Indiana Jones and The Kingdom of The Crystal Skull (2008)

[mdrew1120 0]

There was no point of making it.

[Julia 477]

I was so disappointed when I saw that film. I was at a midnight showing with other Indiana Jones fans, and we all left the theater in silence and dismay as the credits rolled.
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WORST PART:
Indiana Jones: "Where'd they go? Space?"
Professor Oxley: "Not into space. Into the space between spaces."

[Lando 2019]

I think South Park covered this perfectly.

[sillstaw 414]

My problem with this choice is that it was too successful. So many people have seen it that, by this point, talking about its WTF moments just doesn't have that same amount of surprise to it.

[RyanPower 3]

Yeah, we have all talked about the CGI monkeys, how wooden Marion was, the nuking of the fridge, the crazy plot etc. But I think this wold be interesting (and maybe even validating) to hear the HDTGM crew watch this for some new things to add to the discussion as well. Maybe bring in some of the stuff the cast and crew said after the movie came out about its mistakes. After all, this movie was such a disappointment, wouldn't HDTGM be part of that healing process?

 

My favorite bad thing about this movie is hearing how they worked on the script for over a decade... and this is the result?! Even if they improved the whole thing it would be just as good.

[Nasher 29]

Plinkett on Red Letter Media have a very solid video critique of this too, as do many podcasts. I'm kinda bored with it now.. just reminds me how sickening the whole thing was.

[Professor Procrastination 9]

 

I think South Park covered this perfectly.

 

 

A horrible movie, but Lando said it best.

[BagguhMcGuirk 104]

I agree that this movie has been ripped apart by a lot of people and that Sout Park did a great job, but I still think it's worth doing a show on. This movie destroyed a beloved franchise, or atleast beloved character, and made you wish Spielberg never used cgi again. I mean you could literally do an entire show on the cgi in this movie. The plot is ridiculous, even for an Indian Jones movie, the dialogue was written by a retarded 5 year old, and the comedy was...non existent. Although I do have to say that casting Shia labouef as a cool, greaser biker dude was an inspired choice. Nothing says tough like shia laboof with a leather hat and letter opener.

[stickfigurehero 9]

This is on television right now. I managed to have not seen it until this moment, though I have seen the south park parody and read/heard everything that everyone else has already but...

 

Holy living fuck.

 

It's so bad. Like stunningly awful in every scene. I am aware that many jokes have been made already but I would love to listen to the show's take on this. They don't even have to talk about how unbelievably insane the plot is. This is just a god awful movie on every level.

 

I literally spent the majority of the movie too stunned to even make jokes about what I was seeing. It's like they decided to shop the film out to a college film major who does nothing but smoke meth and listen to coast to coast am.

 

I want to see HDTGM do this just to see if they can manage to cover even 10% of the insanity that is that pile of shit. I wouldn't even know where to start.

[BasilKarlo 3]

Unpopular opinion time: I hate every Indiana Jones sequel. Only the original is worth watching IMO.

[seanotron 2307]

Unpopular opinion time: I hate every Indiana Jones sequel. Only the original is worth watching IMO.

 

I'm not sure that opinion is all that unpopular. I know very few people that will defend Temple of Doom (it's like playing a game of racism bingo). I do think Last Crusade is a genuinely good movie, but it does hit a lot of the same notes as Raiders.

[wakefresh 689]

The thing that ruined this movie was Harrison Ford got old and no one told him he couldn't do stunts. It is not enjoyable to be looking at an old man attempt to run, roll, and contort his body. Especially, when the image you have of the character is that they are vibrant, athletic, and fit. They should have had Ford do the same role as Connery did in the Last Crusade -- play the mentor, not the hero. Let a young person be the hero of this story.

 

I also think it is a weird thing that people are up in arms about the story. All of the Indiana Jones stories are fantastical. He's looking for the Holy Grail, or the Ark of the Covenant or the Kali Ma Stones. It seems like people are more willing to suspend their belief when he was looking for a religious relic than when he was looking for something with a supernatural bent than an extra-terrestrial one.

 

And boy, they are trying to make Shia LeBeef into a "thing." He's not The Dude. He's not the one. Heath Ledger was the one until he offed himself, so now I don't know who The Dude is...maybe Andrew Garfield?

[PhillipMedoc 648]

The thing that ruined this movie was Harrison Ford got old and no one told him he couldn't do stunts. It is not enjoyable to be looking at an old man attempt to run, roll, and contort his body. Especially, when the image you have of the character is that they are vibrant, athletic, and fit. They should have had Ford do the same role as Connery did in the Last Crusade -- play the mentor, not the hero. Let a young person be the hero of this story.

 

I also think it is a weird thing that people are up in arms about the story. All of the Indiana Jones stories are fantastical. He's looking for the Holy Grail, or the Ark of the Covenant or the Kali Ma Stones. It seems like people are more willing to suspend their belief when he was looking for a religious relic than when he was looking for something with a supernatural bent than an extra-terrestrial one.

 

And boy, they are trying to make Shia LeBeef into a "thing." He's not The Dude. He's not the one. Heath Ledger was the one until he offed himself, so now I don't know who The Dude is...maybe Andrew Garfield?

Agreed on all points. The stories have always been silly and pulpy; the thing that irritated me about this one was that it was, after the first act, essentially a retread of the first Raiders film with the alien skull standing in for the Ark. And I felt like they were actually way too on the nose with the "I'm too old for this" jokes. I guess that's what made the whole thing feel unnecessary; it was 19 years after the last movie! If they thought they could continue the franchise, this was not the best way to introduce it to a new generation -- maybe that's why Shia LoBoof was cast ("Hey, kids like Transformers, right?"). It could have been worse, Lucas could have tried to keep pushing Hayden Christensen.

 

Is there a hot young thing? Younger and hotter than Ryan Gosling? It seems like with the flood of superhero films we're returning to a hunky kinda Hollywood guy. Chris Hemsworth is melting some theater seats, for sure.

[IHugKittens 53]

It could have been worse, Lucas could have tried to keep pushing Hayden Christensen.

 

I would honestly prefer Christensen over Shia LaBeouf.

[wakefresh 689]

Agreed on all points. The stories have always been silly and pulpy; the thing that irritated me about this one was that it was, after the first act, essentially a retread of the first Raiders film with the alien skull standing in for the Ark. And I felt like they were actually way too on the nose with the "I'm too old for this" jokes. I guess that's what made the whole thing feel unnecessary; it was 19 years after the last movie! If they thought they could continue the franchise, this was not the best way to introduce it to a new generation -- maybe that's why Shia LoBoof was cast ("Hey, kids like Transformers, right?"). It could have been worse, Lucas could have tried to keep pushing Hayden Christensen.

 

Is there a hot young thing? Younger and hotter than Ryan Gosling? It seems like with the flood of superhero films we're returning to a hunky kinda Hollywood guy. Chris Hemsworth is melting some theater seats, for sure.

 

You are so right about the movie being a Raiders of the Ark redo. I didn't even think of it that way, but it is right on the money.

 

Is Hemsworth the guy that plays Thor? Then, yeah, maybe he is The Dude right now. I think Gosling is like the new version of Jake Gyllenhall(sp?); he only does indie movies as far as I know. And I totally forgot about Hayden Christensen. The last I heard from him he played Stephen Glass in a movie, and then...proof! he was gone.

[seanotron 2307]

Yeah I never bought that whole 'Oh it was bad because of aliens!' line. I love sci-fi and had no problem with Indiana Jones doing a 50s sci-fi pulp thing. It sounded like a cool idea on paper. But everyone involved looked so bored. Ford looks bored, Shia looks bored, Karen Allen looks like she's suffering from botox paralysis...and why exactly was John Hurt in this? I love John Hurt, but I could not tell you what the point of his character was.

[nrkist 71]

Yeah I never bought that whole 'Oh it was bad because of aliens!' line. I love sci-fi and had no problem with Indiana Jones doing a 50s sci-fi pulp thing. It sounded like a cool idea on paper. But everyone involved looked so bored. Ford looks bored, Shia looks bored, Karen Allen looks like she's suffering from botox paralysis...and why exactly was John Hurt in this? I love John Hurt, but I could not tell you what the point of his character was.

 

I don't think the problem was the aliens. The films themselves play out mostly as an action/intrigue pulp while teasing the mystical fantastic macguffin. By the time you get to the climax of these films, the audience WANTS to see something crazy. They WANT to know what this gonzo race to the artifact was all about. The audience is salivating for some sort of bizarre reveal at the end of those journies. ToD bucked this trend a bit and just came off goofy and disliked for this poor decision. Crystal Skull went even further off the mark by just being insane from start to finish. Just insane in a totally grating and annoying fashion.

 

It's always a bad decision for your film to rely on callbacks to previous films for its success. There should be a running callback counter in the bottom of the screen for this film. If you removed all the callbacks/self-references, is there even a film here? Kinda the litmus test that should have been applied before this franchise got greenlit for resurrection.

[MikeRiede 4]

yeah I wouldnt want them to do it just for the fact I want to forget it ever happened. IMO, for what this franchise was, this is the worst movie ever made, in that it killed a part of me.

[FirstAidKit 6]

This was recently added to Amazon Prime, streaming for free along with all the other Indiana Jones movies. There is so much for the HDTGM team to discuss.

[joel_rosenbaum 1269]

I remember expecting this movie to be very bad, but being profoundly disappointed anyways. I think Red Letter Media has the shitty George Lucas movies locked down, though.

 

For those who are unfamiliar, there's some disturbing material in there.

[IMAHUGEHDTGMFAN 1837]

Paul Scheer himself did a Q&A stream on yowie.com back in Oct. 2010 and I told him I saw this movie in the theater twice he said that what I did was like "Getting punched in the balls twice"

 

 

 

http://www.cracked.c...uman-giant.html

 

I know he is a hardcore Raiders / Indy Fan so he basically opened my eyes because at that point I wasn't aware of all the bad choices made in the making of Indy 4, I never thought that it was comparable to any of the previous ones but when I saw it at a sneek peak one day before the world premiere it didn't offend me... Now that I know better I can't wait to hear the gangs opinion on this pile of prairie dog crap