Jake

Idle Thumbs 191: Not the Greatest, but the Best

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Ghostbusters 2 gets a bad rep. It's not as good as Ghostbusters, but it still feels like a pretty reasonable extension of the first film's universe. It's perfectly watchable.

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Tegan has the right of it. Ghostbusters II may have that silly Statue of LIberty scene, but Ghostbusters has a scene with Dan Ackroyd dreaming of getting a blow job from a ghost. You tell me which is more ridiculous.

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I actually like Ghostbusters II more than the first.  I don't think it's a better movie, it just has the virtue of being the first one I saw.  It set the expectation for me and in some ways I find the first movie to be more silly because a weird Sumerian deity who manifests a giant marshmallow monster on the roof of a building designed by a cultist architect made less sense to me than a long dead sorcerer coming back to life through a painting.

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but GH1 has the part where they create the ghostbusters

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Well since everyone's saying how they liked Ghostbusters 2, I guess this is the thread where I say how I found Crystal Skull more enjoyable than Raiders of the Lost Ark?

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Well since everyone's saying how they liked Ghostbusters 2, I guess this is the thread where I say how I found Crystal Skull more enjoyable than Raiders of the Lost Ark?

I didn't enjoy it more than Raiders, but I'd say it's about the same level. People who hate Crystal Skull are weird. It's the same shit as all the rest. I'll accept that the fridge scene was way over the top even for Indiana Jones, but it doesn't last all that long, and it's still silly fun, so who cares. I think its biggest problem is that it's just too long of a movie. IIRC the jungle car chase scene especially feels super duper long and unnecessary. I... may be mixing that up with another movie, though. Been a while.

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Come on SBM, Ghostbusters II wasn't that bad was it?

 

No, but Raiders was.

 

 

 

...ok now to be clear and not just inflammatory.

I saw Crystal Skull first, and it was just an ok movie to watch in the cinema. I was aware it was hated but without pre-existing context I just thought it was alright.

Raiders actually bothered me because Indiana Jones is a prat. He's kinda the movie equivalent of video games' space asshole, the way he treats Marion is terrible and in general he just destructively blows through the movie in pursuit of his goal.

And yet the film is predicated on the idea that you're supposed to like this guy. I think I was a bit more childish when I saw this, so that irritation probably distracted me from the fun of the movie itself.

 

I also don't see why an alien crystal skull is less ridiculous than the ark of the covenant melting people's faces off. Less in keeping with the films' universe, sure. But not less ridiculous.

 

I didn't enjoy it more than Raiders, but I'd say it's about the same level. People who hate Crystal Skull are weird. It's the same shit as all the rest. I'll accept that the fridge scene was way over the top even for Indiana Jones, but it doesn't last all that long, and it's still silly fun, so who cares. I think its biggest problem is that it's just too long of a movie. IIRC the jungle car chase scene especially feels super duper long and unnecessary. I... may be mixing that up with another movie, though. Been a while.

 

I think if expectations were the same for me in both movies I'd say the same.

And yes, Crystal Skull does have a crazily long car chase sequence, it ends with a massive swarm of bugs or something.

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At least you've actually seen Indiana Jones. I know people who've never seen any of the movies and also refuse to watch them on principle I guess.

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I didn't enjoy it more than Raiders, but I'd say it's about the same level. People who hate Crystal Skull are weird. It's the same shit as all the rest. I'll accept that the fridge scene was way over the top even for Indiana Jones, but it doesn't last all that long, and it's still silly fun, so who cares. I think its biggest problem is that it's just too long of a movie. IIRC the jungle car chase scene especially feels super duper long and unnecessary. I... may be mixing that up with another movie, though. Been a while.

 

That's exactly how I felt about Crystal Skull.  The haters were just out of their minds.  Like, of course this is what it is, this is what its always been. 

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Crystal Skull is the same stuff as Raiders, just done really really badly.

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How so? It's not like Raiders is anything more than Dumb Action Movie Starring Wise-Cracking Adventurer. It has no substance beyond that. The same holds true for Crystal Skull. As I already said, the only real flaw of the latter is that it lasts too long.

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I think I would have been fine with Crystal Skull if it had less Shia LaBeouf in it.  He drives me nuts.  The rest of the goofy, ridiculous shit I was fine with.

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Ugh, I love it when Chris goes on tears about sound design. It's just nice hearing someone with a lot of specialized knowledge on a subject that I know nothing about break stuff down like that.

 

How so? It's not like Raiders is anything more than Dumb Action Movie Starring Wise-Cracking Adventurer. It has no substance beyond that. The same holds true for Crystal Skull. As I already said, the only real flaw of the latter is that it lasts too long.

 

I think I agree with Ben, though. Crystal Skull is way too aware of its legacy as an Indiana Jones movie, as filtered through the grandpa brains of Spielberg and Lucas, and it suffers enormously for it compared to even the worst moments of the original three. For instance, Lucas has become adamant that Indiana Jones isn't the kind of hero who kills people, even though he murders between two and three dozen people in each of the first three movies (the number varies depending on what you think of leaving people to die), so we have these absurd scenes to avoid Indiana Jones being involved in direct physical violence. I don't know how it happened, but Crystal Skull is like someone making an Indiana Jones thirdhand with no personal or institutional continuity, even though it involves many of the same people (albeit mostly as old men with children and grandchildren, which is probably where I lay the blame).

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This thread is absolutely crazy. Crystal Skull is total garbage. Or at least the closest to garbage Spielberg can produce.

On the surface Raiders and Crystal Skull are alike, but they are incredibly different in how they function on the micro level (as well as surface level things like pacing, editing, cinematography, and acting performance).

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This thread is making me want to go watch Crystal Skull.  I only saw it once in the theater, and walked out thinking "Well that was fun, mostly dumb, but fun."  And then I looked at the Internet and was super confused. 

 

Fuck it, Thelma and Louise can wait a week or so:

 

post-33601-0-05811400-1420340422_thumb.jpg

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I wouldn't really call Indiana Jones a Wise-Cracking Adventurer.

I'd just like to put myself into the camp of thinking that Crystal Skull is a decent action film while Raiders is one of the greatest films of all time. The reliance on CG hurts CS, but I think my biggest issue are the scenes between the action set pieces. They don't have the artistry or subtlety of Raiders, the characters/actors can't really hold a candle to the original ones.

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I wouldn't really call Indiana Jones a Wise-Cracking Adventurer.

what

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what

I meant in Raiders specifically. He has some 'clever lines', sure, but it's not like he's an Arnold Schwarzenegger character where punctuating scenes with one-liners is his entire character. He spends most of the film doing action scenes without much comment, and when he talks it's about his goals or figuring out whatever mystery is at hand. A lot of his interactions with Marion, for example, are clumsy and simple, not witty.

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I wouldn't call ANY Arnold character a wise-cracking character. Ugh. UGH! WE ARE ENEMIES NOW!

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