Tony, Tony and Adam are joined by Dan and Sergio to talk about the latest Indiana Jones movie.
If you are curious what all the buzz is about, check out our review of the show. If you’ve seen the movie, stick around after the break to hear us dig into the details of the movie.
As always, there will be a break to protect those who haven’t seen the movie from spoilers.
No promo in this episode, but we do have Trampas’ review of new Knight Rider television movie.
Next week we are talking about out favorite “Geek Movies” from the 1980’s.
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4 replies on “BSP Episode 063: Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull”
Man, this one’s been mighty entertaining… it could just as easily have been an episode of The Fanboy Smackdown with Adam as the Fanboy getting smacked down (and deservedly so as well).
And you had someone dressed up like Indy with you? Is the Fanboy Smackdown truly dead? I don’t think so…
Adam is my hero!
The wife and I caught Indy 4 on opening day. We both agreed that it did have a lot of fun moments hearkening back to the previous movies, it was, overall, a less than satisfying experience.
It felt like a lot of the concepts of the movie didn’t get thought out well enough and it was really just a series of bits strung together with bits of story.
Listening to you guys talk about all the cool references to the old movie, I realized something – while they were nice to see, the movie felt like it was seeded with these points and then the story was strung together to connect all these bits together.
Also, while from a time standpoint, it makes sense for the Soviets to be the baddies in light of Harrison Ford’s age, they were handled poorly. It felt like they were picked more as a chance to play up the Red Scare/McCarthyism era in light of current events. It was ironic that, in the movie world, the government was paranoid about Soviet infiltrators when Soviet agents (and whole fighting squads even) are able to roam the country with impunity. Finally, as presented, the Soviets were much less serious as bad guys than the Nazi’s in the other movies. In Raiders and Crusade, you really felt like it was a race against evil for the fate of the world. The Soviets were a cartoon in comparison.
The story also suffered by the ham fisted efforts to setup Mutt as the next hero. Making him the love child of Indiana and Marian was just schlocky and over the top.
And, as for the aliens…geez. How did these all powerful beings manage to have some punk walk off with one of their heads to begin with? It was really hard to buy into.
I thought the discussion of the efforts in terms of research that went on for this movie was interesting, and highlights what was for me one of the highlights of the movie. Not only are references included for fans of the old movies and people who know something about the skulls. There are also references that seem tailor made for archaeologists themselves (like me!) I went on opening night with two other archaeologists, and we were (sadly) the only ones laughing out loud in the theater when Indy (having just survived Mutt’s sliding motorcycle) tells a student to read V. Gordon Childe, a famous period archaeologist/anthropologist, and even does it in the proper context. And a bit earlier, when he’s in the classroom, he’s talking about an actual site that my friends and I all know from Archaeology 101. What makes it even better is that the site he’s talking about (Skara Brae) fits in perfectly with the old movies. I’d have to go back and watch again to make sure, but I believe that in either Raiders of Crusade, he’s teaching about a neolithic British burial mound (Hazelden? something like that). So it seems that, his vast knowledge of Indian and Judeo-Christian myth aside, he gets picked over and over again to teach courses on Neolithic Britain. I just thought that was a neat bit of continuity that likely only an archaeologist would be expected to catch. So kudos to the research team.
Oh, and just to dispel a rumor I keep hearing – if an archaeologist born after 1970 tells you that they DIDN’T become an archaeologist because they want to be Indy, they’re a frackin’ liar. Some of my colleagues just say that because they think it makes them more scholarly. Deep down, they all want to wear a fedora and shoot Nazis.
Thanks for the post, Colin. Interesting to hear from an actual archaeologist on Indy–especially the part about his having to teach neolithic Britain over again. I’ll have to look for that. I know he writes “neolithic” on the board in Raiders, and then says about the “hazelden” mound, but I didn’t know he was teaching the same course in all the movies. That’s funny.