Jake

Idle Thumbs 191: Not the Greatest, but the Best

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My dad's hair has been entirely white/silver/whatever since before I was born, and his hairline was extremely regressed (up to the highest point on his head). I don't even remember what we/I said on this topic on the podcast, haha.

 

Oh, you just said that you never thought about going bald as a kid, which I found surprising since it was something I've always been aware.

 

My interest in the Indiana Jones and Ghostbusters franchises was augmented by the time periods they came out in in that I was too young to have really seen Raiders when it came out, I definitely saw Temple of Doom WAY too young (so much so that I had nightmares about the Kali Ma guy) and Last Crusade was at the best time to be slightly older and also appreciative. Same with Ghostbusters vs. GB 2 - I have way more memories of 2 than 1, given that I was slightly too young to really be watching GB1 but saw it anyways.

 

I think I also saw Ghostbusters 2 before the original. I rewatched Ghostbusters recently and realized that I remembered almost nothing of the opening of that movie; I confused the beginning of the second movie with the beginning of the first.

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Netflix bumped the Crystal Skull and sent us Thelma and Louise instead, there is now a wait for Crystal Skull.

Either proof that we shouldn't watch it again, or evidence of its incredible popularity. You decide!

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Netflix literally exhausted of their two copies of Crystal Skull, their movie metrics completely skewed, all because of Idle Thumbs. Number wizards at Netflix completely stumped, throwing papers all around, suddenly give go-ahead to order 17,000 more copies. 

 

Netflix goes under due to overbudgeting of Indiana Jones movies.

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An alternate theory:

 

With their last copy irreparably damaged in the mail years ago, Netflix algorithmically determined demand for the Crystal Skull had hit zero. It was observed that even people that had the movie in their queue always moved something in front of it when it bubbled to the top. The delay is due to engineers scrambling to send an intern out to buy a single new copy at Best Buy.

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But little do they know, only one bluray copy still exists and is being sought out by the Russians. That intern, one Indiana Jones Jr must seek out the lone DVD in

Indiana Jones Jr and "Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull Bluray Edition"

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But little do they know, only one bluray copy still exists and is being sought out by the Russians. That intern, one Indiana Jones Jr must seek out the lone DVD in

Indiana Jones Jr and "Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull Bluray Edition"

 

This needs to exist. The Idle Thumbs should branch out into movie production as well.

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I'm rewatching it now.

 

So many dumb jarjar-like humor in this.

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This needs to exist. The Idle Thumbs should branch out into movie production as well.

 

I have a pitch, too, based on the observation that Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice sounds like the name of a courtcase: Batman realises he can't beat Superman in a fight, and so sues him in court with the Wayne billions. Superman uses the Daily Planet to try and turn public opinion against Superman. As part of the settlement, they form the Justice League.

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Finally listening to the 'cast, and the discussion about twist endings (like Empire Strikes Back).  Has anybody read the classic Heinlein short story "All You Zombies"?  No, it's not about zombies.  There's a movie based on it being made soon, and if it actually keeps the key points of the story, it has the best face-melting twist out of any story I can think of.  Like, I can't wait to see people's reactions to it if it is done well.  I don't even want to talk about it or link to anything if people aren't familiar with the story. 

 

Edited to add: Oh shit!  The movie (Predestination) releases this weekend in the US.  I knew it was done, and had gone to a festival or two, but had mostly avoided learning too much about it and didn't realize the release was this close. 

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I have a pitch, too, based on the observation that Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice sounds like the name of a courtcase: Batman realises he can't beat Superman in a fight, and so sues him in court with the Wayne billions. Superman uses the Daily Planet to try and turn public opinion against Superman. As part of the settlement, they form the Justice League.

What if the Justice League is just the jury of peers they find for Batman and Superman, superheroes have to have superpeers, right? 

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What if the Justice League is just the jury of peers they find for Batman and Superman, superheroes have to have superpeers, right? 

 

It did not occur to me that civil trials can have jurors. This is a brilliant idea. Wonder Woman's the head juror.

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Finally listening to the 'cast, and the discussion about twist endings (like Empire Strikes Back).  Has anybody read the classic Heinlein short story "All You Zombies"?  No, it's not about zombies.  There's a movie based on it being made soon, and if it actually keeps the key points of the story, it has the best face-melting twist out of any story I can think of.  Like, I can't wait to see people's reactions to it if it is done well.  I don't even want to talk about it or link to anything if people aren't familiar with the story. 

 

Edited to add: Oh shit!  The movie (Predestination) releases this weekend in the US.  I knew it was done, and had gone to a festival or two, but had mostly avoided learning too much about it and didn't realize the release was this close. 

 

I read the first line of that premise and the fact that there's a twist and realised I've already heard it.

 

Similarly, I thought I'd start reading The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, saw it had a first person protagonist, and about a fifth of the way in flipped to the last page to confirm my suspicion that I'd already heard the solution.

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I think that Empire Strikes Back, including the father-son revelation, worked so well because it made the audience aware that there was more to Star Wars than a super-shallow but fun space romp with great special effects. Suddenly the film got "deep", or at least deeper, in a surprising and yet elegant way.

 

In A New Hope, you had the supernatural Force and a kid who learned it from an old master to save the universe. Empire focused the two aspects of the Force, and at a broader level of power in general. Yoda's lessons were about that, but still in a more theoretical way, but they paved the way to Luke's encounter with Vader. "I am our father" is the most concrete demonstration of what can happen if you don't keep your shit together and give in to the seductions of power. Suddenly all these vague phrases from the swamp planet turned into a conflict which was very real. None of this is very high-brow, but after A New Hope I can imagine that the audience was very surprised not just at the plot revelation itself, but at the new depth.

 

The prequels on the other hand, with all their politics and confusing plot elements, could have benefited from fewer attempts at being sophisticated.

 

To turn the topic to games, Knights of the Old Republic did a very similar thing, and even though you can call it a re-hash of the Empire story it worked because it was a surprise that the game would even go beyond lightsaber battles and evil dudes.

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BGOAT for me is depending on mood. Some times I am very likely to declare for Dwarf Fortress, others I think of the games I played while younger like the Spyro series for how 'video games' it is. I could even say Final Fantasy X for how much it resonated with my then tween self or how much of a touchstone it is for console gamers of my generation.

But I realise now that ultimately my best game is formed not just by the game itself but by the context around it. So I have to say Natural Selection 2, a game that can be very frustrating. When conditions are met, it becomes a delicious soup of challenge, personal skill, team strategy, and communication.

Beyond getting better at a game where the greatest challenge is other people the joy of this game is who I happen to be playing with.

For a game I've played a year I have an awful lot of nostalgia for it. From once regular players who always colour the matches with their personalities to my first forays into competitive gaming I have a lot of positive memories for personal reasons I can barely describe.

When I think of the other games I've played they don't give me the same breadth of memory even when they're of similar circumstances.

The only game that might be similar is Nosgoth but that's still in closed beta so I'll have to wait and see.

Sorry if this is a bit too tangential.

I think maybe the 'best' requirement of a BGOAT is that if you were to forget about video games for years what would be the one game your mind would return to.

Also to steal from the Indiana Jones topic if I had to name a best tv show I'd call it The Venture Bros because it manages to start out with the pulp feel of Indie and Johnny Quest genre tropes while also being all post modern and self aware about it and unafraid to expand on token characters and turn them into core aspects of an internal mythos.

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Crystal Skull is garbage. Shia LaBeouf is obnoxious, Harrison Ford and Karen Allen are real bad at pretending to be characters that were vibrant in the past, it's overly long and all of the CGI makes it look clean and boring, and the story ends with a big dumb alien spaceship. Dumb dumb dumb. 

 

Temple of Doom is real hokey, but it's far better than Crystal Skull. For personal reasons, I'm a Last Crusade guy over Raiders, but I think that the bulk of this was my obsession with the LucasArts graphic adventure, and it's wonderful little grail diary.

 

BUT. I read this article (warning, it's from aintitcoolnews, so expect a lot of eye rolling on the part of the reader) about Temple of Doom and it changed my view on the film towards the better. The thesis is that Temple is a prequel that examines Indy's change from fortune hunter to wise cracking archaeologist. This would eventually be sort-of undermined by River Phoenix at the beginning of Last Crusade, but it's still an interesting way to watch the film. 

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So many wrong opinions in that post! How do I cope?

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Well, we shake hands and smile and we are confident that our opinions are just opinions! And that's ok! And the world will still keep on spinning! 

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I think I know how they could have fixed Crystal Skull. They should have added Walter Matthau and Jack Lemmon and rename the movie to Grumpiest Old Men.

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I'd love to see a Weekend at Indiana Jones'.

 

I would pay a significant amount of money to see that movie.

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Curious about contemporary reviews of Crystal Skull, I found this nugget from Ebert:

 

Now what else can I tell you, apart from mentioning the blinking red digital countdown, and the moving red line tracing a journey on a map? I can say that if you liked the other Indiana Jones movies, you will like this one, and that if you did not, there is no talking to you. And I can also say that a critic trying to place it into a hierarchy with the others would probably keep a straight face while recommending the second pound of sausage.

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