{"id":2897,"date":"2008-10-13T08:44:41","date_gmt":"2008-10-13T12:44:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cinemacrazed.wordpress.com\/?p=2897"},"modified":"2008-10-13T08:44:41","modified_gmt":"2008-10-13T12:44:41","slug":"indiana-jones-and-the-kingdom-of-the-crystal-skull-two-disc-special-edition-2008","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/2008\/10\/13\/indiana-jones-and-the-kingdom-of-the-crystal-skull-two-disc-special-edition-2008\/","title":{"rendered":"Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (Two-Disc Special Edition) (2008)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"So I keep coming back to that same question over and over: Was \u201cKingdom of the Crystal Skull\u201d really all that bad, or were more Lucas retractors just exaggerating because they grew up and Spielberg\u2019s story didn\u2019t? And I keep coming back to that same answer: No. \u201cKingdom of the Crystal Skull\u201d really isn\u2019t a bad movie; in fact it\u2019s one of the better Indiana Jones entries I\u2019ve seen that\u2019s been grossly skewered by fans as the \u201cPhantom Menace\u201d of the Indiana Jones franchise, when really, it\u2019s not bad. It\u2019s actually quite good.<\/p>\n

What we get with \u201cKingdom of the Crystal Skull\u201d is great forward progression, we get an Indiana Jones whose fought the war, came back a hero, and is still fighting the good fight against pillagers in spite of his age. The Indy we see here is an older man who really can\u2019t quite keep up with the cronies as he used to, but he is smart and quick on his feet, and still the fedora donning hero we grew to love in the eighties. Harrison Ford is fantastic reprising his role as Jones yet again and writer David Koepp dares to go in to the period with great zeal tackling everything from the growing fear of communism and paranoia that inevitably goes back to Indiana, to the crash of Roswell New Mexico that spawns the search for the Crystal Skulls. Koepp takes the period on with gritted teeth and he does it well.<\/p>\n

The addition of new characters is near seamless as Salah has moved on and we\u2019re given a slew of fifties era heroes who bring Indiana up to snuff and in to the quasi-modern age. Speaking as someone who had every inch of this film ruined for him by angry movie geeks, \u201cKingdom of the Crystal Skull\u201d was still quite a surprise to sit through, and just as fun as \u201cThe Temple or Doom.\u201d Look, rag on me all you want but I had fun with \u201cKingdom of the Crystal Skull,\u201d and no amount of bitching from melodramatic fans about \u201caliens\u201d and \u201canimated gophers\u201d could sway me from the spell of Indiana Jones and his further adventures.So what if Indiana Jones has aged, he\u2019s still the man with the whip, and I had a blast watching he and his new sidekick Mutt punching cronies and slipping out of close calls for two hours.<\/p>\n

Some of the finer additions to the adventure is that we get to see Indy do what he\u2019s perfect at, and it\u2019s solving puzzles to which he and Mutt come across temples, and soldiers and KGB all of which make for some of the most exciting fare of the film; Shia Lebeouf manages to also hold his own against Ford as his impromptu apprentice who gets a crash course in tomb raiding, and the welcome addition of Marion Ravenwood also adds the needed punch for all doubting Indiana fans who want to know what some of the old characters have been up to since last we left them. I love Ray Winstone, but one of the main downfalls of \u201cKingdom of the Crystal Skull\u201d is that he\u2019s simply no Sallah.<\/p>\n

In spite of Koepp\u2019s insistence in making him a thief of many trades who switches sides constantly, his character falls flat of ever having enough depth to live up to the likes of Marcus Brody or even Short Round and as quickly as he\u2019s introduced and then gone, he\u2019s a barely known aspect of the story. His character could have very well been taken out with the audience barely realizing he was ever supposed to be integral in the first place. Winstone is simply underused and misused to a sad extent. The twist in the second half isn\u2019t surprising, but you know what? The movie is and I think this Indiana Jones is just as great as the one we last saw looking for the lost ark or temple of doom. I don\u2019t see what all the ballyhoo is about; Indiana Jones still has it.<\/p>\n

As for the DVD, the 2 Disc Special Edition packs a real library of extras and bells and whistles for the fans. Aside from the four language tracks on disc one, we get \u201cThe Return of a Legend\u201d a seventeen minute montage\/tribute to the glory of Indiana Jones and the adventure he brings in to the big screen. Here Spielberg also explains why he felt the need to continue the saga, and what eventually led them to use the theme of extra terrestrials and integrate it in to the story and it makes sense to this Spielberg apologist. I just wish Lawrence Kasdan could have been paid some lip service with his rejected original script. There\u2019s also the wonderful eleven minute featurette \u201cPre-Production\u201d where we see the cast learning how to fence, Spielberg constructing his CGI Area 51, and the CGI visualizations in their polygonal form before coming to life on film.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s also a look at the different versions of Indy\u2019s costume and the choreography for Mutt\u2019s boss fencing battle in the second half. On Disc Two we get over two hours of extras including a playable Xbox 360 Demo for the Lego Indiana Jones Game. We also get an eighty minute Production Diary, as well as a five minute look at the intricate designs of the make up on the Temple warriors from Felicity Bowring. There\u2019s also the ten minute look at the history of the \u201cCrystal Skulls\u201d and how writer Koepp\u2019s ideas stemmed from the artifacts; \u201cIconic Props\u201d is a ten minute puff piece about the variety of props and how they\u2019re characters in and of themselves including the whip, hat, and crystal skulls. \u201cThe Effects of Indy\u201d talks to Paul Huston the veteran effects artist to prior \u201cIndiana Jones\u201d films and how he engineered the battles and set pieces in this film, and \u201cAdventures in Post-Production,\u201d Spielberg\u2019s process of shooting the entire film on traditional film in spite of Lucas\u2019s insistence on using Digital film, the work behind the wonderful sound track and sound editing, and how the poster was important to the film\u2019s enigmatic marketing.<\/p>\n

\u201cClosing: Team Indy\u201d is a three minute montage of the end of the shooting behind \u201cKingdom of the Crystal Skull\u201d and Spielberg\u2019s feelings on the project; as well there are three Pre-visualization sequences one of which being Jones\u2019s escape from Area 51, and to round out the bunch there are an assortment of stills from post and pre-production, and all three trailers to the movie. In spite of the misusage and underusage of the ever talented Ray Winstone, “The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull” is a perfectly great bout of escapism with Indiana Jones at his best and all the serial movie treats Spielberg and co. brought us back in the eighties. Ignore the fan boy whining and decide for yourself.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So I keep coming back to that same question over and over: Was \u201cKingdom of the Crystal Skull\u201d really all that bad, or were more Lucas retractors just exaggerating because they grew up and Spielberg\u2019s story didn\u2019t? And I keep coming back to that same answer: No. \u201cKingdom of the Crystal Skull\u201d really isn\u2019t a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[58,71,219,349,491,499,874,922,987],"class_list":["post-2897","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movie-reviews","tag-action","tag-adventure","tag-comedy","tag-fantasy","tag-i","tag-indiana-jones","tag-romance","tag-sequel","tag-steven-spielberg"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2897","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2897"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2897\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2897"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2897"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2897"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}