Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

[Lianachan]

I saw it last week. I also really enjoyed it. Sure, it has stupid bits - but it's Indiana Jones! A worthy Indiana Jones film, and a great brain-off-popcorn-muncher in my opinion.

[tdvance]

Saw it last night. It was...OK. Didn't mind the aliens at all, as a concept; Harrison Ford was great, as was Karen Allen; the whole cast did a marvelous job, in fact. No, what bothered me a LOT was the lack of decent character development in the writing. Not to mention the fact that the aliens seemed like idiots with nasty tempers.

A decent popcorn movie; that's about it as far as I was concerned. There were a few things I really liked, but can't mention without spoilers.

Now why ruin a good action/adventure movie by slowing it down with character developments? (actually, I like character developments in novels, but in action/adventure movies, I just want to relax and be entertained).

[Gillianren]

We don't need character development. We know Indy. We know Marion. We don't need to know the villains, because Indy villains are caricatures anyway. (This is not intended as an insult to the movies, since they are exactly what they're trying to be--boys' adventure novels onscreen.) We don't know "Mutt," but I think we get to know him well enough, ditto Ox. The genre provides us with just the level of character development it requires.

[Lianachan]

We don't need character development. We know Indy. We know Marion. We don't need to know the villains, because Indy villains are caricatures anyway. (This is not intended as an insult to the movies, since they are exactly what they're trying to be--boys' adventure novels onscreen.) We don't know "Mutt," but I think we get to know him well enough, ditto Ox. The genre provides us with just the level of character development it requires.

Absolutely. I've always considered the Indiana Jones films as probably the best for pure entertainment, without much complication or pretension. Films the whole family can enjoy, and not have to think about. There's a place for such films, alongside the more complicated, artistic high-brow ones.