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

[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.