HTF Blu-Ray Review: Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

Re: HTF Blu-Ray Review: Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

One wonders what frequent Spielberg collaborator Allen Daviau would have done, given that Slocombe appears to be in self-imposed retirement since completing Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, and is now 95 years old.

Re: HTF Blu-Ray Review: Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

And most damningly, now blind.

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I was very pleased with the effort they made to remain true to the originals- from building practical sets to editing on film. Hopefully, the dvd will put the "nothing but cgi" argument to rest.


...an aspect that is even joked about during Indy's interrogation scene.

When I first saw the "Tarzan" scene, I immediately knew it would be torn apart online. It's a throwback to a style and era that is just far too innocent and hokey for most modern audiences.

But I was honestly surprised by the "fridge" backlash. I first encounterd the scene years ago, as part of a rejected Indy 4 draft. It was easily the most memorable part of that story, and one of the best cliffhangers Indy had ever found himself in.

The entire sequence is surreal, bold, and completely unexpected. It's also a pretty gutsy attempt to explore uncharted territory in the series, and a fantastic instance of Indy as pulp hero. So I was happy to see it had survived, and expected it to be praised as a highlight of the film. Instead, people complained that it was an unrealistic action sequence...in an Indiana Jones movie.

Re: HTF Blu-Ray Review: Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

Well I think the whole "nuke the fridge" thing exemplifies the whole fanboy mentality. It shows how they go to a film like this just looking to for things to get all riled up about so they can rush to the net to complain, or at the very least taking something they don't like about a film and completely blowing it out of porportion.

I can see why some might not like the scene or feel it goes to far, even for an Indy movie - the shot of the fridge flying over the jeep, evading the shockwave destruction is what does it for me - but the whole trying to make "nuke the fridge" a phrase to replace "jump the shark", as if nothing ever unrealistic happened in an Indiana Jones movie before and the constant dwelling on it by many of the films more ardent detractors (read: bitter fanboys) is just absurd.

If they focused on the phrase "get a life" as much as "nuke the fridge", then it might actually sink in and they'll learn to stop getting so riled up or simple movies or no longer see the fun in watching movies just to find things to complain about.

Re: HTF Blu-Ray Review: Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

Nicely put Mark.

Watched it with the family last night and we all thoroughly enjoyed it (again).

Maybe we can add "ride the sub", "jump the tracks" & "visit the old guy who's been who's been staring at the wall for 700 years" to "nuke the fridge". This way we can have a phrase for each "absurd" moment in the series.

Re: HTF Blu-Ray Review: Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

Anyone get the exclusive at Target with the 80-page photobook? Look at the photo of Spielberg in his preface, with his hand to his face. Am I looking at it wrong? Where does his thumb go?!

Re: HTF Blu-Ray Review: Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

A lot of assumptions with nothing to back them up.

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I like that scene. Way more than the rest of the movie. It at least had some energy.

You may now analyze my issues.

Re: HTF Blu-Ray Review: Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

Some odd replies. Chuck, why would I want to analyze your issues with the film? I even stated in my initial post that I had a problem with the scene and understood why some people didn't like it. I was just knocking the whole "nuke the fridge" crowd for blowing all out of porportion that particular scene, a scene, given the context of both the film and the series, should've been mildly annoying at best, or worst.

And Edwin, I'd say the fact that there's a website called "Nuking the Fridge", with t-shirts made up with the phrase is enough to back up my "assumptions"
. Not to mention a trip to the imdb message boards or any AICN talkback devoted to the film or Lucas.

Unless, that is, you feel that a silly, unrealistic scene in a film that makes no pretense of being realistic, and part of a series that the filmmakers from day one have maintained was concocted as a tribute to old serials and pulp stories, warrants that kind of behavior and attention and that the people who do so are mature, psychologically sound people who lead socially and vocationally healthy lives. If so then we'll have to agree to disagree.

Re: HTF Blu-Ray Review: Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

I do believe it emphasizes how, for many filmgoers, realism has become a higher priority than escapism. When you can spend every day discussing the same movie with others, you don't really need to escape that reality. However, you may feel a need to have it validated.

Anyway, there are two fundamental problems with "nuke the fridge" as a cultural meme. The first is that Indy surviving an atomic blast doesn't exactly take him far from his original purpose. He's a pulp hero that always encounters- and survives- the fantastic.

By comparison, Happy Days was a show built upon the concept of nostalgia. People tuned in because they could relate to that specific way of life, and felt they had been there themselves. So when Fonzie strapped a lifevest over his leather jacket, then jumped a shark on a pair of water skis, it was a clear sign the show had lost its original intent.

The other problem is that the argument presupposes Indy's universe is exactly like our own. But as we've seen in the previous films, this simply isn't true. The physics in Indy's world are just a little off...immortality exists...magic is real...and the gods make their presence known.

Indiana Jones rarely displays ill effects after surviving an escape that would've killed the average human being. You also rarely get to the end of an Indiana Jones film, comic, book, or videogame, only to learn that the myth or legend was a hoax. In Indy's life, the legend is almost always true.

Re: HTF Blu-Ray Review: Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

You know it's funny that "Happy Days" was a conceived as a television version of "American Graffiti", so Lucas is directly, and indirectly responsible for both sayings!

Maybe somebody will come up with a "Six Degrees of George Lucas" game/theory where everything bad about movies will somehow always connect to Lucas!

And I agree with the contrast. "Happy Days" was a nostalgia show about small-town 50s life, so "jumping the shark" would seem out of place. And as argued countless times before, the Indy series is a homage to old serials and pulp novels, so using a refridgerator as a makeshift bomb shelter really isn't out of he realm of possibility given the fantasitical nature and tone of the series. As I said, I can't see why it's perceived as anymore than an minor annoyance, if even that and certainly not something to start a whole internet subculture on.

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This thread has jumped something, but not sure if it is a shark, a fridge or dog poop.

The movie was enjoyable. I didnt' love it, but I certainly found enough in it to enjoy a 2nd viewing on BD at home. Harrison Ford really did a good job as always.

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It's probably because most people have no idea of the real effects of an atomic blast, and just assume that everything is vaporized.

Doug

Re: HTF Blu-Ray Review: Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

What I don't get about all the backlash against Indy 4 is the amount of energy expended discussing how much people DIDN'T like it. Okay, you didn't like it, why prolong the agony by discussing it again and again some five months later?

For instance, I've loved Spider-Man since I was a kid. Loved the first two films, but despised the third. After a few days of grumbling, I let it go. I don't think about it anymore (until using it in this example). I've moved on. Why would I dwell on the bad when there's so many other movies I DO like I can discuss and reminisce about?

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I thought the "nuke the fridge scene" was extremely unrealistic (in the first place, there was no reason to line a fridge with lead in an A bomb test, other than to set up the "escape"), but my problems with the film go far beyond that. Fundamentally, it's a dull, uninteresting story. Indy isn't going after a Macguffin he's even really interested in (his pursuit is forced on him. Bleah). Crystal skulls carry zero historical weight (they were made in the 19th century), and have NO connection to any ancient culture (the connection to Mayans, etc. is PURELY made up). It hardly seems accidental that the actual discovery of the skulls is left to a proxy Indy (the John Hurt character). So other than the cliffhanger stuff, Indy doesn't really act like Indy. And the villains were boring ("I want to know!" Yawn).

Re: HTF Blu-Ray Review: Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

There is every reason for the fridge to be lead lined. The test is obviously a civil defense test as indicated by the presence of suburban homes. In real world Civil Defense tests they put all kinds of things in the blast zone to see how they would hold up. Its not unreasonable to assume they would be testing a lead lined refrigerator for future use in fall out shelters. The preserving of food was a major concern of U.S. Civil Defense planners.

Quite a bit of the "myths" around the Ark, the Holy Grail and the Sankara Stones was made up out of whole cloth too. With these films they have always taken real world items and bent them to the needs of their plot.

Doug

Re: HTF Blu-Ray Review: Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

What would you power a refrigerator with in a fallout shelter, when power is utterly knocked out for an indefinite period? It makes no sense at all to think people would live on frozen TV dinners or last night's lasagna, as opposed to, say, canned goods (which need no power to preserve).

Re: HTF Blu-Ray Review: Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

Most fall out shelters plans were designed to have their own power for a limited amount of time. And it was never assumed that all power would be lost and all infrastructure would break down, that is only a recent invention of the movies. Remember that EMP doesn't happen unless the device is exploded in the upper atmosphere.

Also fallout shelters were only intended to be used for the first 48 hours after an attack, where people could wait till after the fallout had settled, hence the term fallout shelter. For most people the biggest threat would be exposure to radio active fallout.

Doug

Re: HTF Blu-Ray Review: Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

They exist, and were probably well in stock at a nuclear testing ground, so that's what they used. It makes enough sense for me to go along with it. Just like the mission in Raiders of the Lost Ark was forced on him. True, the connection to Mesoamerican cultures was largely made up, but not by Spielberg and Lucas. The 19th century antiquities dealers that sold them almost always claimed that the skulls came from -- you guessed it -- Mesoamerican cultures. Only in the last few decades have most of the been shown to be manufactured in Germany. I'd certainly say it's no more of a stretch that the Siva lingam stones, which are entirely mythical in nature and possess properties invented wholesale for Temple of Doom. I too would have liked a more bad ass villain. She wasn't shown doing anything truly awful, much like Colonel Vogel in Last Crusade.

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I don't know, she, through her men, murdered 6 or 8 Army guards right off the bat at the start of the movie. That's pretty awful to me.

Doug

Re: HTF Blu-Ray Review: Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

That's probably something we can all agree on.

Re: HTF Blu-Ray Review: Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

I was thinking the same thing.

Re: HTF Blu-Ray Review: Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

But when Mutt catches up to him, Indy really doesn't have anything left in his life. It's not so much a quest for a Macguffin as a search for meaning. I think that's an interesting approach- especially for an aging Indiana Jones. It beats just sending him after a random artifact- the way most of his stories (books, videogames, etc.) have been over the past 20 years.

As for the skulls, what they lack in historical basis is made up for by other elements of the plot. Indy has always been about exploring various belief systems, and here we have several- both modern and historical- woven together: El Dorado, Roswell, Crystal Skulls, Nazca Lines, etc.

Ultimately, Indiana Jones is more of a pulp hero than a historical one. The latter seems to be a common misconception, and where the new film lost a lot of people. But as noted, the previous two films took a great deal of fictional liberty with their Macguffins as well. It's also trend that has been reflected in nearly every incarnation of Indiana Jones: The comics had him fighting skeleton armies and demons, the videogames had him exploring Atlantis and entering other dimensions, etc.

Re: HTF Blu-Ray Review: Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

That's no different at all to any of the previous entries (hell, he downright resents the Grail quest, because it was more important to his father than his son was). In each film, it is a human search that fires Indy's passions--the Macguffins are always secondary to him. He is more interested in finding Abner Ravenwood than the Ark. He is more interested in exploring the issue of stolen children than the Sankara stones. He is more interested in finding his father than the Holy Grail. Now, he's more interested in finding Professor Oxley than he is the crystal skulls. It is identical to the preceding three. The only thing that is different from them is that the mini-adventures at the beginning of the first three INDIANA JONES flick show Indy pursuing a treasure that actually is of paramount (no pun intended) interest to him (the golden idol, the ashes of Nurhachi, the Cross of Coronado)...

Re: HTF Blu-Ray Review: Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

Of course, we didn't even see those guards get killed (nor the Ugha Warriors later), which is one of my big criticisms of the film. Spielberg didn't hesitate to show people getting killed in the old films, and it helped to create tension, etc.

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But we didn't see any "innocent" people getting killed on screen in either Raiders or Last Crusade.

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Looking forward to watching this. I just got it from amazon.com. However I got only the basic plastic blu-ray case, I think I read somewhere that the blu-ray came with a shiny cardboard slipcase? Did anyone get that version?

Re: HTF Blu-Ray Review: Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

I haven't always gotten those when I've ordered from Amazon.com. The slipcases are usually made in limited numbers (i.e. a title that comes out with one today probably won't still be being made with it a year from now), and their primary purpose is to make the box more eye-catching for retail shoppers. It's possible that the shipments that Paramount sold to Amazon were sold without the slipcase to save money. That said, I've got one on order from Amazon and if it were up to me, I'd prefer to have the slipcase (but I probably won't cry over it if it's missing).

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I rented and watched this for a second time. The Blu-ray seems to be pretty faithful to what I saw in the theatre as far as PQ and AQ goes. Generally, when I watch a film a second time I find it kind of grows on me. Unfortunately, this is one of the few that doesn't. A second viewing made me reassess my original feeling about it. I now think that this is the weakest out of all four films. I originally thought "Crystal Skull" was better than "TOD", but I can now see that that is not the case.

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I can't say for sure but over the week, I saw copies at Best Buy, Wal Mart, Toys R Us and Borders and none of them had a slipcase so I don't think there is one. Target's exclusive version came with a book and that had a slipcase that fit over the book/package but that's much bigger than something that would fit around a standard Blu-ray case.