Posted by: sean witzke | May 13, 2008

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull looks a whole lot like a piece of shit.

There are a lot of factors. Old Indiana Jones isn’t something I’m at all interested. It sounds like Roger Moore’s later Bond films to me. I don’t want Indy with a fucking kid and wife. Fuck that noise. There’s Spielberg’s turn toward more “adult” and”serious” movies which consistently shown diminishing returns. There’s George Lucas’ involvement. The man who’s dedicated his life toward destroying the work of his younger, more idealistic and creative self. There’s the awful CGI. There’s the moronic way it’s being sold. There’s the rumor that there was a Frank Darabont script about Roswell and hunting Nazis in South America that was completely scrapped at Lucas’ say so (which probably was amazing). And then theres fucking Jar Jar. There’s the creeping tone of “cash grab” lurking throughout every leaked shot, every press conference, every photo. It all screams desperation.

But I think I’m going to see it anyway. And I hate myself for it.

Because Cate Blanchett is the best actor alive. And to top that, she’s doing a sexy accent. And she’s playing my favorite kind of pulp villain.

“Fuck you, Steven Spielberg!”

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Responses

There’s CGI?

WHY THE FUCK IS THERE CGI?!? CAN NO ONE JUST MAKE A FUCKING LIVE-ACTION MOVIE WITH A FUCKING CAMERA ANYMORE?!?

Not that I’m foursquare against CGI, or anything, in fact in the proper place I quite like it, but how do you need that in an Indiana Jones movie? Crowd scenes? Bullshit. I saw Raiders on TV the other night, and it was still AWESOME…and there’s not one part of it that would’ve been improved by CGI, and there was also nothing missing.

Uh, you know, except the bit where the old Egyptian guy explains how looking at the Ark is bad news…

I swear to God…the asylum’s taken over the inmates.

Oh, but then Corvette Summer was on right afterwards.

By: pillock on May 13, 2008
at 8:23 am

Well, you have to realize that the films and directors that actually use physical effects are highly specialized and territorial. Stan Winston and Rick Baker are forced to work on crap like Terminator 3 and The Nutty Professor in order to actually pay the high prices for their services. Guillermo Del Toro has his own crew that work only for him, same with Peter Jackson. Not to mention studios prefer CGI because they have much more control over it.

Hell, Tarantino needed to train new stunt drivers so they could complete Death Proof.

And Speilberg and Lucas? They the first people who’d throw practical effects people under the bus for crappy computer effects. Technology always wins with them.

[ Of course, no one tell them that the best cgi ever is in films like Kung Fu Hustle and Planet Terror, which were made on a fraction of a fraction of their budget. ]

By: sean witzke on May 13, 2008
at 3:03 pm

Really? I had no idea things had gotten that bad. Shades of the disappearance of true black and white film…

I suppose that means we ought to start thinking of directors as “shops”, eh?

That the studios would prefer CGI hadn’t occurred to me — I’d been thinking mostly of cost/director’s ego — but of course it makes even more sense that the studio would want more effective powers of meddling. And on Lucas and Spielberg preferring technology to people…it’s difficult to entertain the thought, given where they come from, but then again it’s hard to deny it considering what they like to do. Lucas especially: he’s become a meddling studio head to himself, at this point, so of course he’d prefer CGI!

Damn. And these guys used to be so beautiful.

By: pillock on May 14, 2008
at 1:11 am

Yeah, it’s bad. I think horror movies got hit the worst.

Still when you see Iron Man - that’s a real suit built by Stan Freaking Winston. There’s no substitute for that, y’know?

I think that the right director can use cg to amazing affect, but at the end of the day it’s damaged the art form. Maybe irreparably.

Incidentally, my little sister actually want to get a degree in “Special Makeup Effects” and do zombie movie makeup for a living. So maybe she can go work for Guillermo.

By: sean witzke on May 14, 2008
at 4:16 am

I think the best use of CGI is probably what (I think) its best use in Phantom Menace was: to make matte paintings, especially matte paintings that include moving elements. Some of that stuff knocked me out.

Relieved to hear the iron Man suit is real! Einstein said once that “matter is subtle”. My case-in-point for this (well, obviously not just mine) is usually the Yoda muppet from Empire Strikes Back…

And it makes me wonder: do you think Lucas, and to a lesser degree Spielberg, are just in love with that frisson of unreality? Like, I can see having an aesthetic form around the “uncanny valley” — freaky! It’s both real-looking and fake-looking at the same time! I mean I enjoy drinking orange juice after brushing my teeth, perhaps it isn’t that different…I mean I can sort of see either of them putting up the money for “Sky Captain”, and loving the way the actors looked, but not loving the way that distortion made the CGI stuff look more natural by comparison. A sort of backwards appreciation of the effect.

And if that were the case…I dunno, I guess it would be a bit like how it’s become apparent from the Star Wars and Raiders spin-offs that what Lucas and Spielberg cherish about those films is NOT the genius reappropriation that much of the audience loved, but the crappiness-factor that stuff was reappropriated from. Like, if they could’ve figured out how to do it and make it suck, they would’ve preferred to do that in the first place. That’s a pretty horrific thought, to me: a friend of mine had a book of Star Wars and Raiders production sketches and storyboards, that contrasted them on the facing page with production photos and movie stills…and wow, I still need to find that book, y’know? I mean it had that certain crystal perfection to it. I’d put it on the shelf next to the H.R. Giger Alien design book, just for the aesthetic contrast. But could a book like that even be made for the later Indy movies and the SW prequel trilogy? Hmm, maybe Phantom Menace; in my opinion TPM did have some design elements that played to the authentic theme, even though it obviously also had many more that seemed like unconscious attempts to peel aesthetic, design, and theme all apart from one another. But I guess it could be just my viewer-bias that says these seemed like unconscious attempts…which leads me to wonder, was the perfection I saw on display in the Raiders/SW sketch/photo comparison book conceivably something that Lucas regretted? Like, I took it to be perfection, but he didn’t.

Ouch.

Very highly recommend the Skywalker Paradigm site if you haven’t already seen it, Sean. Gee, really rattling on about the late Seventies Lucas/Spielberg axis here, but you have to understand I was fully eleven years of age when Star Wars came out — literally the perfect age (so I believe) to have it hit me square between the eyes. Add to that, that they started to go wrong almost right away — climax and cusp in the same instant.

Iron Man I’ll be seeing as soon as I fish up my paycheque…and then I’ll be reviewing a little Ghostface. CGI has damaged the artform, yes…as the substitution of “dialled-down colour” for true B/W film has damaged the artform. I see those as the same. This is just another reason to love Gondry, he uses the camera — is he a “shop” too, do you know, or is it just him himself?

Oh, and tell your sister that anytime she wants to go out and reclaim that medium, she’s got a guaranteed ass-in-seat.

Long comment, right. Well, I’ve had a beer or two.

By: pillock on May 14, 2008
at 6:45 am

Firstly - Dude ,Todd Klein is commenting on your blog.

The deal with Iron Man is Stan Winston designed the physical suit first, so all the cg has to match up with a physical object. So you don’t get the kind of wonky cg stuff.

I think the “uncanny valley” stuff is just waiting for a film where the villains are incredibly realistic humans. Like Cameron Stewart people. Could be awesome.

Oh and the design books and Alien. I think that’s the real failure of the new trilogy. Having Ralph McQuarrie design your movie is something you can’t top. And somehow Alien topped it by hiring Giger and Syd Mead and Moebius. I mean, shit. And the new trilogy? Does anyone know who worked on those movies?

Of course, my favorite Indiana Jones movie is Last Crusade, so my opinion should probably be discarded.

By: sean witzke on May 15, 2008
at 12:51 am

I know, Todd Klein, holy shit! Awesome.

Yeah, I’d like to see someone use the uncanniness, that might be interesting. On Last Crusade — I liked it a hell of a lot more than Temple Of Doom, anyway, so for me it’s number two.

By: pillock on May 15, 2008
at 1:25 am

Really, Last Crusade is head-and-shoulders above Temple Of Doom for one major reason — because it’s willing to adhere to the attractive symbolic formula established in Raiders. I mean you wouldn’t think it would be that complicated: see how popular that first one was? Let’s make another. And yet in Temple Of Doom this is just what they didn’t do…

(Oh, whaddaya know, it’s on TV right now…hope I don’t have to retract anything after I’ve seen it again…)

…Which is baffling, because you would think filmmakers of all people would be capable of saying “I love how the audience responded to the way we chose to express our contemporary themes in this crazy nostalgic genre mash-up, we are geniuses my friend!” But somehow they didn’t seem to understand what they’d accomplished.

But then they manage to get it right again in Last Crusade, so…

These guys confuse the hell out of me.

By: pillock on May 15, 2008
at 3:51 am

Also: crap is this ever one slow-moving adventure movie.

By: pillock on May 15, 2008
at 4:56 am

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