Indiana Jones Movie Review

[pyat]

velvetpage and I started watching Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom last night. We remembered why we hadn't watched it in years. I don't think I've bothered to watch it since I was in 7th grade.

Both of us dislike the female lead intensely. I find her feathery, blow-dried 80s hair more annoying than anything else in the movie, including the comical and/or villainous negative Indian stereotypes.

I'm also irritated by the suspension of disbelief required for a couple of scenes. I can accept magic stones and an evil priest with the power to pluck living hearts from a man's chest... but, man, why would anyone fly a small plane load of chickens from Shanghai to Tibet, with an apparent layover for refueling in Chongking? Why would the Chinese pilots ditch the plane over the Indian Himalayas, instead of, oh, say, China?

Magic is fine. But I always had trouble suspending my common sense!

Comments

[zenten.livejournal.com]

Magic is fine. But I always had trouble suspending my common sense!

http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?t=396001

[pyat.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that's pretty much it!

[pyat.livejournal.com]

Though, I have to say, if the movie is good enough, I'll overlook a LOT of mundane logic failures. Like, for example, "What are all these Nazis doing in Egypt, which was a British colony at the time of Raiders of the Lost Ark?"

[nottheterritory.livejournal.com]

Actually I recently(ish) read a book about the search for the "Oasis of the Birds" that The English Patient was based on - suffice to say, there was actually quite a lot of Axis intelligence work going on in Egypt during the '30s - not a small amount of it in the form of at least pretended archeology. It would have been more realistic if they'd had a bunch of Italian lackeys as a cover story but as it goes, that was a pretty minor offense.

Nothing compared to the '80s hair, certainly ;)

[pyat.livejournal.com]

Yeah, fair enough, I suppose. But it would have been nice to least acknowledge that they were doing it on the sly.

[catarzyna.livejournal.com]

Both of us dislike the female lead intensely. I find her feathery, blow-dried 80s hair more annoying than anything else in the movie, including the comical and/or villainous negative Indian stereotypes.

That was Mrs. Steven Spielberg before they were married.

Honestly, it is my least favorite of original trilogy but I like it well enough.

[pyat.livejournal.com]

I'm enjoying it, mostly. The action scenes and the honestly creepy villains do carry me over the silly or clunky bits.

And, really, her hair is fine... it's just totally not 1930s hair!

[catarzyna.livejournal.com]

I agree, now I am going to have to watch again it over lunch. There will be no chilled monkey brains on my menu.

Hair aside, I know they did painstaking work with her dress it is all made from beads from that era.

Actually, I like Kate Capshaw best in How to Make an American Quilt but that is probably too much of a female sort of movie for you. ;-)

[pyat.livejournal.com]

Ah, but I am enough of a man to endure a "chick flick" from time to time with the missus. I made her watch enough movies when we were dating, after all.

[catarzyna.livejournal.com]

No doubt, I've watched more films/tv movies based off Stephen King stories than I would have on my own had it not been for LA. :-D

[bodhifox.livejournal.com]

Monkey brains! Sums it up, right there.

[pyat.livejournal.com]

I think you mean MMMMMmmmmmonkey Brains!

[lee-in-limbo.livejournal.com]

Temple of Doom was horrible. I like Raiders and Last Crusade, but Temple was just a travesty, and it's aged very badly.

I still want to see the new film.

Lee.

[jordangreywolf.livejournal.com]

Hey, this nicely illustrates why I so often venture into fantasy when I run games. Once there's magic, hey, it's the price of admission to accept that. But any time there is stuff that is uncomfortably close to "the real world" - that's where the players usually will start to have qualms.

(Exception: In D&D, if I have some magical effect that a player ASSUMES is because of a certain spell, but doesn't conform to that spell's resist DC, duration, area of effect, etc., then I might get a player complaint ... because, obviously, he should have a sporting chance to argue my flimsy magical plot hook out of existence!)

The absolute worst is any time there's a "mystery" going on. Whodunnit ... and how? Storybook mysteries largely work because the writer can steer us along, and make sure everyone is smart or dumb at the right time to make things fit ... but when players have total freedom to poke everywhere, and to ask questions (and demand answers) that might or might not be relevant, there's all sorts of trouble. (And if someone asks a question, there's the danger of there being a "tell" if the GM has to stop and think about an answer, or when he waves it off and says it doesn't matter ... as opposed to at other times when he gives a very specific answer that was obviously prepared ahead of time.)

Dungeons, traps, monsters ... or bloodthirsty pirates going "Yarrrr!" - those are a whole lot easier to handle, and less likely to engage the players' thought processes just enough to question the GM's intelligence.

...

Er, anyway, yeah, I didn't like the "love interest" either. I wanted Marion Ravenwood to be back instead. Bah.

[redeem147.livejournal.com]

I watched it some months ago when I realized Amrish Puri and Roshan Seth were in it. Monkey brains. Bah!

Waste of great actors.

You call him *Doctor* Jones!

[waiwode.livejournal.com]

Say what you want about Temple, but it has one of my favourite lines in all movie-dom:

"No time for love, Doctor Jones!"

Doug.

[mar2nee.livejournal.com]

I love the kid and the roller-coaster-mine-cart chase.

On the DVD special features, George just shakes his head and says "well, I was getting divorced at the time. It's a bit dark."

Daniel has Adam and his friend Eric there, right now. I want to see it, too! (the new one).

[summerfields.livejournal.com]

Piet, if you have touble suspending common sense (and taste), then don't see the new one.

Urg.
It was lame.