Saw it this afternoon. And I really liked it despite going pretty far afield.
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"Indy survives a nuclear attack. I groaned at this part, and seriously considered leaving the theatre. A guy who wore a fedora to the theatre did, at this point."-Wik
@ I agree there, they went massively overboard with the nuke thing. They could have even kept the 'survive teh nuke' incident but done it less ridiculously. Often the test structures were built at a distance well outside the thermal bloom but still close enough to be knocked down. And while they went massively overboard the fridge scene had
some basis. At all those above ground test sites the single most survivable object in or around a common American home was the refrigerator. Which would often be found intact even with the rest of the house collapsed around it, but they used to built fridges a LOT more strongly than they do now.
"Aliens? I like the idea of hinting towards aliens at the beginning, but to have them be the focus of the movie? Nah. And why, oh WHY did we have to see the damned aliens?"-Wik
@ As soon as I heard it would involve a crystal skull I knew it would involve aliens. They're just too connected in pop culture for anything else. And the way it involved them was largely as I expected but in a way it was fitting. At the time they were dealing with there was a big hysteria on about the UFO phenomena and how they tied things together made a fitting, if at times campy, plot element.
"I always figured the story should be set towards achaeology. In this movie, he's using his archaeology to get to a non-arch. goal. Not a fan, there. Also, and this one took me a while to get but it nagged at me until I realized it - in the other films, we have Indy following archaeological rules. Granted, he's no real archaeologist, but the IDEA of the story is based around that. In this movie, he's following pseudoarchaeological rules. In fact, the premise of the movie is pretty much the premise of the book "Chariots of the Gods", which is the PROTOTYPICAL Pseudoarchaeological book! It's a minor point, but I'm an anthropology/archaeology nerd."-Wik
@ Can't bring any disagreements there. It was very much pseudo-archaeology, and a direct rip-off of CotG. They jump straight from one implausible bit to another, but it was done with enough flair and humor for me to accept it as what it was. Including a not so subtle dig at the issues in prior Indy movies.
"The monkeys in a jungle were so bad, that my girlfriend couldn't stop laughing. ANd not in a good way. What was with a Tarzan Shia LeBoeuf?"-Wik
@ QFT, the monkeys and the Tarzan part were the worst part of the movie, just ridiculous.
"Psychic Russians, for some reason, ruined it all for me."-Wik
Actually I interpreted it differently as one of the most entertaining parts of the movie. At the time depicted both the US and CCCP were engaged in attempts to utilize what have been termed "psychic weapons/perceptions." And it was ridiculous, patently so, but we were so intense any potential weapon no matter how nonsensical could NOT be ignored. And I took away from it that she had absolutely she herself didn't have any such powers, it was all in her head. And her fate was supreme irony as she was destroyed by the powers she had not possessed before and wished to gain.
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The motorcycle chase was great, despite how ridiculous the ants scene got (fire ants are small as are most army ants and if you are mobile they will NOT manage to kill you) it was still great fun. The anachronisms were strangely mixed.
They had what they called a "duck". But it was not a
DUKW as you'll note it was smaller with only 4 wheels and a single rear axle. Nor even the
GPA Ford's amphibious Jeep that never reached production. From what I saw it was in fact not the duck but the
GAZ-46, a genuine Russian vehicle made in imitation of the Ford GPA.
