What Indiana Jones meant to me

Well, I am a little ashamed that the latest installment of Indiana Jones movie is the only Indy movie I've seen so far. It is quite pathetic since we have the DVDs at home and I never really bothered to preview the movies before watching. I purposely delayed watching them because I wanted a clean perspective with this latest installment. I didn't want to bias my judgment or anything. 

May 22, Indy finally hit shores. Prior to that, I've been spying on the net what the comments have been so far since it previewed it Cannes. As expected, the reviews were mixed. The die hard fans liked it to death that they even hummed along to the fanfare. The others said they were bored all through out and that the wait was all wasted.

To be honest, I had been eagerly awaiting for this movie. The trailer was fantastic and the casting was interesting. Cate Blanchett as a Russian communist and Shia Le Bouff as Indy Jr. and Karen Allen returning. It was a casting coup! And the shots were fantastically done. And two high profile directors working on this movie. That must really translate into something, yes?

So I went ahead and waited no more. I watched on the first night. 

When the movie started playing, i had to take a pause and really admire the nice aerial shot of the dessert. Everything went downhill after that. Dont get me wrong, the photography was fantastic all through out. I wish I could say the same though for the story.

I will not divulge the story here so you could watch it yourself in GREENBELT 3 - yes, shameless plugging.

To be fair, I was kept at the edge of my seat all throughout the movie. It was an action-packed movie that you have hardly enough time to pee. But I was getting antsy at one point. The scenes were far from believable and that's not a good thing. Normally, I don't comment like that because I like scenes which are over the top and proudly dangles its creative license to me. But this one, it's too much! How can it be possible for these old bats to fall down THREE TIMES from a very high waterfall without getting scathed or anything. Much less proceed to run, swim, hike, climb and all things obstacle course. NOT POSSIBLE.

Well, yes, it's Indiana Jones, it's forgiveable.

Fine.

But really what I cant forgive is the presence of martians in the movie. True to Steven Spielberg form, there's got to be ET and martian presence. I wonder why? Is this his signature scene as John Woo's flight of pigeon's during fight scenes?

Anyway, i found the whole movie quite formulaic and corny.

Formulaic because it was sooooo standard. The twists were so expected. The action scenes, you could almost smell it coming. And the foreboding angles, c'mon! Most of the scenes were dead giveaway.

Corny because of camp factor. It was very kitschy. Although I thought the angle on the peru land patterns were interesting until the aliens came. Couldn't it have been some conspiracy theory instead? 

Well, my money didn't go to waste because if for anything, Indy is still Indy. It only raised my wanting to watch the other Indy films.

Meantime, i will shift my energy to Caregiver and Sex and the City movies next week.

PS: I saw the mummy 3 trailer and it is kick ass! i've never been this proud of jet li and the terracota warriors. The movie however is especially close to the MANDARIN story of Marvel comics. Hmmmm....