Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (James Mangold, June 30th 2023) Movie • Page 16

After watching Mangold's excellent 3:10 to Yuma tonight, I feel a shred of optimism he could treat Indy right. It's still a long shot but maybe we'll get a fitting send off, as he's shown he can deliver with Logan.

 

Not a major reappraisal, but I watched Kingdom of the Crystal Skull with my 7-year-old son yesterday, and he thought it was pretty good. He enjoyed most of it, but he did at one point go and get his tablet and start playing a game, where he sat and watched Raiders & Last Crusade straight through entirely captivated. He laughed at a lot of the stuff that made me groan, like the CGI monkeys and prairie dogs, but after we finished it in two sittings he said he liked it a lot.

It was slightly better than I remembered, but I still stand by everything I said in that long post a few posts back, with the exception of calling it an okay-ish adventure movie - I would say it is a decent to pretty good adventure movie depending on how much you like The Mummy (1999, not the Tom Cruise one).

Aside from just cluttering the scene with CGI jungle leaves for no apparent reason, the digital look that bothered me the most seemed to come down to green / blue screening backgrounds for no good reason, like when they're just standing outside of the airport hangar at the beginning. There's no good reason not to just shoot that scene at an airport somewhere outside, or a studio backlot dressed up like an airport, which even seems like a step too far to me when there are lots of airport hangars you could shoot at for an afternoon. It is super distracting and ruins what is actually a pretty great and enjoyable reintroduction to Indy. That, and I swear they did a bunch of digital color grading, which I almost always hate the look of because it honestly looks to me like you went out and spent a lot of time and money and hard work to shoot something a certain way and then right at the last minute you just went in and made it look like you shot it on crappy video by digitally painting over and smearing everything. Such a weird stylistic choice.

But I purposely didn't let my son watch Temple of Doom, and not because of how dark and violent it is, but for the overtly racist garbage - so I ended up feeling like in the grand scheme of things there are worse things in the world than a movie being a little too silly or relying a little heavily on modern filmmaking shortcuts.

 

Technically the reappraisal already happened. It had good reviews and did pretty well financially when it came out. Everyone started to hate it after that.

 

I HATED it when I watched it on release in theaters as a 25 year old with no kids yet who had grown up on the original 3. Like squirming in my seat and wanting to walk out of the theater. Felt like Steven Spielberg was personally giving me the middle finger and saying "Fuck you, Eric" and laughing in my face. I felt like what most Star Wars fans sounded like talking about the prequels, which I always enjoyed and had a soft spot for even though they weren't anywhere near on the same level as the OT.

Watching it yesterday with my son was fun and I enjoyed the movie and did not struggle to finish it.

 

I heard it was bad and waited to watch until I could rent the DVD. I hated it when I saw it. Saw it semi recently and I was a little more okay with it, but still had some major issues.

 

The effects are the worst part, but the 2000's decade is the worst in that area. CGI was just running amok back then. Spielberg had mostly converted to dramas by that point so it is easy to imagine that George Lucas' prequel strategy of doing everything digitally had a lot of influence.

 

I liked it as a fun nostalgia trip on opening night and have never rewatched it /shrug

 

I liked it a lot in theaters, watched it two or three times at home and still enjoyed it. Been a while, I'll probably do a full series rewatch with wife leading up to new one.


But honestly, we all know the true 4th film is The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones: Treasure of the Peacock's Eye. Episode is absolutely wonderful. Love that series.

 

I'm hopeful for this movie since Disney seems VERY confident in it. Dial of Destiny is opening at Cannes this year which means reviews will be out a month before one of the most expensive films in history ($300M budget) hits theaters. If they thought they had a stinker they wouldn't be doing this.

For context, yes Indy 4 premiered at Cannes as well, but that was only 4 days before the movie opened

 

Do people under 30 really want to watch an elderly man swing around? The brand is so tied to the character, unlike something like Star Wars.

 

I'll be 29 when this comes out and the answer:

 

“Elderly man swinging around” is a major selling point for me. “LucasFilm” and “digital de-aging” are my major hindrances.

I’m in my mid-30s, though, so you shouldn’t take my senior citizen opinion seriously.

 

there is quite a large number of people that are over 30 years old that like to go to the movies

 

prove it

 

When Top Gun Maverick was out I remember overhearing a LOT of older people that very clearly had not gone to a movie theater very often

 

Tragic if true.

 

I was going to make a comment about how my mom and her friends go to movies, and then I remembered this demographic also includes me. And then I remember how old I am. Thanks, Chorus.

 

I used to have to walk to the movies, in the snow, uphill both ways.

 

I went to the movies yesterday to watch Mario Bros and there were three rows of physically fit men sitting behind me. I bowed and they introduced themselves as “30 year olds who love Mario.” I sat down and enjoyed the film but every 5 minutes one of them would say “I’m over 30 and this movie is great.” As soon as the movie ended I turned around and we nodded heads.

 

this leaves no doubt

 

I’m sold