Jake

Idle Thumbs 191: Not the Greatest, but the Best

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Ebert once again showing his ignorance of (or indifference regarding) the angry nerd hordes on the internet.

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Ebert doesn't know shit about what I liked about the Indiana Jones movies, or sausages.

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There's literally still no one that knows for sure how to pronounce either Shia OR LeBeouf, so how can I possibly like Crystal Skull?

 

I feel like this is the same conversation as suggesting The Chronicles of Riddick was anywhere near the film that Pitch Black was, but magnitudes more important for the history of filmmaking and nerdery.

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Thankfully the final entry in Riddick is an unquestionable turd.  So there's that.

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Which is a lot more like Pitch Black than Chronicles, and honestly pretty enjoyable. I mean, it's kind of redundant, but still.

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It's basically a remake of Pitch Black, yeah, but with the addition of Dahl "Doll" Dahl, the gay woman who turns straight for Riddick after a movie's length of Riddick hitting on her despite her saying she didn't want it.

 

It's pretty cool.

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I don't often walk out of a theater seething mad, but when I do, it's probably a movie with Vin Diesel. 

 

Which is weird, I think the guy is pretty cool.  But I hate a bunch of his movies. 

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It's basically a remake of Pitch Black, yeah, but with the addition of Dahl "Doll" Dahl, the gay woman who turns straight for Riddick after a movie's length of Riddick hitting on her despite her saying she didn't want it.

 

Uuuugh I hate this shit.

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Raiders of the Lost Ark is one of the best films ever made. Crystal Skull has a ton of awful bullshit in it, and I enjoyed it largely because I have a preternatural ability not to get pissed off by many kinds of awful bullshit. My opinion on Temple of Doom wavers constantly. Last Crusade is fun and goofy.

I thought the discussion about video games as hobbies was interesting. The main point was that video games are sort of fundamentally different from movies and books, in that you can basically just sit down and play a video game in the way you can't really make a hobby out of reading a book or watching a movie. I think one possible counterexample/complication here would be Shakespeare - Shakespeare can be a hobby. I have The Complete Shakespeare sitting right next to me, and sometimes I'll just go through and read some Shakespeare. Or maybe I'll watch one of the films made of his plays, or I'll go see Shakespeare at the local theater or drive up to LA to catch it there. The way I interact with Shakespeare's ouvre is pretty similar to how I interact with games that I play as hobbies. Just like I might fire up NEO Scavenger or Teleglitch or Proteus or Quake Live or Flotilla and play for a while, I might crack open Shakespeare and read for a while.

I think poetry is like this too. I k now someone who just keeps Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson around, reading one or the other every once in a while. Lots of people do this with other poets they like.

Maybe the key is that poems, plays, and games are the sorts of things that you can experience in smaller chunks, if you want, although TV and even movies are like that but I don't know if anyone watches a TV show or a movie in the hobby-like way described in the cast.

I'm not sure I'm going anywhere with this. I just thought it was interesting.

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It's not analogous because...? I thought the idea was that games are interestingly different from other forms of media because they can be a hobby, and I was pointing out that some forms of media apart from games can work as a hobby. Did I miss some different or broader point that the Shakespeare example doesn't throw any helpful illumination on?

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I think the point was (if I'm remembering correctly), that a single game can be a hobby in a way that a single work can't in other media. Someone can just play Minecraft, or just play WoW, or just play Europa Universalis, and just that one game is their hobby. That's why I don't think enjoying an entire ouvre, along with adaptations, is quite analogous.

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It would be easier to draw analogies to other mediums if major sports were still being made from scratch and gained acceptance. Like, if Notch somehow had a doppelgänger who created basketball. Most things of that style/scale emerged from a culture or cultures over centuries, but video games pop a new culture-sweeping craze every few years. Few will ever have the longevity of a classic sport, though, I imagine, simply because they require (ever changing) technology to work. Maybe in 50 years when tech evolution has settled down, the last hold out humans can experience a shared game for more than a couple generations, from behind their sun shields on the tiny ocean-bound islands that remain of our continents.

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So I did rewatch Crystal Skull tonight, first time since seeing it in the theater. It's really a fine movie. Yes, all the things people complain about are legitimate (the fridge, some mediocre cgi, Shia, etc), but it still delivers a fun Jones adventure, and a better adventure than a lot of contemporary movies. It pays homage to the past without unduly lingering on it. I guess it's just a movie that I don't have any interest in niggling the fun out of.

One thing mentioned earlier (I think it was this thread, if not then...I probably went and read too much shit on the Internet about Crystal Skull a week or so ago) that I will dispute though is that Jones is given the Han Solo treatment of suddenly being a character that won't kill. He shoots a poisoned blow dart into a guys mouth, presumably killing him. He beats a guy senseless with a big wooden stick, and then lets him drop into a horde of ants that devours him. He easily could have saved that guy if he wanted. He didn't plug him with a bullet, but he murdered him just as dead. His actions earlier also lead to like a half dozen guys being incinerated alive. That's less directly his fault, but still, he moves through the world as a whirlwind of destruction that leaves corpses in his wake. That he doesn't happen to shoot anyone in this particular story doesn't seem to be any change in the essential character that has been established.

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Real talk: greaser Shia is great. I don't think he's a problem at all. I'll accept nearly all other problems people can name (while also remaining personally and largely indifferent toward them), but Shia is actually a fun character. Boom!

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Real talk: greaser Shia is great. I don't think he's a problem at all. I'll accept nearly all other problems people can name (while also remaining personally and largely indifferent toward them), but Shia is actually a fun character. Boom!

Yeah, totally. The moment in the diner where the Greasers and the Socs start fighting was fucking hilarious, and he's totally fine throughout the rest of the movie. Better than Short Round, even. Bringing back Marion was also a great idea, although I feel like the movie didn't handle her nearly as well, which was pretty disappointing.

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The diner scene is terrific, and there are a couple of scenes where he shows a real anguish and emotional vulnerability that are not typical of a Jones movie, but I ultimately think his character starts really strong and then just kind of slowly peters out, reaching a point of feeling largely irrelevant in the final 15-20 minutes (which is not a fault of Shia or the character, but of the writers not having anything for him to do). 

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Yeah I can definitely see where you're coming from (Tycho with Marion, and Bjorn with Shia).

 

I think the ending in general was probably the worst part of the movie, hah. Still, I love it.

 

Man, maybe I should just watch all the Indy movies this weekend.

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Interestingly, the color palette, lighting and cinematography all feel way pulpier to me than what I remember of the first three films (though that could just be because I haven't seen any of them in years). 

 

Oh yeah, and I completely agree with Tycho about Marion, both in being glad they brought her back and in that she could have been handled better (she just doesn't get enough dialogue).  Karen Allen was in her late 50s during the filming of Crystal Skull, and we have so terribly few examples of that age of woman being either kickass or as being sexually/romantically desirable in cinema, and Marion is both. 

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As a side note, I finally bothered to look up Shia's character's name, because I couldn't remember it. Mutt?! I take back everything I said, worst character in the entire history of cinema. (But also secret best, because DAMN, what a great play on "I'm named after the family dog." DAMN. Like SO good. Ahhh! Can't believe I never realized that before.)

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Interestingly, the color palette, lighting and cinematography all feel way pulpier to me than what I remember of the first three films (though that could just be because I haven't seen any of them in years). 

 

Oh yeah, and I completely agree with Tycho about Marion, both in being glad they brought her back and in that she could have been handled better (she just doesn't get enough dialogue).  Karen Allen was in her late 50s during the filming of Crystal Skull, and we have so terribly few examples of that age of woman being either kickass or as being sexually/romantically desirable in cinema, and Marion is both. 

 

Sigourney Weaver is that, as well. It's hard to improve on the "original" best.

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That's kind of my point though. For every Weaver role that's that way, we have like 20+ male characters who are over 50 who are represented as being badass, heroic or romantically/sexually desirable.

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