Watching an Entire Movie Series and Posting Your Thoughts Thread

Kevin Roegele

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It's quite illuminating to watch a film series one after another. Not easy to find the time, but when you do it reveals a lot about the series and the way they change and evolve.

To start with, the Indiana Jones films, which I have just finished gorging myself on.


The Temple of Doom (1984)


The second to be made but the first chronologically is the one I started with. Lucas didn't start doing prequels with Star Wars! This is dark, angry Spielberg that surfaced again in the very similar The Lost World; half the film is set-up, the rest is pure action and spectacle, full of shadows and grim violence. Literally, half way through Temple the story is completely ignored and it's just one long action climax, a relentless series of set piece action scenes. It can be wearying, but if you are in the mood, there is little you'll find anywhere to top it. This was, I believe, following a trend Lucas invented the year before in Return of the Jedi - instead of just having your action climax at the end of the film, why not make the entire last third of the film the action climax. Temple starts even before that-!

In fact, Temple is so clearly a string of action scenes by the end that Spielberg doesn't even bother cutting it properly - he leaves out anything that might slow the pace, such as the introduction of a huge thugee. We just go straight to the fight. This is the the Spielberg that gets the most criticism, famously in the term, 'it's just a rollercoaster ride, not a story".

This does have a negative effect on the characters, as they have almost nothing to do in the second half of the film except fight, run and scream (and gaze with widened eyes off camera as something really bad comes towards them). Yet both Short Round and Willie, despite her tendency to be annoying, are good comic foils for Indy. This classic Spielberg impromptu family set-up works much better than in the later films, where Indy is travelling round with a whole bunch of people.

As for the other characters in Temple - aside from Lao Che, memorable in his few minutes, they are entirely forgettable. Even the villains, nasty as they are, have no real characteristics besides what they look like. They are an evil cult, that's all you get.

Temple is, in many places, a nasty and aggresive movie, and the level of violence far greater than anywhere else in the series. It's also typical Goonie era Spielberg with the gross-out insects and monkey brains and such.

Temple is a more-is-more sequel, an attempt to ramp up everything from Raiders (except the plot). Whether it's superior to Crusade or not, it's really the last proper Indy film, the last to be commited 100% to recreating the thrills of cliffhanger serials.


Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)


Such a classic, and so pure and simple in it's objectives. Raiders knows exactly what it is doing and where it is heading that it just sweeps past and is finished before you know it. In it's refusal to concentrate on Indy as much as the later films, it shows the wider picture, the quest for the ark, with all the characters persuing it. The star is the film itself, the style, the heart-in-mouth cliffhanger style, the endless fights and stunts and snakes and explosions. Ford is at his best, Marion is his best romantic intrest, the villains are truly worthy of Indy, and the action is full of invention and ever-increasing tension. Really, as close to perfect as movies like this can come. It all ends with a scene worthy of any horror movie, a true climax - the opening of the ark is worth waiting the whole movie for.



The Last Crusade (1989)


Lucas didn't start showing us what our heroes were like when they were younger with Star Wars either. It begins by showing, in a very short space of time, how Indy gained his intrest in historical items, his fear of snakes, his scar, his whip and his hat. All in the space of about ten minutes. It's a fun sequence but forcing all that stuff in is a bit much.

Essentially Last Crusade has one huge plus - Sean Connery and his interplay with Ford - and one huge negative - Spielberg's lazy direction. The relentless action of the previous films is gone now. There are action scenes, but not only are they less in number, but they are far less in quality. Apart from the great centre piece tank chase, none of the action scenes have the same energy or mounting tension as in the previous films. Previously, the action was full of invention and one-thing-after-another. By Crusade, it's generally by-the-numbers. Take the opening fight onboard a rain-lashed ship - so pedestrian I could believe the second unit director, or his 90-year old grandma, directed it. Also, the criticism of violence over Temple clearly had an effect as Crusade is a lot more comical and toned-down in it's violence.

It's clear Spielberg was a different director by the time he made Crusade. He can do this stuff on autopilot, what he was really intrested in was the relationship between father and son. As such, Indy is a far mellower and more moral character than the guy we began with in Raiders (and why the hell does he wear a tie?).

Having said that, whenever Connery is on the screen it's gold. Who would have thought he would have such perfect comic timing? The villains are forgettable but an effective mystical atmosphere is created in the finale.


Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008)

What to say about this? It's astonishing to watch this so soon after Raiders.
Simply, Raiders looks like a classic, exotic, sweat and blood romantic adventure and Kingdom, in many places, looks like a TV spin-off on a sound stage. The scene where Indy meets Marion is so limp and lame and pathetic you can't believe this is being made with, and by, the same people. The magic between the two as they walked off at the end of Raiders is completely absent.

Ford is too old. Lucas and Spielberg said Indy was never about age. But it was, originally, about relentless action and stunts and suspense, and a guy who could fight five guys, get thrown off a truck, do some stunts, fight some more, and then ram a car off a road. Indy is too old for that, Ford is too old, and if you can't do that there is no point in the movie.

Karen Allen, bless her, should not have been bought back. You're watching someone who is delighted to be at an Indy reunion, not Marion Ravenwood from the first movie. Shia is passable, and benefits from some deft economic characterisation. John Hurt and Ray Winston are wasted.

As mentioned earlier, Indy works best with one or at most two companions, not four-! It's not exciting watching Indy swing over a ravine if then four other people have to do it as well. And the fact that an old man, a fat oldish man, a oldish woman and a kid survive Indy's adventures throughout the film, despite not being Indiana Jones themselves, it hardly comes across as deadly or even dangerous. Most of the stuff they go through just involves running down stairs, running away from Mayans, running away from Russians, running away from exploding temples, sitting in a jeep while it goes over a cliff, sitting in a jeep while it goes over a waterfall....and so on. It's a pedestrian adventure that most of the characters survive without doing much.

Action movies with old people DO NOT WORK. Did Spielberg not see A View to a Kill?

The best thing about the movie is John William's wonderful music, as ever, and Kate Blanchett as Spalko, who is underused to an almost Darth Maul degree.

As for the aliens thing at the climax...by the time this movie gets to the climax, I have given up caring. The Crystal Skull is almost Phantom Menace bad.


Conclusions


If you want a revelation, watch Indy in the opening scene of Raiders, and then in any scene in Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Is Indy even the same character? He began as a grizzled, grave robbing bad ass, almost an anti-hero. By Kingdom, he is just a decent, somewhat beleagured old man. If you take away the character of Indy, and you take away the action, what do you have left?

I actually think Spielberg was really done with Indy by the end of Temple of Doom - or atleast the style of the Indy films. There is so much cliffhanger action crammed into Temple there is really no way to take it any further. After that, the action in the series is significantly toned down and reduced, and the films focuses more on character interactions than action adventure. The first two films are about recreating the matinee serial adventure vibe, the second two are more modern action-adventure comedies.

This is a wonderful trilogy, with characters that have become pop culture and scenes of spectacle and suspense so thrilling that everyone remembers them twenty years later. The Crystal Skull is a painful reminder that all good things come to an end; that directors often lose something in their later years; and that, as Indy learns, some old legends are best left untouched.
 
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It's clear Spielberg was a different director by the time he made Crusade. He can do this stuff on autopilot, what he was really intrested in was the relationship between father and son.

The relationship between Indiana Jones and his father is what I loved about Crusade. Harrison Ford and Sean Connery have amazing chemistry and all their scenes together are magical.
 
The relationship between Indiana Jones and his father is what I loved about Crusade. Harrison Ford and Sean Connery have amazing chemistry and all their scenes together are magical.

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Back to the future...

MOST EPIC SERIES OF FILMS ON THE PLANET!!!!
 
Back to the future...

MOST EPIC SERIES OF FILMS ON THE PLANET!!!!

quoted for truth!

I would love to see a film by film take on that, I would but i do not feel like watching 6hrs of movie back to back tonight :(.
 
Crusade just has to be my favourite of the series, and the 2nd best movie of the series, its a great 3rd, which makes it something of a rarity!

Its funny, I have never watched all Indy movies at once, I rarely get the time to do such things, these days anyway, only done it with a few, Spidey, X-Men and Bourne I think.
 
BACK TO THE FUTURE is one of the best trilogies to watch in one straight shot. I did it way back in college when I first got the box set. Definitely a great example of the whole being greater than the sum of its parts.

One of the things I never realized was that Marty's inferiority complex ("Chicken?!") doesn't come in until Part II (a sign of the writers trying to give him a new obstacle and add to his otherwise complete arc from Part I.)
 
One of the things I never realized was that Marty's inferiority complex ("Chicken?!") doesn't come in until Part II (a sign of the writers trying to give him a new obstacle and add to his otherwise complete arc from Part I.)

The sequels were more character-driven. The original was about the story. This kid goes back in time and must get back home, but in meantime fixes his parents. In the sequels, the plot didn't really matter. Marty goes to the future in Part II to save his son, but we discover that he needs to save himself. In Part III, Doc falls in love and realizes that there's more to life than inventions.
 
The Jaws series:

Jaws - :awesome: :wow:

Jaws 2 - :sleepy:

Jaws 3 - :dry:

Jaws: The Revenge - :barf::wall:
 
Kevin, while I agree with your views on the Indiana Jones series, I must disagree with this.

Action movies with old people DO NOT WORK. Did Spielberg not see A View to a Kill?

IMHO the three best action films of the past few years all star old guys.

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Wow Kevin that is a good essay on the Indy films, I myself wouldn't know the words to express on my favorite films, when I was a kid I thought TOD was better than Raiders for the same thing because the last hour was full on action but now I find it boring.

I wouldn't have the time or patience to sit through all moves in one sitting, the only times I've come close is watching the four Batman films one a day and noticed how each one got worse in terms of flashier bigger action sequences, from the dark and somber mood of Batman '89 to the campy comedic crapola Batman & Robin.
 
when I was a kid I thought TOD was better than Raiders

Almost every child considers Temple of Doom to be the best. Not because of the action, but because of the dude who removes people's hearts.
 
I also really enjoyed your thoughts on the Indy series, and was very impressed. I think I agree with you almost 100% on those points.
Apart from the old guy thing that dude love brought up, I thought the action scenes with older Indy worked in CS, and when they didn't it was not down to his age, just that they were not that well executed or imaginative.

A couple of months ago I ordered 'Conan the Destroyer' on dvd, i had not seen the movie in about 15yrs, so quite enjoyed it as a brainless S&S movie, especially as i was getting into the SSoC comics at the time and was just desperate to see some kind of attempt at a Conan movie that i was not overly familiar with(as i am with the 1st one).

So a few weeks later I watched it back to back with the 1st movie.
The first movie is a piece of art, a very well made movie with fantastic sets and a great atmosphere. Even if it is not a great adaption of Conan, is is a great S&S movie.
In comparison the follow up is a piece of junk masquerading as the same type of film. The stunts are terrible in comparison, they look like kids playing with swords in the playground sometimes, schoolplay stuff, like, Conan takes an awkward swipe at a net that is being flung around him, no way does it look like that sword will go through it, so let's quickly cut away and pretend it did.
Absolute crap, but if it was not so crap we would never have had Die Hard with Bruce willis, so let's be thankful for that.
Because CtD was such a crap sequel, Arnie knocked back doing a sequel to Commando that would have been based on that novel that Die Hard was based on.
CtD could have been great as well, they binned Roy Thomas and Gerry Conway's original script,( using only the settings), and were not allowed to have the Ray Harryhausen stop motion creature for the finale they wanted, instead putting Andre the giant into a terrible rubber suit.
Basically Dino De Laurentis wanted to make more money by cutting it down to a PG13, and cutting lots of corners, so many that they ended up with a terrible movie which made far less than the adult original.

So yeah, watching it back to back with the original brought out all the sloppy mistakes and terrible artistic decisions in a way that they did not register so much when i watched the movie on it's own.
 
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Kevin Roegele said:
Indy is a far mellower and more moral character than the guy we began with in Raiders (and why the hell does he wear a tie?).
That always bothered me, he isn't James Bond, but thankfully he loses it later on.
 
IMHO the three best action films of the past few years all star old guys.

sylvesterstallone.jpg


bryan-mills-photo.png


Universal_Soldier_Regeneration-fana.jpg

To clarify, I meant action movies with old people, not an old person; i.e. a group of old people, ala Indy IV, not one old person, ala Rambo IV or Taken. In A View to a Kill, Roger Moore was so old he needed a stuntman to run. The producers were aware of this so gave him an even less physically active companion, Patrick McNee, to make Moore look atleast somewhat more in shape by comparison. But that didn't work, and these things snow ball, and mess up the whole movie.

As for Universal Soldier 5, Van Damme is 49 and Lundgren 52, so they are not quite in the same category as the guys pushing 70 in Crystal Skull.
 
I also really enjoyed your thoughts on the Indy series, and was very impressed. I think I agree with you almost 100% on those points.
Apart from the old guy thing that dude love brought up, I thought the action scenes with older Indy worked in CS, and when they didn't it was not down to his age, just that they were not that well executed or imaginative.

A couple of months ago I ordered 'Conan the Destroyer' on dvd, i had not seen the movie in about 15yrs, so quite enjoyed it as a brainless S&S movie, especially as i was getting into the SSoC comics at the time and was just desperate to see some kind of attempt at a Conan movie that i was not overly familiar with(as i am with the 1st one).

So a few weeks later I watched it back to back with the 1st movie.
The first movie is a piece of art, a very well made movie with fantastic sets and a great atmosphere. Even if it is not a great adaption of Conan, is is a great S&S movie.
In comparison the follow up is a piece of junk masquerading as the same type of film. The stunts are terrible in comparison, they look like kids playing with swords in the playground sometimes, schoolplay stuff, like, Conan takes an awkward swipe at a net that is being flung around him, no way does it look like that sword will go through it, so let's quickly cut away and pretend it did.
Absolute crap, but if it was not so crap we would never have had Die Hard with Bruce willis, so let's be thankful for that.
Because CtD was such a crap sequel, Arnie knocked back doing a sequel to Commando that would have been based on that novel that Die Hard was based on.
CtD could have been great as well, they binned Roy Thomas and Gerry Conway's original script,( using only the settings), and were not allowed to have the Ray Harryhausen stop motion creature for the finale they wanted, instead putting Andre the giant into a terrible rubber suit.
Basically Dino De Laurentis wanted to make more money by cutting it down to a PG13, and cutting lots of corners, so many that they ended up with a terrible movie which made far less than the adult original.

So yeah, watching it back to back with the original brought out all the sloppy mistakes and terrible artistic decisions in a way that they did not register so much when i watched the movie on it's own.

Whoa, I did not know that about Commando 2 being essentially Die Hard. Amazing. The original novel is quite a page-turner I gather.

I completely agree about the Conan films. Destroyer feels more like a fourth or fifth sequel than a first sequel, such is the degeneration of everything and lack of creativity. It's laughable. I do however find Grace Jones inadvertantly hilarious, smashing guys in the face and screaming, you can tell those stuntmen were genuinely scared.

It's a shame there were not more Conan movies (as long as they were better than the second of course). It could have been a cool franchise. It has the same clear, essential parameters that allow for endless variations on a familair theme, ala Bond or Indy.
 
It's a shame there were not more Conan movies (as long as they were better than the second of course). It could have been a cool franchise. It has the same clear, essential parameters that allow for endless variations on a familair theme, ala Bond or Indy.

Yeah, the Kevin Sorbo film 'Kull the Conqueror' was reworked from from one of the proposed third Conan scripts, Sorbo refused to follow in Arnie's footsteps with the same character, so they changed him to Kull. That is a worse movie than CtD.

I am really hoping they are successful with this new Conan film so we get a series, and sequels can be based on the original stories.
and yeah, I almost forgot about Grace Jones, I really like her in general, she is by far the most watchable component of that movie.

edit: btw, that info about how the proposed Commando 2 was going to be based on the Die Hard novel was in a recent Empire magazine article on the history of the Conan films.
 
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John Milius is a genius, that's the reason why Conan The Barbarian is so great and the other Swords & Sorcery movies are so bad.

"King Conan" FTW.
 
Twice in my life I've watched the Lord of the Rings extended trilogy in one day. To all interested, I would highly recommend not doing this.

Halfway through Two Towers, I tried to remember watching Fellowship, and I couldn't help thinking "Was that today?" The human attention span is simply not conditioned for taking in something so epic. Every little moment of drama or story is dwarfed by the scope of the big picture. Your brain can't process or ruminate on most of what goes on because it's off to the next part of the story.

Maybe when I have kids, I'd love to watch it like a miniseries. One disc per night over six nights.
 
From Dusk Till Dawn Trilogy

I did not know until yesterday that there was not one, but two sequels to the 1997 cult classic. I knew that there must have been a good reason as to why I never heard of these sequels (really a sequel and a prequel), but against my better judgement I picked up the boxset for €10 when I saw it.

In preparing myself for the worst, I decided to leave my viewing of the 1997 cult classic until last. This way if worst came to worst I would end my viewing of the trilogy on a good note, and how right I was to do that!

From Dusk Till Dawn 2 is an abomination, it's just absolutely awful. Everybody phones in their performance and the plot is non existent. The characters are terrible in the sense that I could care less about what happens to them. Compare that to Clooney's, Lewis', and Keitel's characters in the first film and you are genuinely rooting for these people to get out of the horrible situation they have found themselves in. Another problem is that it's way too short and utterly boring. Then again, I suppose I should be thankful that it's short because watching it was absolute torture.

Funnily enough, even though the second film fares better than the third film on rotten tomatoes (that doesn't say much), I actually preferred the latter. Don't get me wrong, From Dusk Till Dawn 3 suffers from a lot of the problems that the second one did. For instance the characters are again absolutely terrible, not because they are bad but because the character development is non existent.

The "hero" of the film never redeems himself for a very questionable decision to execute a kid who just wanted to be like him, so he really doesn't deserve to escape at the end.

However, there was potential for a good film. The 3rd film makes up for the mistakes of the 2nd film by actually trying to improve on the story that was established in the first film. The characters are better than the ones in the 2nd film but the time just isn't there to establish a bond between the characters and the audience. The action, gore and killing is also an improvement in comparison to the 2nd film, however you could tell that they had a crap budget. That is illustrated by how some vampires go up in flames when staked or exposed to sunlight, while others just slouch to the ground. It seems like they only had a budget to use effects for what they felt were important deaths.

All in all, these films just don't measure up at all to the 1997 cult classic. The third one deserves points for being well intentioned and would have benefited from a bigger budget to improve on the script, running time and effects. In comparison the second film is pathetic, absolutely zero effort put in and a totally unnecessary sequel. It's hard to believe that Tarintino and Rodriguez actually produced these films, you would have thought that they would have wanted a certain level of quality.
 
Twice in my life I've watched the Lord of the Rings extended trilogy in one day. To all interested, I would highly recommend not doing this.

Halfway through Two Towers, I tried to remember watching Fellowship, and I couldn't help thinking "Was that today?" The human attention span is simply not conditioned for taking in something so epic. Every little moment of drama or story is dwarfed by the scope of the big picture. Your brain can't process or ruminate on most of what goes on because it's off to the next part of the story.

Maybe when I have kids, I'd love to watch it like a miniseries. One disc per night over six nights.

I've only ever watched the series in a row over several days. It's tempting to try the whoel thing, I'm talking Extended Editions, all at once, but as you say....you can't take it all in. It's like trying to swallow a whole apple, you can't do it. That's why you take bites. Return of the King itself is quite ridiculously epic, and Fellowship is so loaded with set-up and back story, after you have watched the first ten minutes you feel like you have already seen one movie.

That's why I did Indy, the Indy series is not taxing :) I don't think Star Wars will be either, or Back to the Future.
 
I've watched the Back to the Future trilogy, all four Indiana Jones films, the first three Die Hards(before the fourth was made), Lord of the Rings Extended trilogy and the original Star Wars trilogy.

One day in late 2012 I plan on picking a whole day to watch, Iron Man, Iron Man II, The Incredibly Hulk, Thor, Captain America then The Avengers...that would be the most epic sitdown ever.

Also, I have no idea why some of you had problems watching LotR extended trilogy back to back. It's essentially one incredibly long movie and I plan on doing it again sometime in the future.
 
It's essentially one incredibly long movie and I plan on doing it again sometime in the future.

That's the key to why LotR is so good throughout. It really is one movie split into three - as Tolkien's book was of course. The only difference between the three movies is three different editors.

Imagine if it had always been done like this-! Imagine if Spielberg had shot three Jaws movies at once, or all three Indiana Jones sequels in 1983.

Imagine if Spider-Man 3 was split into two movies, as was the original plan.

The mind boggles...
 

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