110 replies to this topic

[Tarl_Cabot]

but I can't see it as anything other than an inferior, by-the-numbers retread of RAIDERS with Sean Connery and a considerable amount of sentimentality added to the mix."

Exactomundo! A perfect reason to hate it. You said it better than I ever could. :cool:

[DLibrasnow]

One of the reasons that TEMPLE OF DOOM was as dark as it was was because George Lucas was going through a divorce at the time...He said it, not me!

[Turn]

I'm really kind of disappointed that Last Crusade is getting such a bad rap. It's not near Raiders as far as groundbreaking nor as unique as TOD as far as darkness and being the polar opposite of Raiders. I just remember a friend of mine and me going to see this in the theater about a week or two after it was released and having a great time. Here was a great character in his element. And whenever it came on cable it always caught my attention.

The only thing that really bothered me was the way they treated the secondary characters like Sallah and Brody as comedy relief.

As for Connery, I think this is a unique role for him because for me personally, it was one of the few times I didn't watch a film with him in it and think to myself I'm watching a Sean Connery film. To see this man who is normally the epitome of the virile, macho hero flitting around with an umberella on a beach it didn't have me saying "how can they do this to Connery?"

If anything, that's a testament to Connery's ability as an actor. Just because he was Bond and other strong men, what's wrong with his stretch as an academic guy who takes little active role beside bashing somebody on the head with his umberella. That's part of the fun of this movie is having the old school action hero being the passive guy. But he also has moments when his authoritative side comes through. "Indiana, let it go," near the end when he's reaching for the grail was a good example.

I think it was a great opportunity for two Hollywood icons to hook up and play off each other without having to conform to their perceived roles the entire time. Connery as a nerdy academic and the tough-as-nails Ford getting sentimental. But enough of the reasons I like them showed through and their chemistry was a joy. Consider that as opposed to when Ford teamed up with another Hollywood superstar like Brad Pitt in The Devil's Own, which bombed big time.

[Jaelle]

I was very interested in reading Loomis' posts on LAST CRUSADE because I was struck at the differences in our reception of Connery's role in the film, and of the father-son relationship.

Bear in mind that I saw this film together in the theater with my best friend -- both of us were and are rabid Connery and Ford fans and we deliberately chose not to go with our husbands. We wanted to spare them the experience of two hopeless females enjoying these two hunks work together on the same screen. (They very much appreciated our consideration. )

We had no idea how Indy's father was going to be written. We were both floored and delightfully surprised to see Connery play him as a religiously devout academic who was more interested in his work than in his son -- BUT a tweedy academic who still has guts and determination. This was so unConnery like! Here we expected just to see the same old Connery but here he was offering us something so very different. And for us it worked! We liked the fact that Indy's father was NOT like his son. It would have reduced Indy to a mere copy of his father. The estrangement between them was perfectly understandable: Mr. Jones spent most of his time away from his son with his work, off on expeditions or in the library. To the young Indy he probably seemed like a square, boring musty old academic. He got the archaeology bug from his dad but he wanted to be more adventurous than him.

And both of us thought that the elder Jones made for an attractive academic -- no, not glamorous like Indy. But we had no problem understanding the attraction felt by that blonde Nazi. (Loomis will no doubt call us blindly biased on this point -- I won't argue with him. )

The elder Jones did NOT turn out to be a wimp, imo. He was determined and courageous throughout. Connery played him as a single-minded, religious academic ready to face anything. But he thankfully did *not* play him as some Bond-like action hero. That would've been, imo, completely "ho hum" -- we've seen Connery do that so many times, it would've been just like watching Indiana Jones, Sr. - same as his kid. And, for me, terribly uninspired.

Also, I love that scene in RAIDERS in the classroom, watching Indy teach. It shows the audience that in the academic world, he's a bit of nebbish, a geek. He's socially uncomfortable with people, while he's something else entirely when he goes off on his adventures. I loved that contrast.

From Rich Douglas:


Liked your posts, Rich. Atrocity is right, followed by another one. I know about the "laziness" quote. Lucas was once a decent filmmaker, now he's become nothing but a tired old rich hack.

[Tarl_Cabot]

The only thing that really bothered me was the way they treated the secondary characters like Sallah and Brody as comedy relief."

Yes! They turn Brody into an incompetent tourist buffon. He was supposed to be Indy's peer, just an older, out of shape version;past his prime but still brilliant collegue, not an "do you speak english" type of traveling moron.I hated that. selling a character out for s and giggles is unforgivable!

[Loomis]

Originally posted by Turn

As for Connery, I think this is a unique role for him because for me personally, it was one of the few times I didn't watch a film with him in it and think to myself I'm watching a Sean Connery film. To see this man who is normally the epitome of the virile, macho hero flitting around with an umberella on a beach it didn't have me saying "how can they do this to Connery?"  

You make some very valid points, Turn. I guess it just boils down to a matter of taste: some people are pleased to see Connery playing the kind of role he doesn't normally play (and you are right to point out that "he also has moments when his authoritative side comes through" - the "Indiana, let it go" line is a very good example).... but others are disappointed that Connery isn't much more the macho, tough and sexy Connery of old.

LAST CRUSADE has some clever ideas (the opening with River Phoenix is terrific), but they are undercut by too much silliness.

The film doesn't just treat "secondary characters like Sallah and Brody as comedy relief" - Connery is too much the clumsy the old buffoon, and comic Nazis surely went out with the Ark? (Pun intended.)

The villains are weak as water. The love interest is likewise a damp squib.

The writing is lazy, trading on absurd coincidence (Brody is lost in a crowded street, and he just happens to bump into Sallah - how convenient; Sallah seems to appear from nowhere again later on to aid the Joneses).

The viewer's intelligence is insulted several times (a location is referred to roughly three times as "Venice, Italy", presumably so that audiences won't think it's Venice, California; and the line "If you're a Scottish lord I'm Mickey Mouse" originally went "If you're a Scottish lord I'm Jesse Owens", but the filmmakers were worried that most viewers wouldn't have heard of Owens).

The special effects are unremarkable, and the film has zero visual "wow factor". The wonderful locations are completely wasted, thanks to indifferent production design and flat cinematography.

Ford looks utterly miserable throughout.

Too many scenes are unutterably stupid, for instance the one in which Colonel Vogel (Michael Byrne) boards the airship alone to apprehend the Joneses, and Indy poses as a ticket collector. He throws Vogel out of the window and then announces, in English, "No ticket", at which point all the passengers panic and start waving their tickets. It's just inane.

Nothing about the film seems fresh. When RAIDERS and TEMPLE OF DOOM came out, they seemed (despite their influences - which included 1930s serials, Hammer Horror, Bond and STAR WARS) unlike any films that had ever been made. LAST CRUSADE just plays like a lukewarm retread of RAIDERS. Visual gags are ripped off from RAIDERS and TEMPLE OF DOOM, and there is the obligatory "yucky creatures" scene (rats instead of snakes or insects), but we've seen it all done better before.

[DLibrasnow]

Originally posted by Tarl_Cabot
The only thing that really bothered me was the way they treated the secondary characters like Sallah and Brody as comedy relief."

Yes! They turn Brody into an incompetent tourist buffon. He was supposed to be Indy's peer, just an older, out of shape version;past his prime but still brilliant collegue, not an "do you speak english" type of traveling moron.

Yes that bothered me to but not as much as that whiny screaming Willie Scott or Short Round in TOD.

I thought it was interesting that Indiana was named after George Lucas' dog, Willie was the name of Spielbergs dog and Short Round was the name of the TOD screenwriters dog.

[Loomis]

Originally posted by Jaelle

it would've been just like watching Indiana Jones, Sr. - same as his kid.  

That's what I wanted from Connery, though! (Although I see where you're coming from in dismissing that idea as uninspired. As I put it in my previous post, it all comes down to personal taste: some are happy with Connery delivering an "un-Conneryish" performance, while others are disappointed that he didn't just give us straight-down-the-line Classic Connery.)

[Tarl_Cabot]

LAST CRUSADE has some clever ideas (the opening with River Phoenix is terrific),"

No it was not. I waited desperately for 5 years for Indy 3(much like my 6.5 year wait for the bland Goldeneye) and they give me River pheonix for 15 minutes. Another kid's movie device typical of Spielberg.The sequels are no where near as cool as the first one. I liked Temple a lot but it had weaknesses....Indy 3 was terrible. I think Raiders should probably never had a sequel (maybe The Matrix too-I'll wait till November 5 to decide).leave perfection alone! :mad:

[Jaelle]

Originally posted by Tarl_Cabot
I think Raiders should probably never had a sequel (maybe The Matrix too-I'll wait till November 5 to decide).leave perfection alone! :mad:

On that, Tarl, we are in complete agreement!

[DLibrasnow]

Yes I managed to avoid "Matrix Reloaded" at the movie theater but I have been assigned to cover the press screening of "Matrix Revolutions" on Nov. 3rd, a fact I am not happy with because I didn't even like the first one!

[Double-Oh-Zero]

Originally posted by Loomis


Spielberg has said on many occasions that Bond was a key inspiration for the character of Indiana Jones and the Bond films for RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK. Sure, there were other influences - serials of the 30s, as you point out - but Bond was certainly one of the main ones.



For the sort of "fuddy-duddy old " that Connery ended up playing, they might as well have hired Jack Lemmon. They wasted Connery. They missed a trick.

Indiana Jones is an academic, a geek.... but he's also an adventurer, a fighter and a ladies' man. Henry Jones is the cloth from which Indy is cut, the old block off which Indy's a chip, so he ought to be, well, an older version of Indiana Jones. An academic who's also an adventurer. Instead, the character is just an academic, a geek.

We should be able to picture Henry Jones having had the sort of amazing, highly dangerous escapades in the past that his son is now having. Indy never got to know his dad because his dad was always off in far-flung corners of the globe shooting people and being shot at - that should be the explanation for why the two of them have this dysfunctional relationship. Instead, the film pretty much tells us that, while he did do some travelling around, Henry Jones spent most of his life in Utah with his head buried in books about the Holy Grail, and that he never did anything dangerous. Look at the astonishment Jones, Sr. displays when Indy shoots a pair of Nazis.  

So why didn't father and son get on? After all, they had virtually identical interests in archeology. They were both academics. You'd have thought they would have gotten on like a house on fire. Jones, Sr. obviously lives near the university Indy teaches at. Yet for 20 years they barely speak to each other. Why? It's tough to buy it.

But it could have been so easy to buy if Henry Jones had been a wild and crazy, death-defying adventurer just like Indy. If your passion for archeology leads you to spend your days rocketing around on mine trucks being chased by insane Indian cultists, then of course you're not going to have much time to watch your son grow up. And all this would have also explained how Indiana Jones became the man he is: unconsciously trying to win his father's acceptance, he gradually becomes a clone of his old man, going into the same profession and adopting the same attitudes towards relationships and the same streak of lunatic heroism.

And it's not as though Connery couldn't have played the grizzled old adventurer and womanizer to perfection: look at his subsequent performances in THE HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER, THE ROCK and ENTRAPMENT. That was the kind of thing I wanted from Connery in LAST CRUSADE, not a performance as a doddering old buffer, a performance that could have been given by hundreds of other actors.

Connery is a STAR, and when you hire a star, you essentially hire someone who's perfected a signature role. Connery's is that of the ultra-virile tough guy who's a wow with the babes. Well, that's too little of that in Henry Jones. As you put it, DOZ, "it's called acting" - but I wanted to see Connery the Legend in LAST CRUSADE, not Connery the actor.

You make very valid and interesting points, Loomis. But basically what I'm trying to say is that Connery probably wouldn't have accepted the role if Spielberg had said flat out to him: "Okay, Sean. We want you to play Bond again. Just make him more of a father figure and a bit older." I agree with your post about Indy being cut from the same cloth, and it does show at many points in the film. For instance, when the Joneses are on the beach, it's Henry that uses his wits (and the seagulls) to deter the Nazi plane. When Elsa is flirting with Indy while the two are tied up, Henry thinks that she's talking to him, and he tries to woo her in return. There are other points throughout the film that show this, but the main idea is to show how estranged the two are. Henry himself says to Indy: "You call ths archaeology?" In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if it was Connery's input that made the character such a . My guess is that Spielberg approached Sean to play it as Bond, and Connery tweaked the role to make it more interesting for everybody, including himself.

The fact is, Henry just doesn't have the energy to do that stuff anymore. He's been widowed, and been through a lot in his lifetime. It would have been pointless to have him in there if he was just going to steal the spotlight and play James Bond again. Basically, it's an Indy film, and this time Sean's just tagging along for the ride. You might as well put the leather jacket and fedora on Sean and say "Do your thing." He would detract from the whole point of an Indy film: to show Indy's adventures, not his dad's.

Hope I'm not offending you, Loomis. I guess we'll have to agree to disagree.

[DLibrasnow]

Hey Loomis -- have you watched the feature length documentary?? If so did that alter your perceptions of any of the movies?

Now that its been a couple of days since the set came out what are peoples thoughts on the documentary??

[Loomis]

Originally posted by Double-Oh-Zero

Connery probably wouldn't have accepted the role if Spielberg had said flat out to him: "Okay, Sean. We want you to play Bond again. Just make him more of a father figure and a bit older."

True.

Originally posted by Double-Oh-Zero

I agree with your post about Indy being cut from the same cloth, and it does show at many points in the film. For instance, when the Joneses are on the beach, it's Henry that uses his wits (and the seagulls) to deter the Nazi plane. When Elsa is flirting with Indy while the two are tied up, Henry thinks that she's talking to him, and he tries to woo her in return.  

You're right. Perhaps I'm being a little too harsh on LAST CRUSADE. I guess I just have a fixation with Connery As Bond. (Which is probably pretty normal among those of us who frequent this site!)

Originally posted by Double-Oh-Zero

Hope I'm not offending you, Loomis.  

Good grief, not at all. One of the things I love about this site is that we have huge arguments over things (I'm not saying this is a huge argument, though), and yet there is so very rarely any flaming or ill-feeling. The atmosphere on CBn is great - and it's probably never been better than it is now - and no one (whether a staff member, a longstanding member, or someone who's just joined) needs ever to be hesitant about speaking his or her mind.

Originally posted by DLibrasnow

Hey Loomis -- have you watched the feature length documentary??  

Not yet. I'll probably watch it tonight.

[DLibrasnow]

You are in for a treat, it does a great job of putting the whole trilogy in perspective! Enjoy!

[Turn]

I have got to hand it to you, Loomis. You are one of the most entertaining posters on this board when it comes to elaboration and making a point. I don't always agree with you, but you always state your points clearly.

[DLibrasnow]

I also appreciate Loomis' posts, even though the two of us disagree on a number of issues.

[Jaelle]

Originally posted by Turn
I have got to hand it to you, Loomis. You are one of the most entertaining posters on this board when it comes to elaboration and making a point. I don't always agree with you, but you always state your points clearly.

Ditto! The guy has me re-evaluating stuff all the time...... He'd have a great job in MI6's psyops department.

[Loomis]

Wow. Thanks, Turn, DLibrasnow and Jaelle. I'm certainly feeling the love tonight! Shucks, I'm embarrassed. I don't know what to say....

Anyhow, the appreciation goes both ways. The three of you are among the posters whose names I always click on when I see they've replied to a thread.

[Genrewriter]

It's really hard for me to rank the films seeing as I basically grew up on a steady diet of repeated viewings of all three. Raiders is the best of the three, alkmost perfect. I put Last Crusade in the number two slot because of Connery and also the tank chase is a real showstopper. Temple of Doom gets the third slot primarily because one of them has to come in third. I would have liked to have seen the deleted stuff from the script as it had some truly scary, out there stuff regarding Indy g0oing over to the dark side for a while.

[DLibrasnow]

Originally posted by Genrewriter
Temple of Doom gets the third slot primarily because one of them has to come in third.  

Agreed....even though I put TOD in the third spot its still better than 98 percent of the stuff that's put out today and called entertainment.

Originally posted by Genrewriter
I would have liked to have seen the deleted stuff from the script as it had some truly scary, out there stuff regarding Indy g0oing over to the dark side for a while.

I am in agreement with you on this point to Genrewriter, but the Indiana Jones movies were essentially made as family entertainment.

[Jaelle]

Originally posted by Loomis
Anyhow, the appreciation goes both ways. The three of you are among the posters whose names I always click on when I see they've replied to a thread.

Check's in the mail, Loomie. Or rather, the international money order.

[Genrewriter]

True, Darren but still when you have a scene where a guy has his freaking heart ripped out...The tone of that scene sort of is at odds with the rest of the film.

[Loomis]

Originally posted by Genrewriter

True, Darren but still when you have a scene where a guy has his freaking heart ripped out....

Not in the UK, unfortunately. And I've just read that the British Board of Film Classification, which heavily edited that scene in 1984, has made even more cuts to the new DVD release of TEMPLE OF DOOM. I'm not too sure of the ins and outs of it, since I've only just come across this discussion on another site, but it makes interesting reading: http://www.theraider...52&pagenumber=1:

I remember being pretty shocked by how gruesome the uncut version of that scene was when I saw it in Japan, having seen the censored British version of TEMPLE OF DOOM dozens of times beforehand.

That said.... I'd still say that RAIDERS is a darker film than TEMPLE OF DOOM, possibly scarier for young children. The tone of TEMPLE OF DOOM seems a lot more lighthearted and cartoonish to me, but maybe that's just me.

[Genrewriter]

Good point, the ending of Raiders is probably the only time a PG rated movie has ended with people bloodily metling and exploding.

[DLibrasnow]

Originally posted by Loomis


Not in the UK, unfortunately. And I've just read that the British Board of Film Classification, which heavily edited that scene in 1984, has made even more cuts to the new DVD release of TEMPLE OF DOOM. I'm not too sure of the ins and outs of it, since I've only just come across this discussion on another site, but it makes interesting reading: http://www.theraider...52&pagenumber=1:

I remember being pretty shocked by how gruesome the uncut version of that scene was when I saw it in Japan, having seen the censored British version of TEMPLE OF DOOM dozens of times beforehand.

You know since I grew up in the UK I have only seen the British edit of TEMPLE OF DOOM. I am going to have to check out my DVD for the US version.

[Tarl_Cabot]

Yes I managed to avoid "Matrix Reloaded" at the movie theater but I have been assigned to cover the press screening of "Matrix Revolutions" on Nov. 3rd, a fact I am not happy with because I didn't even like the first one!"

You're loco Dsnow . The Matrix was the best of '99. Bond and Star Wars both sucked. At least 1 popcorn flick got it right.

[rafterman]

Raiders is the best, followed closely by Temple, loved them both, don't really like Last Crusade...it just rips off Raiders' style and has to bring in the father to help things along....I like Temple because it's different, strucutrally and plot wise.....no Nazis...Last Crusade is way over rated...

[DLibrasnow]

Originally posted by rafterman
Raiders is the best, followed closely by Temple, loved them both, don't really like Last Crusade...it just rips off Raiders' style and has to bring in the father to help things along....I like Temple because it's different, strucutrally and plot wise.....no Nazis...Last Crusade is way over rated...

I liked Last Crusade because it explored the father-son dynamic and it featured Sean Connery.
The only reason Temple is different is because Lucas was going through a friggin' divorce!

[DLibrasnow]

Originally posted by Tarl_Cabot
Yes I managed to avoid "Matrix Reloaded" at the movie theater but I have been assigned to cover the press screening of "Matrix Revolutions" on Nov. 3rd, a fact I am not happy with because I didn't even like the first one!"

You're loco Dsnow . The Matrix was the best of '99.

Oh gee....well if you say so then you must be right......NOT. The Matrix sucked the big one....hated it!