Friday, November 30, 2018

Guest Post: Where's Marion...Or Disposable Love Interests

By Kiti Lappi

In a discussion on Facebook a few days ago we got to talking about Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull - the Indiana Jones movie which should not have been in the opinion of lots of fans, it seems -  and one of the good points with that movie came up.

It brought Marion back. And even got her and Indy finally married. That there was a son was good too. Forget that he was played by THAT actor, just consider the idea that there is a next generation now. At least I like it, maybe because I don’t have any kids of my own and with my age there is now no chance of any, not natural ones anyway, and being one kind of dead end bothers me a bit. 

And even somebody like Indy, a character who IS tied to time unlike somebody like, say, James Bond, so he is supposed to age - it’s not nice to imagine him as a the cranky lonely old man next door, moving around with a cane or a walker and nobody knowing how cool he once was. Better to imagine him as the doting grandfather, telling stories of his exploits to the grandkids who are gathered around him and are watching with wide eyes and waiting with bated breath for him to tell how he got out of the snake pit that time.

But the biggie is still: They brought Marion back.

Why? Why does matter so much to me?

Personally, one aspect is that I like romance. Hey, I am a woman, so sue me. However I can’t stand most romance novels because hell of a lot of them - most I have read - spend way too much time with the endless will they or won’t they, does he really love, or even like her, how deep are her feelings for him, or describing what kind of sex they have when they get to it and forgetting what is the other nominal plot at times totally, and especially when that other plot is supposed to be kind of important, like a murder mystery or espionage or, hell, saving her business, or his, or the family farm, the characters spending inordinate amounts of time concentrating on how hot that other person is, whether to have sex, or wondering if he really cares, makes the whole thing feel more than a bit flakey to me. 

If there is a murderer on the loose and possibly coming after me you could drop the hottest male in the universe on my lap and I’d still spend at least somewhat more time trying to figure out who that killer is than admiring his total hotness and wondering what he maybe thinks of me (and trying to figure out whether to have sex…). Maybe I’m just quirky that way, or have low sex drive or whatever, but mostly those scenes make me want to grab the characters and shake them and point out that there are somewhat more important things happening around them. 

And keep love triangles far away from me, thanks. One at a time is complicated enough. 

So for me the go-to source for romance has always been all kinds of other stories with a romance subplot. Like the first Indiana Jones. Which was rather great as far as that part is concerned. You got that they knew each other, you got that there was history and previous problems, you got that they still had feelings - deep feelings - for each other, that they would not have ever gotten back together except for the circumstances which now forced them to. So would that be enough to bring them back together? He cared, she cared, but was their troubled history still too much for them? 

Then, exciting derring do and lots of action later they did get back together. Ooh, they really DO love each other. Now they just have to stay together, right? Wedding, family, adventures together before kids, and maybe adventures where that family gets threatened and they work together to save each other and their family and… OOH, I CAN’T WAIT!

Then next movie. No Marion. 

Okay, this was a prequel, and set for the period of time after their break up and before they met again. And Willie certainly was no match for her, so understandable that that affair never led to anything. 

And then there is the third movie

And… hey, where’s Marion? Why is Indy now flirting with that blonde? That story does pretty clearly take place later than the Ark one, so - what happened?

Of course the affair with Elsa doesn’t last, and ends very definitely, but he still has an affair with her. And as far as I remember there isn’t even a mention of Marion, no short discussion with Jones senior, for example, with him telling junior that he should have stayed with Marion, him answering that they just seemed to be incompatible or something and that she had left, or saying that they had a break up and he gave up too easily but is now going back and he WILL win her back because this showed him that she is the only one for him. 

But there is nothing. It’s pretty much as if she hadn’t even existed. 

And that definitely made the film less enjoyable for me, because I kept waiting for that explanation, even as a throwaway comment, of her absence. 

Now on some level I get it. The meeting, the attraction, the getting to know each other a bit and then the hero getting her favor, conquering her, during the story is exciting. And I suppose after that doesn’t seem as exciting, they now know each other, he has won her, what else is there to tell? Plenty, actually, but I suppose it could be a bit harder to make all that seem exciting. The meeting and wooing is easier.

So often enough in film series the female lead in each movie changes. Our hero meets and wins a new lady each time. 

But this revolving door of leading ladies makes a hero seem kind of shallow. Okay, often enough more like VERY shallow. Especially when each time the previous love of his life, or at least the last lust object, seems to be totally forgotten, not meriting even that throwaway line of how she, I don’t know, went back to her childhood sweetheart or had a too busy work schedule or how his job makes it too dangerous for him to commit to long term relationships and he is willing to risk only short affairs, or that maybe he was so badly scarred by losing the great love of his life that he no longer can go there. 

(Okay, at least they have tried to give that impression a few times in the James Bond franchise… better than nothing, I guess). 

The hero is a player, going through life having short, even if sometimes pretty intense affairs with countless women he seems to totally purge from his life and his memory afterwards. 

And at least for me that makes him seem rather less heroic. 

And then there always is that image of the hero as the lonely, cranky old man… not cool. Not at all.

I want the cool grandpa. And the young man who will fall in love, win his lady love and then KEEP her, through thick and thin, until death parts them. With at least one kid and then grandkids coming to the story at some point, whether that gets shown or not. 

Thursday, November 29, 2018

Movie Review: Atlantis: The Lost Empire (2001)

I hesitate to call this a "blast from the past" movie review even though it's for the film podcast Myopia: Defend Your Childhood because I never saw Atlantis: The Lost Empire in theaters even though it came out the summer between my sophomore and junior years of high school. Perhaps I should have, since it wasn't long historically speaking (less than a decade) until The Princess and the Frog and Disney abandoning old-school 2D animation in favor of 3D stuff like Tangled and Wreck-It Ralph. Let the record state I generally like the 2D look better, especially in the hands of a master like Disney alumnus Don Bluth when he did things like The Secret of the NIMH and Titan A.E., both of which, incidentally, I previously reviewed for Myopia.

Oh well. Too late now. Here's the podcast. And now for the review...


The Plot

It turns out Atlantis was real, but sank beneath the ocean in a cataclysm that killed many of its citizens but left a few survivors hidden in force-fielded disaster shelters. Flash forward thousands of years and we meet Milo Thatch (Michael J. Fox), a boiler-room worker and sometimes academic at a museum whose board of directors is tired of hearing about his theories on Atlantis. Recruited by a friend of his late grandfather, he sets off on an undersea voyage in search of a lost city and its legendary advanced technology. Unfortunately some members of his crew have ulterior motives, and trouble ensues.

No wonder we did this as the last film in a month ostensibly dedicated to Indiana Jones films...

The Good

*The movie starts out with a bang with the destruction of Atlantis (well, most of it) and then we cut straight to Milo's misadventures. Those happen to be hilarious, by the way, especially when the board of trustees are running away from him in a desperate attempt to avoid listening to his theories about Atlantis. Then we meet Whitmore and the submarine and off we go.

*The animation is well-done, meshing traditional drawings with CGI.

*The supporting cast of ethnic stereotypes was kind of amusing, plus they did put some effort into developing them as characters. African-American Dr. Joshua Sweet (Phil Morris) is actually half-Native American and raised in both cultures, while Puerto Rican Audrey Ramirez's (Jacqueline Obradors) more typically masculine interests were encouraged by a father who wanted sons. And given how exaggeratedly macho she can get, one can infer this didn't make her family particularly popular back home and perhaps she had to fight. The one who got the least development is the lecherous and filthy Frenchman "Mole" (Corey Burton).

*Surprisingly edgy for a Disney film on multiple levels--one action sequence is set off by Milo setting off for a midnight crap (complete with a shovel, toilet paper, and him taking his pants off), cars with screaming soldiers exploding, on-screen bleeding wounds, etc. No wonder this one was rated PG.

*Some of the historical detail works, like WWI-style uniforms for the soldiers and one character's angsting about the dangers of the Kaiser.

*There are no contrived ways for the heroes to win without killing bad guys, or at least it's kept to a minimum. You want to stop a bunch of violent thugs from destroying an ancient culture? Prepare to get your hands dirty. I've pointed out the problems with that before. And even though our hero isn't the mightiest man by any stretch of the imagination, he gets in on it too.

The Bad

*During the leviathan attack scene, it was awfully dark and hard to tell what was going on. To be fair I watching that part on my Kindle Fire HDX while on the apartment elliptical rather than on my laptop or a television, but I don't recall having the same issues with the rest of the movie. Considering how much I liked the film's animation, this was somewhat disappointing.

*This is something I didn't notice until Nic pointed it out on the podcast, but Kida, the Atlantean princess, is either unable to or has difficulty reading the old-school Atlantean language, as do apparently many other Atlanteans. Thing is, Kida and her father at least and probably much more of the population have been around since the collapse of Atlantis itself, their aging process dramatically slowed by their supernatural/super-science crystals. It's not like Milo found a group of descendants of ancient Romans who over the course of generations have gradually forgotten most of their language--one can infer that the Atlantean king never actually taught his daughter to read.

Granted, the Atlantean king doesn't seem to be the type (he does, after all, tell Kida she will be queen after him), so I doubt that's actually the case. However, the fact it can even be read that way is a bit of a problem. I could imagine a modern Latin scholar finding a lost Roman colony and re-teaching them stuff they'd lost (remember, most people in ancient times would be illiterate anyway), but given how long-lived the Atlanteans are, it seems very unlikely they'd just forget. If it was made clear that the language used on the technology is something akin to hieroglyphics or Latin and the Atlanteans typically use only a "lower" script/language as was the case in ancient Egypt that might be one thing, but it's NOT. Also, Kida is the heir to the throne and part of the upper class. Realistically she at least would know how to read it even if the Atlantean commoners wouldn't, and given the prevalence of their technology before the collapse, I would expect more of the Atlanteans to know it too.

*The Atlanteans' ability to speak all the different languages doesn't really make a lot of sense. Even thought the Atlanteans look Polynesian, their original language seems to be some kind of Indo-European dialect (the young Kida calls her mother something resembling "Ma"), but despite living underwater for thousands of years they can speak modern English and French? Maybe if it was made clear they'd rescued survivors of ships destroyed by the guardian monster Leviathan over the centuries, that would make more sense.

(It might also replenish their gene pool--considering how they're descended from a relatively small number of survivors and all seem to look generally the same, they're probably getting more and more inbred as the generations pass.)

*It's established early on that Sweet is an Indian medicine man as well as a modern-style doctor, but we never see him trying any Native American medical techniques when things go wrong. It's like a gun on the mantelpiece that's never fired.

*And the Atlanteans initially seem awfully welcoming to people who'd barreled into their homeland uninvited, armed, and in such large numbers. It's even lampshaded by the Atlantean king. Some more mixed reactions by the rank-and-file Atlantean soldiers to their commander's sociability with the strangers might be in order. And the villains' plot could be triggered by an attack by some overzealous Atlantean (think Kocoum attacking John Smith in Pocahontas)--if some idiot gave them a pretext and it isn't initially clear who attacked whom on whose orders, that could keep some of the good people on the bad side longer.

The Verdict

Generally an entertaining film, but there are some logic issues. 8.0 out of 10.

Thursday, November 22, 2018

Blast from the Past Movie Review: Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008)

The film podcast Myopia: Defend Your Childhood rounds out the Indiana Jones movies with the last one, 2008's Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Yes, the one with Shia LaBeouf in it. Not actual cannibal Shia LaBeouf, fortunately, but still. I remember finding it rather disappointing when I first saw it--the McCarthyite G-Men questioning Jones' war service came off to me as a shot at the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth (which questioned the 2004 Democratic candidate John Kerry's Vietnam record) and everybody seemed rather passive standing around with Soviet guns pointed at them much of the time.

So ten years later, was it as disappointing as I remember it? Let's take a watch (here's the podcast) and find out...



The Plot

It's 1957 and although McCarthyism historically would be winding down, it's still possible for academic Henry "Indiana" Jones (Harrison Ford) to get accused of being a Communist. Especially since he's narrowly escaped from a band of Soviet soldiers on the loose in the United States under the command of Communist zealot Irina Spalko (Cate Blanchett). Placed on indefinite suspension after the FBI searches his office, he meets an angry young man named "Mutt" Williams (Shia LaBeouf) who brings a message from Jones' former colleague Harold Oxley (John Hurt) passed on via his kidnapped mother Mary (ACTRESS REDACTED FOR SPOILER REASONS). The race to prevent the Soviets from seizing the power of the legendary Crystal Skull is on...

The Good

*Some people think Indiana Jones should stay in the realm of fighting Nazis and Judeo-Christian supernatural lore, but after 1945 the Nazis were squashed flat and the totalitarian danger was the Soviet Union (and to a lesser degree Mao's China). You can't have him fighting Nazis after WWII if you want to continue his having adventures, and Spielberg's original idea of having him fight an uprising of Nazi die-hards somewhere after WWII sounded really forced. I had no beef with the Hindu sacred stones of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. Hell, I found that one better than the explicitly Christian Last Crusade. And this isn't the first time Indiana has tangled with the Reds--once upon a time there was Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine and other times he fought the Soviets.

*Spielberg cast actual Russians as the Soviet soldiers so they'd have authentic accents. Some of them even look distinctively Slavic. That's some good attention to detail there. The refrigerator from the infamous refrigerator sequence is also one of the older models that latch and cannot be opened from the inside--i.e. the kind that children suffocate in. That also shows attention to detail, as those models would eventually get phased out but that wouldn't have happened as early as 1957 given how I remember my mother warning me as a child (i.e. late 1980s or early 1990s) about the dangers of refrigerators.

*Although I'd griped about the relative lack of action sequences at the time, Indiana and Mutt's adventures following the trail of the kidnapped Oxley and Mary (whom we find out later is a lot more important) utilize actual archaeological skills like excavating, looking for clues, etc. It's not all about throwing down with German and Russian soldiers and Hindu death cultists, people. :) And our heroes are passive captives a lot less often than I remember.

*Blanchett does a good job as Spalko, a Soviet agent who (possibly if you go with the movie; definitely if you include expanded-universe stuff) has psychic powers. Not only that, but she's an extreme True Believer in Communism. Not just Communism, but straight-up Stalinism given how she talks about the man. And she has some very sinister and supremely creepy plans. The Nazis' vast armies and open contempt for freedom, democracy, etc. were an obvious danger, but the Soviet threat was more subtle.

*There's some stuff that's pretty funny, including the diner brawl scene and at least one incident where Indiana tries something that would have worked in the 1930s but doesn't owing to his advanced age.

*LaBeouf is oftentimes aggravating as Mutt, but that may well be intentional. He's an angry young man with a giant chip on his shoulder, apparently a bit of a strained relationship with his mother, and somewhat lacking in male role models. And he can convincingly emote, not just when he's angry but when he's legitimately upset.

*Indiana's interaction with his love interest in the film (not saying who for reasons of spoilers) is pretty funny. They're like an old married couple, except they're not. It's one of the most entertaining parts of the film. And said love interest's age allows for the frame story of The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles--at least part of which is canon, considering how in the movie he talks about riding with Pancho Villa--in which he's elderly and living with a daughter and grandchildren to not contradict this one. After all, the record for the oldest natural mother is in the mid-late 50s and Indiana's daughter from the show does resemble this movie's female lead somewhat. Not going into any more details for reasons of spoilers, although you guys should know who I'm talking about by now. Especially since although her showing up is supposed to be this big surprise, she's on the poster.

*Although a lot of people had a beef with the refrigerator scene, there were people who survived Hiroshima despite being within 300 meters of the detonation. Here's some more, with one survivor using a freezer. The landing and rolling should be the problem, but then again, he did drink from the Holy Grail about nineteen years before. Even if you have to drink continuously from it to stay alive, it still might've conferred better-than-usual health.

The Bad

*The earlier films had German soldiers operating in other countries during peacetime in full uniform and in large numbers and nobody seems to care. The opening sequence features at least a couple squads and maybe a platoon (40 men) of Russian soldiers roaming around Nevada. The fact they're in stolen U.S. uniforms makes it less ridiculous than I remember--I'd thought they were wearing more distinctive Russian gear--but still. Infiltrating a few agents here and there isn't hard, especially in an open society like the U.S. But dozens of men? The Germans tried to infiltrate saboteurs into the U.S. during WWII and they got caught pretty quickly. Surely in this more paranoid time someone acquiring that many U.S. military uniforms, vehicles, etc. for disguises would be noticed. Maybe if it was obviously older stuff like WWII-era Lend Lease material from when the US and Soviets were allied that might work, but nobody mentions that. A snarky "thank the Lend Lease program for their generosity" would be all that was needed.

And later they're in actual Soviet uniforms in South America. You know, where the U.S. had a history of slapping down anything remotely resembling a Communist movement. This is not to say that U.S. intelligence is omniscient, but surely somebody would notice something. Especially, you know, the whole "in Soviet uniform" part. Very obvious, especially with the ludicrous amounts of equipment they bring with them that has Russian writing on it. The Soviets had better HumInt than we did; they'd be better at subtlety.

*For reasons of realism/plausibility, I would have set the film in 1954-ish. Soviet dictator Josef Stalin died in 1953 and Stalin's successor Khruschev might've wanted Stalin devotee Spalko out of the country and not potentially threatening his reforms. Ergo, send her off on a spying mission where her occult talents could be useful. McCarthy's colleagues turned on him in 1954, but the harassment of Indiana could be part of the Red Scare's death spasms. Indiana's love interest would be younger and thus more likely to be the mother of Indiana's daughter as depicted in The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles. I could easily imagine him having a daughter of out of wedlock given how much of a cad he was as a younger man, but if said daughter was the product of a fling or one-night stand and he had no involvement in her life, why is she looking after him in his old age? Do her kids need a father figure that badly that she'd be willing to take in a man who left her mother "in trouble" decades prior?

Yes, I am that much of a stickler for continuity and plausibility and IJ has a well-laid-out timeline.

*Mutt refers to having attended prep schools with fencing and debate, the former of which he puts to good use. Given his familial situation, how exactly could they have afforded that, especially given the implication he was kicked out of many of said prep schools? Colin Williams must've had quite an RAF pension.

*The monkey sequence is entirely too over-the-top. There's pulpy (like Mutt's sword duel with a Soviet agent, which according to the almighty TVTropes was actually filmed for real aboard two speeding jeeps) and then there's just ridiculous.

*A character who was Indiana's war buddy betrays him to the Soviets for money and then is entirely too aggressive in chasing him around. One's switch doesn't totally flip from "friend" to "enemy" like that--the slide to damnation is typically more gradual. Maybe if they'd been injured somehow as a result of their betrayal earlier in the film, then they'd blame Indiana rather than themselves and pursue him vindictively. Think Darth Vader blaming Obi-Wan for his crippling in Dark Lord: The Rise of Darth Vader, which fuels his further descent into evil rather than making him reconsider his actions. But that's not what happened.

(In his defense he does later seem to try to be friends with Indiana, recruit him for another money-making scheme, etc., but if his heart really isn't in it, why is he following him to South America? Even if in addition to paying off his gambling debts the Soviets were blackmailing him--they were very good at that--he seems way too enthusiastic.)

*And given the importance of what's going on at the base in the opening sequence, it seems unlikely there'd only be a few guards at the gate even though it's out in the middle of nowhere.

*There's a fair bit of obvious CGI, especially where small animals are concerned.

*In the movie, Indiana references having been at one point a double agent in Berlin during WWII. Basically he would have pretended to be working for (presumably) the Nazis while really working for the U.S. Thing is, given the events of Raiders of the Lost Ark and The Last Crusade and some of the non-movie adventures, it's clear he's no friend to Hitler and his goons. The Nazis would be fools to think he'd be willing to betray the U.S. for them after all that, and the sheer amount of bad blood between him and them would make working together very difficult. Better to leave that out and make it that he was a commando or something. Per the other Indiana Jones material, he spent most of WWII keeping the Axis from getting their hands on various supernatural super-weapons like he was doing in the 1930s, so they should have left it at that.

The Verdict

I expected it to suck. It didn't. Pleasantly surprised. 8.0 out of 10.

Thursday, November 15, 2018

Blast from the Past Movie Review: Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989)

The podcast Myopia: Defend Your Childhood continues its Indiana Jones month with the third movie, in which Indiana returns to the Nazi-fighting and Christian-inspired mythos of Raiders of the Lost Ark after a detour into Hinduism and Thuggee with Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. Although I saw parts of it as a child at my grandmother's house (I remember "no ticket," the slipping-glove scene, and the tank-treads scene), I don't recall if I ever saw the whole movie. If I did, I can't remember it.

So here's the podcast. And now the review...


The Plot

It's after the events of Raiders and Indiana Jones (Harrison Ford) finally retrieves the legendary Cross of Coronado, which he'd tried to keep from grave-robbers as a youth. Returning to his college, he learns that his father Henry Jones (Sean Connery) has disappeared while on the hunt for the Holy Grail. He sets off to Europe, where he meets the comely Dr. Elsa Schneider (Alison Doody) who had worked with his father before. The Nazis get involved once more and Indiana and his father have to keep them from getting their hands on something that could make Hitler immortal...

The Good

*Although the beginning went on for a bit too long, it did reveal the back-story for Indiana's hatred of snakes, his use of the bull-whip, and his propensity for fedoras. That's something I'm sure the fans would appreciate and it's not shoved in there for clunky fan-service but exposited smoothly in what's essentially an origin story. There's also a bit of foreshadowing with the dog and we're shown rather than told why his relationship with his father isn't the best.

(I also like that young Indiana was a Boy Scout. I earned my Eagle rank in 2001 through Boy Scout Troop 1011, Atlanta Area Council. BSA forever!)

*I liked how they had Sean Connery play Indiana's father as (somewhat) a Non-Action Guy who's not really that much of a fighter. Considering how he was a bodybuilder and used to be James Bond, that's definitely playing against type. Of course, although he lacks the strength and stamina of a young man, he can still pull off clever stuff, as the "Charlemagne" moment shows...

*There's a nice bit of Reality Ensues at the beginning where Indiana it turns out is behind on grading papers for his day job as a college professor due to all his off-the-clock adventuring. When he see his office stuffed with antiquities one might claim "belong in a museum," we also see a bit of hypocrisy, which is a bit amusing.

*There are some subtle touches of characterization, like when we see Elsa on the verge of tears at a Nazi book-burning rally where works like Das Kapital are incinerated. She's still an intellectual and an academic and you'd expect people like that to hate book-burning. She also identifies as an Austrian rather than German, so she might not really understand just how cruel and tyrannical Nazi rule is until that moment. I do like how they gave Elsa's character some complexity, as opposed to her just being useless and obnoxious like Willie.

*There are also some nice little details--at the Nazi rally, for example, you see Himmler (the one with the glasses) and Goering (the fat one) along with Hitler himself. And the treasures from "the finest families" in Germany were likely not voluntarily donated. And a tank that a small Middle Eastern country uses is a WWI model--they're not going have WWII-era stuff.

The Bad

*The movie was rather slow-moving. Per this site here, it's the longest of the four movies. Although to be fair I was watching this movie on a deadline and had a lot more reason to be impatient than usual, the movie still felt too long. I don't have any suggestions for scenes to be cut, but perhaps trimming a few seconds from each scene would add up.

*The Anschluss--the union between Austria and Germany--took place in 1938, but it's not clear when in 1938 the movie takes place. Austria is referred to many times as a separate country and there's still a border post with the Austrian flag on one side. And the German soldiers we see in Austria, though they're in uniform, aren't openly parading around like they would in a fascist state. I could easily imagine plainclothes German agents or soldiers there in secret to undermine the "Austrofascist" regime, but having uniformed soldiers hiding in a castle seems like the worst of both worlds. You can't really do anything lest you get caught and if someone spots you you're screwed.

However, the latter part of the story takes place in the Republic of Hatay, which only existed for a short time after the Anschluss, and the books getting burned at the Nazi rally likely came from Austria, since I imagine there wouldn't be many copies of Das Kapital left in Germany proper six years after the Nazi takeover. Yes, this is nitpicky, but still. It might've been better if the movie took explicitly place during or soon after the Anschluss itself. The Nazi rally could have taken place in newly-occupied Vienna and the Nazi takeover could have caused such administrative chaos that it would have interfered with the hunt for Indiana and his dad. That would also explain why the border post with the Austrian flag (which it's my understanding the Nazis outlawed) is still there.

*There's a character who has no reasonable way to speak modern English but does. Given how another character is forced to speak in a foreign language as a child, it would have been more interesting if they communicated in Greek or Latin.

The Verdict

The weakest of the original three, and less enjoyable, believe it or not, than Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. I'd give it an 8.0 out of 10, barely.

Thursday, November 8, 2018

Blast from the Past Movie Review: Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984)

Here's a flashback for you. Once upon a time in East Cobb there was a store called Zany Brainy, which was basically an educational toy super-store. And once upon a time, the first movie I remember purchasing for myself (as opposed to asking someone to buy it for me) was Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. Which I bought on VHS. Yes, it was that long ago.

This was when I was in middle school probably, since Zany Brainy folded in 2001 and this was well before it closed. I remember watching it several times, but it's been many, many years since I saw it. And so when Myopia: Defend Your Childhood did its poll and Indiana Jones won for the November series month, I was ready to review and enjoy. Here's the podcast.

And now for the review...


The Plot

Archaeologist and adventurer Indiana Jones (Harrison Ford) begins this adventure in Shanghai in 1935, cutting a deal with Chinese gangster Lao Che (Roy Chiao) for a diamond. Lao tries to backstab him as one might expect, and he flees Shanghai with singer Willie Scott (Kate Capshaw) and his Chinese orphan helper Short Round (Jonathan Ke Quan)...aboard a plane owned by Lao Che.

Lao Che's men abandon the plane in the Himalayas--still in the air--forcing our heroes to land it themselves (for a certain value of "land") in India, where they find themselves facing off against a murderous cult. Who will lose their beating hearts or their everlasting souls to the dreaded Kali-Ma? Only one way to find out...

The Good

*Once we get beyond the annoyingly-long showgirl number, the opening sequence is quite a lot of fun. And it stays fun for around twenty minutes. Gunfights, car chases, a plane crash. Never boring. The movie in general is very fast-paced and quite a lot of fun.

*The acting is generally good. Kate Capshaw is good as Willie, while Amish Puri does scary-intense well as the sinister Mola Ram.

*The depiction of the British Raj's political system is accurate. Around 1/3 of British India was ruled by Indian princes who were once Britain's allies but were eventually reduced to vassalage. Nominally independent royal courts subject to British inspection is something you'd see. You'd also see British-educated Indian officials like the young raja's prime minister.

*However annoying Willie is, seeing Indiana troll her is always good for a laugh. The extended "five minutes" scene stands out as particularly funny.

*There are some very impressive set-pieces, like the hidden temple of Kali and the gigantic idol therein and the mines.

*Although this isn't strictly part of the movie, it did inspire one of my favorite sequences of Family Guy, in which Stewie is enslaved in It's a Small World.



The Bad

*I really didn't like the opening several minutes. We don't see Indiana Jones movies for the showgirl sequences, and we had to suffer through a three-minute-long dance number whose whole purpose is to introduce Willie and the situation with Lao Che. At the very least they could have axed the second dance number and kept the first, or showed Indiana coming into the club when the music starts and watching it (and Willie).

*Willie is incredibly high-maintenance and annoying. Raiders of the Lost Ark love interest Marion was pretty cool and Elsa from The Last Crusade has some complexity, but Willie just got on my nerves. As Indiana explains to Short Round, the problem with her is the noise, and she makes quite a lot of it. Fortunately the events of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull showed that Indiana had better taste in the long run.

Nic sent me this Family Guy video that mocks how obnoxious Willie is, although in Kate Capshaw's defense, she only got involved with Spielberg AFTER getting the part.



*I can understand why the government of India got so pissy about the movie that they banned it (they also got pissy about Clone High and got it removed from MTV--shame on India for hyping up how they're the largest democracy while engaging in petty censorship) when we see the villagers cringing before Indiana and friends. This is improved somewhat when it's revealed that the village priest believes they've been sent by the god Shiva to save their children and sacred stone (i.e. they're sacred-by-association), but the optics are very White Savior-y. And then there's the dinner sequence that has to be seen to be believed. :)

*There are a bunch of obvious callbacks to Raiders, like a big minion who gives Indiana a run for his money in hand-to-hand combat and a flight through a tunnel chased by an oncoming natural feature. Could be a little more original.

*Can any of the villains actually hit what they're shooting at? Even though the fact this is a prequel undermines the suspense, if Indiana or any of the other heroic characters get winged or injured but not killed (maybe an arrow in a limb that doesn't damage anything vital but slows them down or causes lots of pain), it might up the suspense a bit. Hell, one reason I liked Valkyrie so much is that even though I knew the coup against Hitler would fail, there's a big chunk of the movie where it looks like it actually worked.

*For someone who is at least nominally a Christian, a character gets rather indignant about some practitioners of Thuggee having "betrayed Shiva."

The Verdict

9.0 out of 10. Quite a lot of fun.