Whippety Wack!!

I don't really know how to start talking about the new Indiana Jones. Primary because my own viewing experience was ruined by watching Peter Traver's video review of the movie, in which he (apparently because of his pissed-offedness from the film's crappiness) gives away a crucial plot surprise. I guess he didn't want people to see it.

I still think people should see it. I mean, people like to talk shit; especially critics. If we listened to all the warnings we heard about the world, sure we might not get pregnant or get STDs, but we would miss out on some pretty good adventures, too. As a friend of mine once told me about the dangers of Oakland, California; "Sure, Oakland's got a death toll, but it's got a life toll, too."

So how much life is there in the new Indiana Jones flick?

[realizes glass is half empty]

The movie hella sucked balls. A sad day for the franchise, indeed. And I had such high hopes...

I don't know how to pinpoint exactly what went wrong with the new Indie, especially without giving anything away. Most easily put: there wasn't any reason to make it.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not one of those anti-franchise commies that go around hating on all remakes. I mean: Rocky, Harry Potter, Friday the 13th, Batman...they keep rolling out good flicks again and again. But they don't keep saying the same thing over and over- and even if they do, they say it in a different way.

While watching Indie IV, I saw the same actors from the same movies doing the same stunts, saying the same shit, and even having the same relationships with basically the same friends and enemies as I had before, when it was actually fresh: sixteen years ago. Even the sets looked curiously similar.

I think what happened is that Lucas and Spielberg just wanted to make more money. Everything from the dialog to the plot to the acting seems so forced and scripted that the whole thing just feels like an afterbirth. They had a chance to inject some energy with newcomer Shia LaBeouf, but all he does is act like a dumb sidekick the whole time.

All my friends kept talking about how bad it was going to be, and I was the one who was still excited. And there are some good things about it, to be sure. They just got flushed down the drain with the rest of it.