Despondent over losing one of their own to the metropolis called New York City (in the movies, Metropolis), the Film Pigs scramble for a comforting subject in the form of Indiana Jones. This podcast is an episode of The Bacon, where the Pigs delve deep into a single subject, talk it straight into the ground, and then keep talking some more. With special guest Hilary Anderson and music by Adam Blau.
This time, on a very special episode of The Film Pigs Podcast:
- 0:00:00 – Intro
- 0:01:42 – The Bacon: THE INDIANA JONES MOVIES
- 0:53:42 – Outro
They only renamed the film on the box (presumably so it would line up with the others). The title on the film is still RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK.
IJ4 is nowhere near as bad as you guys make it out to be. It wasn’t RAIDERS but I didn’t go in expecting it to be. It’s an enjoyable action-adventure movie on par with parts 2&3. The opening twenty minutes are fantastic, and the main fault of the movie is that it doesn’t quite recapture that throughout the rest. But the action scenes are still brilliantly choreographed, shot and edited. I’ll take any action scenes in this over pretty much any other modern Hollywood film (except M:I-4).
I’ve seen IJ4 twice now, and I have to stick to my opinion that it is CGI-slathered junk. Please don’t smite me, I liked M:I-4.
So long as the Film Pigs deliver entertainment at intermittently regular intervals I shall not smite thee.
I can not vouch for Death though. He’s a loose cannon, that one.
As a formerly practicing, now expert agnostic I never thought I would say this: I agree with God.
Skull isn’t that bad. Lord knows it isn’t that good either.
Thank you for devoting so much time to my favourite film series.
JP
PS-Podcast suggestion: B-Movie stars.
I’m with the pigs. I’ve only watched IJ4 once, and that was too much. They idea of being set in the 50s against Communist Russians is a good one, but everything else was just garbage.
Btw. We need an ep on adventure movies (or the recent lack thereof).
Simply the fact that they failed to have Indy utter the line, “Commies. I hate these guys.” was enough to turn me off of IJ4.
For me the best RAIDERS knock-off ever made is Jackie Chan’s ARMOUR OF GOD. The plotting makes zero sense but the action is beyond spectacular.
As for INDY 4, what a mess of a film. I’m glad Todd mentioned Ford’s moronic reaction to seeing Marion again. It’s like Ford did a joke take and Lucas made them use it.
I could go on for pages about why that movie stunk, but I think an interesting footnote to get into is the original script written by Frank Darabont titled INDIANA JONES AND THE CITY OF GODS.
And ladies and gentlemen, it was WONDERFUL! Darabont worked on the script with Spielberg for a year and it shows. He nailed it. It was smart, dark, exciting and best of all, there was no LeBeouf. It was purely an ‘Indy and Marion’ picture.
Every beat the finished film fucked up was executed perfectly in the script. It also had wonderfully touching call-backs to the other films.
This was the script that got Spielberg and Ford on-board to clear their schedules. Production began… then Lucas said “I don’t like it.”
Darabont has spoken publicly about the crushing moment when Lucas told him he was rejecting his script, and how he said: “George, you’re crazy!” to no effect. As I mentioned, he had spent a year of his life writing the ultimate INDY sequel, and he succeeded only to have it thrown in his face.
There’s an interesting (and exhaustive) article about Frank Darabont’s draft, and how completely superior it is to the finished film. It just goes to show how much George Lucas has regressed as a film-maker.
http://mysterymanonfilm.blogspot.com.au/2008/06/50-strengths-of-darabonts-draft.html
Make no mistake, Darabont wrote the film Spielberg WANTED to make. It must have hurt to have his creativity and passion stifled at every turn by his oldest friend.
I know! Great screenplay. What baffles me is how Lucas still maintains this bully power over Spielberg, a clearly more accomplished filmmaker, even if you don’t like his more contemporary stuff…at least he has some contemporary stuff of note. Lucas…produced Red Tails.
Red Tails.
I think it’s the ‘big brother/little brother’ dynamic they have. Lucas has the same thing with Coppola, who was his mentor.
Kevin Smith talks of how Ben Affleck called him one night from Lucas’s house as they were having Thanksgiving dinner, and Spielberg was there. Affleck kept ringing Smith and telling him how these two were together and it sounds like they’re like teenage boys. Teenage boys who just happened to be middle-aged billionaires.
I’m a little baffled that Ronald Lacey as Toht from Raiders has not made it into the Nicolas Cage Memorial Bizarre Line Reading. Pretty much anything he says in the movie, really. “We are…heh heh… not thirsty…”