I’m trying to knock out some the movies I haven’t seen that most of the rest of the population has. Chel and I picked up Raiders of the Lost Ark from the library. We both gave it a B. It has a fun story and the action is above average.
I felt there were a few glaring holes. 1) Indiana seemed to warp from one place to another in the space-time continuum. More than once I thought, “How’d he get there?” 2) The heroine was more irritating than desirable. 3) The special effects at the end were straight out of Ghostbusters. I know it’s the same time period, and maybe those effects were good for that time, but I felt the movie would have been better off not showing melting crayons in the last few frames and leave more up to the reader’s imagination.
Last, I had no idea Indiana Jones was a mass murderer. The body count in that movie was much higher than I would predicted. This didn’t have an effect on my movie grade – I just had no idea.
Those special effects crushed me when I was a kid. That shit scared me.
ReplyDeleteMass murderer? I think that's a bit much. I think maybe sociopath due to his lack of empathy for killing all of those henchmen. Where do all of these henchmen come from?
I was also terrified of the face-melting as a kid. My parents tried to keep it from us, but I opened my eyes when I was supposed to have them shut, thus bringing on the nightmares.
DeleteMarion Ravenwood is awesome. She doesn't really need Indy to save her, and she can mostly take care of herself, as opposed to the Temple of Doom's female lead, universally regarded as the worst.
Watching older movies with dated special effects is pretty disheartening. Ghostbusters is a prime offender, so is Aliens. Blue, crackling lightning seems to be the go-to shorthand for directors wanting to communicate something other-worldly.
It's probably best not to think about all the people Indy has killed. If all the fun and daring-do was drained out of those kind of adventure movies, Luke Skywalker, Indiana Jones, and any character Schwarzenegger has ever played would be war criminals.
Well, Jon, it wouldn't make Indiana Jones a war criminal. A lot goes in to the designations for armed conflicts under international humanitarian law. To qualify, Indiana would have to zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
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