Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny

TOD is decent fun, but I think the overall pacing/location is an issue. It's like 'arrives at the temple, frees the kids, kills all bad guys and retrieves the mcguffin within 6 hours'.

This differed in a big way from one and three - where he had to spend some time figuring things out, visiting various exotic locations before even finding out where the final destination was. So it missed that international sweep we associated with the other films. A single location isn't necessarily an issue (Nakotami Plaza in Die Hard) but I'm not sure it suited an Indy film. It also seemed to have wildly illogical and inconsistent geography whereby you could keep going down the cave structure but eventually exit out at the top of a mountain beside a rope-bridge, but thats probably uber-nerdy complaining!

That's all it really has going for it though. The rest is pretty subpar, especially the excruciatingly painful comedy, and the actual story is easily the worst of the trilogy. That Crusader Knight ending is just...ugh...no.

I probably said it earlier, but I recently saw a fanedit of Last Crusade and it was improved INCREDIBLY by some judicious edits. But it's still the weaker one out of the original three.

However, gone is the stupid scene in the library. That idiotic "no ticket" bullshit. That Scottish accent rubbish from Ford is out. Some of Connery's blathering is gone too. That ridiculous dogfight scene is excised, including that absurd scene in the tunnel. And there's a few more snips of stuff here and there. The most lengthy edit is the complete elimination of the River Phoenix opening. But, frankly, that never felt part of an Indiana Jones film anyway.

Over all the movie is now a bit leaner, with less of the cringe worthy moments and feels more in line with the previous two, where there are some humorous moments (mostly limited to the great Denholm Elliot) and they don't make the eyes roll out of your bloody head.

Also, don't listen to Pixelburp. He knows nothing. 😋

Raiders and last crusade are both good and temple of doom has some iconic set pieces. The flop is meat for the gammon like the critical drinker who is a misery merchant YouTuber.

Nothing in my message had anything pro or anti Disney in it. He doesn't just predict movies doing badly he wished anything that doesn't fit within his narrow definition of what a film should contain should do badly. I say this based on a view of a number of his videos not just his Indy YouTube review.

Traditional reviewer like Roger ebert may not have been perfect but they didn't wish films to do badly based on their own biases

I could be wrong but I watched Last Crusade within the last year and a half on streaming and I could swear there's extra footage in there not in the original theatrical version and the version I watched recently came across far better and more coherent than I remember the original film. Often a theatrical version was trimmed down (particularly in the projected reel days) in order to squeeze in four screenings as opposed to three into a day.

I remember seeing Betty Blue when it came out first and I thought it was rubbish. Then the extended version was released theatrically a few years later and it was brilliant, everything that originally did not make sense suddenly did.

I don't recall any trims to the Last Crusade happening and the film has always been the same since I saw it in the 80's. Temple of Doom, however, was cut for violence in 1984. In the theatrical version shown here and in the UK, Mola Ram doesn't pull the heart out of the poor sap who ends up going into the pit of fire. Instead he just hold up a heart in front of his disciples and they all cheer. So it looks like he's just pulled a heart from under his cloak or something in an effort to fool his audience. Frankly that ends up being much better than the actual uncut version, which is just silly looking.

For years, the only version that was available on video was the cut version and when I first saw the uncut version on bluray, I was WTF?

As for 'Betty Blue', Beineix made a conscious decision to compile a director's cut in 2000, which was about an hour longer than the one that was originally released.

Two white male leads in the same movie? in this day? No way, why? because box check, Mutt would atleast need to go through a sex change and the back story for that would need to take up 1/4 of the movie..

Jesus, is that thing 15 years old now.

Fkn 'ell. 😪

When I first came across him on youtube a few years ago I thought he was decent enough. Okay, I disagreed with some of what he had to say about films, but that's okay: hearing views you disagree with articulated coherently and knowledgably is a good thing. I knew he was a bit pre-occupied with seeing things from a culture wars perspective, but I thought, on balance, he was still a perceptive enough presence.

But, he's really become a parody of himself since then. Everything is utterly caked in this culture wars anti-woke shiite. It's pure pandering nonsense. He was spamming youtube for weeks there with click bait about how much of failure the new Indiana Jones movie was. A film that hadn't yet been released and that he hadn't seen. The new Indiana Jones was okay, that's it, it's not terrible: the world continues to spin on its axis. He's a joke basically, but there's plenty out there that'll eat his schtick up.

you have to admit there is a certain frame to Disney movies lately , what alternate frame do you put on it that get you to the same place?

But isn't that exactly what is happening....you're getting angry at a youtuber for correctly articulating exactly what is happening. Both Disney and Hollywood are struggling to produce hits. Isn't that also what Todd Philips said years ago, that you can't make a decent comedy anymore because of woke idiots....and we haven't seen a funny movie in a decade. Should we get angry at Todd Philips?

We are on a thread about an Indiana Jones movie that has flopped!

@conorhal

Both Spielberg AND Lucas.

Two people who I have great respect for, because they are responsible for some of the greatest times at a cinema that I've had during my childhood. But, yes, they are just not funny people to put it simply.

Of course, humour is HIGHLY subjective and just like horror it can be the hardest thing to achieve in a film, AFAIC. Everyone's opinion of what is funny and horrific is an absolute minefield. But, again AFAIC, neither film maker has the chops to make a truly funny scene, especially one that's required to go beyond a momentary gag.

I don't know what you mean by frames and I'm not trying to get to any place, but regardless, you may have missed my original point.

You are giving praise and credit to the Drinker for predicting this would be a flop, and saying he knows better than Disney because of it.

But the real truth is that he always says they are going to flop. And its always because of the evil women.

There is a reason he calls it the worst film in history while everybody else just thinks its is middle of the road mediocre. There is a reason he says it has failed because of PWB and that she ruined Indiana Jones, when everybody else just thinks it was a shoddy plot and overlong action scenes. What do you think those reasons are?

By the way, realising that the Critical Drinker is playing to an audience does not mean I have an allegiance to Disney, or whatever the hell that was supposed to mean.

Im not saying he has special powers of prediction, it looked like a car crash from a long way off. The question for Disney and others is their project selection, there are good examples of female led movies that were popular and wouldnt generate ire , Kill Bill , the Hunger Games etc. and I think Tom Cruise has shown that you can take an 80's movie and generate hype because of the sheer effort and love he put in. Its really on these companies why they dont think women can lead new movies but instead use the crutch of inserting them into old properties that tend to have to disrespect the old characters.

I enjoyed it. Indy was a reluctant hero this time and I think it worked well him coming from a place of being fed up and bitter. Indy has never been slick and he wasn't assigned the doddery old man role in this!I thought the de-aging was the best I've seen but it's not perfect.

I've seen people giving out about the magic element but sure in raiders the ark is opened and spirits kill the nazis, in last crusade there's a thousand year old man and a chap who turns to dust in minutes and in temple of doom there's magic potions.

It has been pointed out to me that much like with raiders would the situation have been the same had indy not been involved at all?

I'll watch it again when it makes it to the tv and I thought it was a fun few hours overall.

Ha ha come on now.... do you think I waste time listening to a guy state the obvious over and over, the dogs on the street know why Disney and Hollywood are in decline, don't get yourself into knots just because a youtuber says something you don't like. Life is too short!

Good post.

It's hard to know what the future is for cinema at the moment. It's pretty clear that the one-two punch of Covid and the ubiquity of streaming services have done serious damage to box-office returns. I know there's exceptions - Top Gun - but even looking casually at box office numbers it appears that films just make less and that the theatrical window isn't anywhere as important as it used to be, not just for tent-pole blockbusters, even the Oscar nominees received a fairly paltry bump this year.

I think it's a bit of a depressing vista at the moment. I can't remember the last time I was at screening of anything that was more than half full and a great majority of the time it's been far less than that. Watching a film in a packed out auditorium feels like something from another age. And anecdotally I know friends of mine who are serious movie buffs, who'd have previously gone constantly to the cinema, who now barely go at all, preferring instead to watch things at home. I'm a bit of an outlier among the people that I know in that I always try to catch a film in the cinema if I can. I still think there's no substitute if you want to really experience a film and it's practically rejuvenating in that you can take your head out of your phone for a couple of hours and sit in the dark and let something wash over you.

I know cinema as an art-form isn't dead, that there's still loads of good films being made, but I feel like the audience for these films is becoming more specialised and niche - and is that just the way it's going: smaller indie films or huge, largely dumb, blockbusters. I do wonder what the overall picture will look like in five or ten years.

A film would have to be exceptional for people to swap the comfort of watching it cheaply or free at home to go to the cinema.

Last couple of times I've been to the cinema it's been constant noise and phones and even people threatening to start fights. Honestly, just a **** show. Not sure if that's post Covid hangups and/or tiktok culture.

You criticise Disney as being “creatively bankrupt” and not making new stuff and yet your idea for an Indiana Jones movie is bring back previous characters, cast Chris Pratt in another big budget movie franchise and have the object of the adventure as Atlantis rather than something original?

people in glass houses shouldn’t throw hard stuff

Saw the movie today and absolutely loved it.

a very worthy entry in the series and a very nice way to end Indy’s story.

Phoebe Waller-Bridge did a great job and there none of that “strong woman/girl power” crap.

i saw on Google that this is being called a box office flop but as far as I can tell all the websites claiming this are not mentioning the international box office.

Is $150 million really a “flop” or is it just a slow start?