Er... yeah.
I'm not sure quite what to say about this as I both really enjoyed it and got really annoyed by it.
I think I'll take my usual approach of moaning on about the stuff I didn't like and then undermining myself at the end by going "However, I actually kinda enjoyed it too".
So, stuff that annoyed me.
First off, although I don't expect an Indiana Jones film to be 'realistic', what I do expect is for the stunts to seem like actual people are doing them and they're not all CGI.
I've mentioned before that I've embraced GCI after some initial scepticism, but let's face it: Indi films are all about doing practical effects. As a film series they are a massive homage to early cinema - specifically the cinema adventure serials. Those films couldn't possibly have had a lick of CGI, so Indi should have as little as possible too.
Most especially in terms of stunts. I didn't mind them doing CGI for things like the nuke blast or the aliens, but to have bits where clearly CGI was used to make the stunts seem 'doable' or more dangerous than they actually were was not good.
The most glaring example involved a tree, a car and a river. It just looked so fake and so naff it was laughable, but not in a good way.
There were quite a lot of (often furry) critters in the movie too. Specifically some rodenty chipmunk/prairie dog things, some monkeys and some ants play fairly significant roles.
The chipmunks I quite liked - they were used for comedic effect only and it worked. The ants were a bit dodgy. It worked on some levels, but it was also a rather uninspired and flat sequence generally. It also seemed to have quite a few logical holes that made it seem a bit daft.
The monkeys, however, were really poor.
They made no sense, they lead to something that made no sense and was both daft and unrealistic and they seemed very cheesy. I mean, why the hell would these monkeys suddenly decide to help Mutt? It was just utterly random. Plus, of the three they looked the most obviously CGI.
What else?
Russians instead of Nazi? Fair enough, but they should have been emphasising they were Communists, not Russians. Just like they emphasised they were Nazis, not Germans.
The head Russian was a good evil character, but she seemed a little, I dunno, nice? It could have done with a few scenes of her heartlessly killing her minions or something to really make her seem nasty. Her death was a bit rubbish too.
Also, there seemed to be a weird relationship with Indi and the Communists. He didn't really resist them enough and seemed to help them out in too straight a fashion. Normally you'd expect him to help with an eye to setting up his escape route, but instead his escape routes seemed more improvised.
Indi having a son was good - that worked - but the return of Marion less so. She seemed very flighty and random - not how I remember her at all.
But lastly, the thing that really made me think the film was a big meh was the lack of humour. It just seemed to be playing things to seriously, too po-facedly. A lot of the gags miss-fired and too much seemed funny not because it was meant to be but because it looked daft or made no sense.
Where was the witty repartee between the good guys and bad guys? Where were the something happens to Indi that's both scary and funny? Where was the shoots the swordsman bit or the goes to shoot the swordsman but find he's lost his gun bits?
So there you go, it just leaves me to say that despite all that, I still kind enjoyed it. Indi firing on three cylinders is still Indi.
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