not going to have much left of it, and even less remaining of the contents inside !
yes mate i think a lot of that might have been due to bad cuts/edits but then a lot is also due to VERY bad writing. cate blanchett’s character was a complete waste of time and, indeed, her “powers” were never properly brought into play (perhaps because it was ridiculous ?). having said that, the entire film is fucking ridiculous so why not ? for me, that film doesn’t exist. the only thing that even slightly links it to the new film is an offhand mention about mud being dead (good) and a divorce from ms ravenwood. it’s a shame that those two things “put” indy where he is, mentally, in that film as otherwise a fan edit could just excise them completely. however, they’re only touched on for about 10 seconds so that’s the only real connective tissue.
I was done after Crystal Skull. I rewatched recently and it’s still not that enjoyable.
I think this one boils down to if you can tolerate Waller-Bridge and her being the strong female lead and Indie being weak and needing help. There can’t be a strong male lead in anything Disney owns.
crystal skull is not going to get more enjoyable with time. with things like that, for me, sometimes the initial glow that rubs off from previous entries in a series can give them a bit of allure and make me forgive some small failings but in the case of the crystal skull i really hated it from the off. as said here, i left the cinema feeling bad :-/ with that said, it’s only got worse over time. i have literally zero desire to watch it again. i have the indiana jones box set that, thankfully, goes up to the real ending of the series (the last crusade) so i don’t have to have the crystal skull in my house ! i would consider buying dan ackroyd’s vodka if i drank and could afford it, or even just to have it as a trinket, but i’m pretty much eating cereal with banana and down to 1 “proper” meal a day with protein and suchlike as we’re really broke at the moment !
although, conversely, sometimes the glow of association can do films a disservice. i actually watched evil dead again recenlty (the 2013 one) and while it’s a far cry from the originals i actually enjoyed it a lot more the second time around. yes, it’s trite, contrived, does nothing new and is pretty tone deaf throughout but for what it was it’s actually okay. it felt like a sci-fi channel film or something gone a bit mental and with a larger budget. i was expecting something in line with the previous films and didn’t get that, i just got a tonally different version of what we’d seen before (and a dog died in it which is always a cheap shot, unless the film is JAGTEN). however, i was deeply unimpressed with evil dead rise, even though a few mates thought it was “ok”. maybe that will get better with time but i think i’m done with people recycling evil dead tropes and doing absolutely nothing new. i was expecting something more like “the raid” but with dead people, just a real action violence extravaganza but, instead, we got the cabin and the same old schtick it’s just the set decoration made it look like an apartment.
Cabin in the Woods started out in a bit of an Evil Dead style but then went nuts. That film was so going to be a bit average until towards the end where it all goes apeshit. But still, that was only ever going to be suitable for a couple of viewings.
I’ll watch it again soon. I feel like with some films I need a bit of a gap before I watch them again. At the time it came out I was sat next to a placement student at work for mentoring etc.. and he said it was bad. But tastes vary.
Great review mate, enjoyed listening. I haven’t seen the film yet but I will soon and look forward to it.
I think the young actor you refer to, on the periphery of Hollywood who you say they could have used for the film intro rather than the deepfake is Anthony Ingruber. He was auditioned for the Solo Star Wars film, but unfortunately he doesn’t have particularly good acting skills, which is a shame because looks wise he’s almost a perfect young Harrison. Even some of his facial gestures and mannerisms are spot on. As you say though, if the Dial of Destiny intro has hardly any dialogue then I’m sure they could have used someone like him rather than relying on CGI. Look him up on youtube and there’s a few videos of him reciting Han Solo dialogue from Star Wars to a camera, and you’ll see what I mean about his looks and mannerisms.
Enjoyable review mate, good work, and well done Graeme for fixing the transcoding issue 👍🏻
Just seen Ingruber was cast as a young Harrison in the film “The age of Adaline” and looking at it on youtube he seems pretty good, so he definitely could have been used. It’s a shame when Hollywood jump straight to using CGI these days.
Apparently for this film they used a younger person for some of the action scenes and then put Fords face onto him, they’re just aren’t as good as Ford though. People forget that some people just have a way about them when it comes to movement that is just as important as when they speak. That’s why Michael J Fox was so good in Back to the Future, he was great at doing the movements. A cruel twist of fate for him to get something that impairs his movement.
there’s a bit when he is on top of the train and jumps between two train carriages. it looks really bad. not sure why they didn’t fix that. i hope to be honest that they (or someone in the community, as happened with luke in the mandalorian) fix a bit of the cgi for home release as a lot was quite ropey. however, with the amount of money this looks to lose i would imagine these edits will fall on the community to sort out rather than disney themselves. the film could also do with an edit, too, as i would say it’s a bit long.
That comes across as some sort of time constraint or lack of caring to me. There’s no excuse for bad FX these days. I mean, Lord of the Rings trilogy is 20-22 years old now and the FX were convincing enough in those films.
it does seem weird to me mate, yes. not sure why they can’t spend a bit more time/money or hire more experienced animators for this stuff. i PRESUME (but i’m not 100% sure) that industrial light and magic would have handled the effects for this film BUT do they even still exist ? i’m not sure. i know a few lucasfilm divisions were dissolved/absorbed during the disney merger. not sure if they’re even still kicking around. lord of the rings looked great at the cinema but on home media, it looks less so. plus, a lot of the big cgi set pieces feature things that aren’t human and are a tad expressionless. like the goblins/cave trolls etc and usually the front ranks of goblins were all actual actors made up. they just did a really good job of hiding the discrepancies, especially for a fledgling studio. there are some parts though like the fellowship sitting together in rivendell and suchlike, if you watch that on bluray the lighting is ropey and the character scaling with the scenes with the larger races/hobbits are quite off. a lot of the best hobbit shots were done with forced perspective, so strange sets were built to enable the hobbit actors to look a lot smaller than they were. a LOT of that was done with forced perspective. a lot of the hobbit action stuff was also done with actual midgets and/or children wearing masks that looked like the characters they were meant to be. there’s a really weird scene that you can clearly see on bluray where the hobbits are rowing a boat, i think it’s at the end of the first film, maybe in the extended cut, but they all look like toby jugs as their faces don’t move but their bodies do (they are small people wearing masks to make it look like the hobbits are really small compared to the boat they’re in). having said that, they spotted where problems could occur with CGI and thought of clever ways around it, whereas the last couple of indiana jones films didn’t, although there’s not really an option for them to have done things any other way. they weren’t trying to turn harrison ford into a midget they were trying to de-age him which is impossible with makeup really.
ILM just got completely trounced when WETA appeared on the scene. I mean look at the diabolical FX in the Star Wars prequels, then came LOTR and WETA showing them how it was done.
it’s actually quite weird that you say that, mate, because ILM actually visited WETA and basically taught them how to do most of what they did in those films, which, yes, makes it very weird that the lotr films look so much better. there’s a lot more going on in the star wars films to fuck everything up. i think the absolutely squeaky clean look to all clothing/ships/places compared to the “used future” look of the originals really does a lot to work against the reality of them. also, most takes/scenes in the film are frankenseined from multiple shots. so lucas would use, say, ewan macgregor from take 72 and hayden from take 12, so that’s why there’s a really odd disconnect with the actors. he was picking each of their “best” takes without realising that the best “take” would be the one where they’re playing off each other the best. it’s really quite confusing how he managed to fuck things up so badly but i think he just fell in love too much with what digital allowed him to do without thinking if he should be doing it, and there was no-one to say “NO” to him. i mean look at the hobbit films, once there was no maverick urgency about things peter jackson went on to make something as dead as the star wars prequels, imo.
You know more about their history than me. But I felt like ILM just couldn’t get the colours right. Everything was way too bright. Never more so than on the special editions, you’d go from 1970s and 1980s film stock shots with grain to some bright clean CGI scene.
the special editions and the colour grading on them are both disastrous. have you seen the adywan edits or the harmy despecialized edits ? they go back and fix all that crap and are much better ! also the adywan edits add new scenes and flesh out some others with extra ships and suchlike (but not in an annoying way)
I feel like I’m totally fine with the original theatrical release. But I may watch out of curiosity. I bet they can’t fix Episode 1 though. The “ridiculous edit” is about the only one which makes it entertaining.
it’s hard to get good quality versions of the original theatrical release, though, as afaik it was never released in HD. episode 1, no, i think some people started to edit it but ultimately all the acting and all the story is shit so the only thing they can really do is make it shorter, they can’t make it better. it’s a turd.
I think last time I watched the original trilogy was on some scans of 35mm copies people had got hold of. So at least better than laserdisc. And obviously not “legit”, but if they won’t release the originals properly then what choice do you have?
oddly enough i looked into this and he was (apparently) actually in this film as a german extra on the train. there’s hearsay that james mangold auditioned him for the part of younger indy but thought him too young and/or not quite up to the role so they went with cgi but he gave him a cameo anyway. that is just internet rumour, though, so i suppose we have to take it with a pinch of salt.
1
Lucian
1 year ago
Thanks George! – A really nice and insightful review (If ‘Bums on seats’ is a series, I’ve missed them, so I’ll have a search later as I really enjoyed listening to this). I didn’t know it was out – I’d read somewhere it was in the making but didn’t realise how long for and that it had finally been released.
I’m not gonna lie; I’m really not a cinema person so I’ll wait for it to come out on the disney streaming thing but the trailer looked pretty cool (which, weirdly, I had to search for – it seems even disney aren’t bothering to bolster interest in the film, though maybe that will change when they release it to stream) .
And bad though the 4th one may have been, it did at least have Karen Allen in again. Yum.
Yes I’m replying to myself and yes, I’ve just seen ‘Bums on seats’ is the first title that appears under ‘Series’. I’ve never been the sharpest knife in the drawer..
well you prove my point mate, it seems disney are quite happy to bury this and/or rely solely on word of mouth. strange decision for one of the biggest franchises ever but hey ho. you will probably rate this one higher than the 4th film, that seems to be the general consensus.
Fin Lazarus
1 year ago
George likes Indiana Jones??? He’s an alright chap after all. We can invite hims to grandpa David’s for Christmas this year and toast the A1222 launch success. It will be more fun than an Indiana Jones movie I promise. Just. few Amiga bubs hanging out watching The Commodore Story.
Thanks for an honest and spoiler free review George. Like most I was upset at how bad crystal skull turned out, but it is with some trepidation that I also want to see this one. From your review it sounds like it might be entertaining, albeit not the best in the series 👍
that’s the thing mate, there are some issues, and some things i didn’t want to touch on that i didn’t like as i did feel they were way into spoiler territory, but ultimately it’s an okay watch and is quite fun in parts. it has a bit of the old spirit, unlike crystal skull which was absolute dogshit and had none of it.
Good to hear 😊 in crystal skull I found the mutt character in particular just awful and an unnecessary addition overall. I’m glad they’ve written him out of the new one 👌
yes mate he was fucking terrible. just a really, really bad choice of character and actor for the role. i suppose at the end of the day, those two things aside, the main issue with crystal skull was the plot and the writing and that can all be laid at george lucas’s door as he was responsible for that gubbins !
Crystal skull was proper dog bin shit, although my memory of it is pretty hazy now.
I do recall there being a load of emphasis on things early on in the film which don’t go anywhere. I seem to recall Kate blanchett having physic powers at the army base – never to be used again. And a big deal was made about getting Indy’s motorbike on the plane – to never see it again in the film.
The CGI set pieces in that, especially the forest section were like non-interactive video games. It was like watching something from Uncharted.
But I feel like Indy films work best when covering things from the bible. Not that I’m a believer in that.
yes, i think there’s more of an established mystical aspect to classic religious artefacts etc, i think you’re right mate. this one was okay though the device was an acceptable item to be chasing after. the crystal skull, however, was fucking ridiculous.
They felt like they could mix in sci-fi elements and it would be fine. The fridge scene is completely pointless, that was thrown in because it was an unused idea for time travel in Back to the Future.
indeed mate but it was also really stupid in terms of making the film unbelievable. hit a fridge with a nuclear blast and send it flying into the air and you’re not going to have much left of it, and even less remaining of the contents inside !
Well if you watch the film again they make sure you can see a label on the fridge with “lead lined” line that was ever a thing?
i know mate but aside from that, lead wouldn’t protect it from being launched about 1km into the air, nor would it protect the contents :p
Lead lined label I mean, my brain was lagging behind a bit there.
yes mate i think a lot of that might have been due to bad cuts/edits but then a lot is also due to VERY bad writing. cate blanchett’s character was a complete waste of time and, indeed, her “powers” were never properly brought into play (perhaps because it was ridiculous ?). having said that, the entire film is fucking ridiculous so why not ? for me, that film doesn’t exist. the only thing that even slightly links it to the new film is an offhand mention about mud being dead (good) and a divorce from ms ravenwood. it’s a shame that those two things “put” indy where he is, mentally, in that film as otherwise a fan edit could just excise them completely. however, they’re only touched on for about 10 seconds so that’s the only real connective tissue.
I was done after Crystal Skull. I rewatched recently and it’s still not that enjoyable.
I think this one boils down to if you can tolerate Waller-Bridge and her being the strong female lead and Indie being weak and needing help. There can’t be a strong male lead in anything Disney owns.
crystal skull is not going to get more enjoyable with time. with things like that, for me, sometimes the initial glow that rubs off from previous entries in a series can give them a bit of allure and make me forgive some small failings but in the case of the crystal skull i really hated it from the off. as said here, i left the cinema feeling bad :-/ with that said, it’s only got worse over time. i have literally zero desire to watch it again. i have the indiana jones box set that, thankfully, goes up to the real ending of the series (the last crusade) so i don’t have to have the crystal skull in my house ! i would consider buying dan ackroyd’s vodka if i drank and could afford it, or even just to have it as a trinket, but i’m pretty much eating cereal with banana and down to 1 “proper” meal a day with protein and suchlike as we’re really broke at the moment !
although, conversely, sometimes the glow of association can do films a disservice. i actually watched evil dead again recenlty (the 2013 one) and while it’s a far cry from the originals i actually enjoyed it a lot more the second time around. yes, it’s trite, contrived, does nothing new and is pretty tone deaf throughout but for what it was it’s actually okay. it felt like a sci-fi channel film or something gone a bit mental and with a larger budget. i was expecting something in line with the previous films and didn’t get that, i just got a tonally different version of what we’d seen before (and a dog died in it which is always a cheap shot, unless the film is JAGTEN). however, i was deeply unimpressed with evil dead rise, even though a few mates thought it was “ok”. maybe that will get better with time but i think i’m done with people recycling evil dead tropes and doing absolutely nothing new. i was expecting something more like “the raid” but with dead people, just a real action violence extravaganza but, instead, we got the cabin and the same old schtick it’s just the set decoration made it look like an apartment.
Cabin in the Woods started out in a bit of an Evil Dead style but then went nuts. That film was so going to be a bit average until towards the end where it all goes apeshit. But still, that was only ever going to be suitable for a couple of viewings.
i thought cabin in the woods was great, i think the fact it’s so generic to begin with works in its favour when it goes mental.
I’ll watch it again soon. I feel like with some films I need a bit of a gap before I watch them again. At the time it came out I was sat next to a placement student at work for mentoring etc.. and he said it was bad. But tastes vary.
Great review mate, enjoyed listening. I haven’t seen the film yet but I will soon and look forward to it.
I think the young actor you refer to, on the periphery of Hollywood who you say they could have used for the film intro rather than the deepfake is Anthony Ingruber. He was auditioned for the Solo Star Wars film, but unfortunately he doesn’t have particularly good acting skills, which is a shame because looks wise he’s almost a perfect young Harrison. Even some of his facial gestures and mannerisms are spot on. As you say though, if the Dial of Destiny intro has hardly any dialogue then I’m sure they could have used someone like him rather than relying on CGI. Look him up on youtube and there’s a few videos of him reciting Han Solo dialogue from Star Wars to a camera, and you’ll see what I mean about his looks and mannerisms.
Enjoyable review mate, good work, and well done Graeme for fixing the transcoding issue 👍🏻
Just seen Ingruber was cast as a young Harrison in the film “The age of Adaline” and looking at it on youtube he seems pretty good, so he definitely could have been used. It’s a shame when Hollywood jump straight to using CGI these days.
Apparently for this film they used a younger person for some of the action scenes and then put Fords face onto him, they’re just aren’t as good as Ford though. People forget that some people just have a way about them when it comes to movement that is just as important as when they speak. That’s why Michael J Fox was so good in Back to the Future, he was great at doing the movements. A cruel twist of fate for him to get something that impairs his movement.
there’s a bit when he is on top of the train and jumps between two train carriages. it looks really bad. not sure why they didn’t fix that. i hope to be honest that they (or someone in the community, as happened with luke in the mandalorian) fix a bit of the cgi for home release as a lot was quite ropey. however, with the amount of money this looks to lose i would imagine these edits will fall on the community to sort out rather than disney themselves. the film could also do with an edit, too, as i would say it’s a bit long.
That comes across as some sort of time constraint or lack of caring to me. There’s no excuse for bad FX these days. I mean, Lord of the Rings trilogy is 20-22 years old now and the FX were convincing enough in those films.
it does seem weird to me mate, yes. not sure why they can’t spend a bit more time/money or hire more experienced animators for this stuff. i PRESUME (but i’m not 100% sure) that industrial light and magic would have handled the effects for this film BUT do they even still exist ? i’m not sure. i know a few lucasfilm divisions were dissolved/absorbed during the disney merger. not sure if they’re even still kicking around. lord of the rings looked great at the cinema but on home media, it looks less so. plus, a lot of the big cgi set pieces feature things that aren’t human and are a tad expressionless. like the goblins/cave trolls etc and usually the front ranks of goblins were all actual actors made up. they just did a really good job of hiding the discrepancies, especially for a fledgling studio. there are some parts though like the fellowship sitting together in rivendell and suchlike, if you watch that on bluray the lighting is ropey and the character scaling with the scenes with the larger races/hobbits are quite off. a lot of the best hobbit shots were done with forced perspective, so strange sets were built to enable the hobbit actors to look a lot smaller than they were. a LOT of that was done with forced perspective. a lot of the hobbit action stuff was also done with actual midgets and/or children wearing masks that looked like the characters they were meant to be. there’s a really weird scene that you can clearly see on bluray where the hobbits are rowing a boat, i think it’s at the end of the first film, maybe in the extended cut, but they all look like toby jugs as their faces don’t move but their bodies do (they are small people wearing masks to make it look like the hobbits are really small compared to the boat they’re in). having said that, they spotted where problems could occur with CGI and thought of clever ways around it, whereas the last couple of indiana jones films didn’t, although there’s not really an option for them to have done things any other way. they weren’t trying to turn harrison ford into a midget they were trying to de-age him which is impossible with makeup really.
ILM just got completely trounced when WETA appeared on the scene. I mean look at the diabolical FX in the Star Wars prequels, then came LOTR and WETA showing them how it was done.
it’s actually quite weird that you say that, mate, because ILM actually visited WETA and basically taught them how to do most of what they did in those films, which, yes, makes it very weird that the lotr films look so much better. there’s a lot more going on in the star wars films to fuck everything up. i think the absolutely squeaky clean look to all clothing/ships/places compared to the “used future” look of the originals really does a lot to work against the reality of them. also, most takes/scenes in the film are frankenseined from multiple shots. so lucas would use, say, ewan macgregor from take 72 and hayden from take 12, so that’s why there’s a really odd disconnect with the actors. he was picking each of their “best” takes without realising that the best “take” would be the one where they’re playing off each other the best. it’s really quite confusing how he managed to fuck things up so badly but i think he just fell in love too much with what digital allowed him to do without thinking if he should be doing it, and there was no-one to say “NO” to him. i mean look at the hobbit films, once there was no maverick urgency about things peter jackson went on to make something as dead as the star wars prequels, imo.
You know more about their history than me. But I felt like ILM just couldn’t get the colours right. Everything was way too bright. Never more so than on the special editions, you’d go from 1970s and 1980s film stock shots with grain to some bright clean CGI scene.
the special editions and the colour grading on them are both disastrous. have you seen the adywan edits or the harmy despecialized edits ? they go back and fix all that crap and are much better ! also the adywan edits add new scenes and flesh out some others with extra ships and suchlike (but not in an annoying way)
I feel like I’m totally fine with the original theatrical release. But I may watch out of curiosity. I bet they can’t fix Episode 1 though. The “ridiculous edit” is about the only one which makes it entertaining.
it’s hard to get good quality versions of the original theatrical release, though, as afaik it was never released in HD. episode 1, no, i think some people started to edit it but ultimately all the acting and all the story is shit so the only thing they can really do is make it shorter, they can’t make it better. it’s a turd.
I think last time I watched the original trilogy was on some scans of 35mm copies people had got hold of. So at least better than laserdisc. And obviously not “legit”, but if they won’t release the originals properly then what choice do you have?
adywan/harmy as mentioned 🙂
https://swrevisited.wordpress.com/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harmy%27s_Despecialized_Edition
oddly enough i looked into this and he was (apparently) actually in this film as a german extra on the train. there’s hearsay that james mangold auditioned him for the part of younger indy but thought him too young and/or not quite up to the role so they went with cgi but he gave him a cameo anyway. that is just internet rumour, though, so i suppose we have to take it with a pinch of salt.
Thanks George! – A really nice and insightful review (If ‘Bums on seats’ is a series, I’ve missed them, so I’ll have a search later as I really enjoyed listening to this). I didn’t know it was out – I’d read somewhere it was in the making but didn’t realise how long for and that it had finally been released.
I’m not gonna lie; I’m really not a cinema person so I’ll wait for it to come out on the disney streaming thing but the trailer looked pretty cool (which, weirdly, I had to search for – it seems even disney aren’t bothering to bolster interest in the film, though maybe that will change when they release it to stream) .
And bad though the 4th one may have been, it did at least have Karen Allen in again. Yum.
Yes I’m replying to myself and yes, I’ve just seen ‘Bums on seats’ is the first title that appears under ‘Series’. I’ve never been the sharpest knife in the drawer..
well you prove my point mate, it seems disney are quite happy to bury this and/or rely solely on word of mouth. strange decision for one of the biggest franchises ever but hey ho. you will probably rate this one higher than the 4th film, that seems to be the general consensus.
George likes Indiana Jones??? He’s an alright chap after all. We can invite hims to grandpa David’s for Christmas this year and toast the A1222 launch success. It will be more fun than an Indiana Jones movie I promise. Just. few Amiga bubs hanging out watching The Commodore Story.
David has more experience burying stuff in the ground than digging it up. Spirit of the Stone for example.
Not able to play this one on IOS – different video player / decoder than the usual maybe?
It should be OK now. Transcoding glitch on mp3
you should be able to play it now mate just a hiccup earlier
Nice one 😊👌