Indiana Jones V

[Seb Lucas]

Interesting idea, Scotty. I personally wouldn't want to see a remake given that there are so many plots and mythologies available that could produce fresh and dynamic material. Limiting the character to a remake says to me that the Indiana Jones character has narrow appeal and that Raiders was a bit of fluke artistically.

I'd rather see them remake Temple and do it right!

I would be interested to identify what specifically are the elements in Raiders that work and why don't they work as well in the sequels. Temple should have worked. The premise is ok. Good alternative to Western cod mythology. To me it is the unnecessary Short Round, the shrill Willie Scott, inadequate special effects, misplaced comedy and cuteness, and a dull climax that rob this production of potential greatness. It all went to camp too soon.

 

[Lean'n'mean]

but it shouldn't be a Mr. Bean, either.

Spoilsport !!!

 

[Edward]

I still have a lot of affection for Temple as it was my first Indy. I saw it in the cinema in July 1984; Raiders I saw for the first time on television the following December, when it was the big Christmas Day film that year. The others I saw in the cinema. I enjoyed them all very much. Raiders remains the best as the original. Objectively I do now regard Temple as the weakest, and it was the Shortround character. It doesn't bother me the way it would if I saw the film today as a new film, but it can be viewed as a cynical ploy to pull in the kids. Where, to be fair, it does have a plus is that it gives a shorthand to introduce that Indy does care about the plight of kids, and makes it that much more believable when he is suddenly enraged when he discovers the kids in the mine under Pankot. Willie didn't bother me as such, but she was definitely a departure from Marion. Elsa Schneider was another thing again, and Cate Blanchett's communist lady was another superb female character. I hope they stick with having great female characters in anything new.

I don't want to see a remake of any of the original films, but at the same time, I don't know that I want to see the whole thing "reimagined". I'd settled for a sensitive folding in of the original backstories and films as 'canon', with the same character being played rather than an attempt to start from a clean slate a la Bond.

In terms of actors.... we rewatched Jurassic World the other night, and Chris Pratt in that has shades that I think would make him work well as a younger Indy. He's also highly bankable at the minute given the success of the Guardians of the Galaxy franchise. I know his name has been much-rumoured; it would make a lot of sense. Otherwise, Disney might go for an unknown, the way they have for many of the parts in the new Star Wars films, but is the Indy brand currently big enough to sell itself without starnames attached? They, of course, could be other roles.... Given they have said Ford will be in the next one, it still seems likely to me we'll see him used as a framing device and a younger actor playing younger Indy in there, so maybe it will be some unknown groomed to step in like that. Or , hey, maybe they'll just CGI Ford to begorrah, a la Kur Russell in the flashback scenes in Guardians II...

 

[MikeKardec]

Nonetheless, an effective Indiana Jones reboot geared for the millennials might start with text scrolling down (ala Star Wars) describing the global tensions in terms that sound exactly like today's... and then a quick cut to the first scene and the date "1937".

I like it. Quite a few years ago I created a website that introduced a number of 1930s pulp stories. Simulating what I imagined an era news reel to sound like (read like) I wrote the following as lead in:

From Romania to Portugal, a revolution of militarism and conservatism sweeps Europe. In the Far East, a late blooming lust for empire sends the soldiers of Nippon into Korea, then Mongolia, Manchuria, and finally China. Bogged down and without resources to sustain their endless quagmire of expansion, the agents of the Emperor look even further south … to the wealth of the Indies.

In the wake of depression and failed reconciliation the sun has begun to set on the once mighty empires of Britain, France, and Holland. Under threat from the newly emerging Axis powers and internal pressure from native populations, officials in the European colonies are unsure whether they will be militarily abandoned by the mother country or become the last bastions of hope, battling on long after the homeland has surrendered. Another World War is imminent but exactly who will begin fighting whom, and over what, is not yet known ...

I like your Hawaiian concept!

misplaced comedy and cuteness

You got it in a nut shell.

One of the best models for an action film with great humor is every episode of the beautifully written TV series, "Justified." All character based, never "comedy" yet always funny. Another is The Wind and the Lion, again, never "comedy" yet always funny.

Lucas has his wonderful qualities but when he starts thinking in legacy mode he slips toward pre Touchstone era Disney. It's ... unfortunate.

 

[Seb Lucas]

God... just realised that if Raiders is 35 years old now - the movies made 35 years before Raiders came out were made in 1947. This would include Welles' flawed but compelling The Lady from Shanghai and Out of the Past (a great Robert Mitchum film noir) and Bogart and Bacall in Dark Passage. Cripes, does Raiders look as dated today as Dark Passage did in 1982, or the others, cool as they were...? I've suddenly realised I've left my will to live in my other pants pocket.

 

[Zombie_61]

God... just realised that if Raiders is 35 years old now - the movies made 35 years before Raiders came out were made in 1947. This would include Welles' flawed but compelling The Lady from Shanghai and Out of the Past (a great Robert Mitchum film noir) and Bogart and Bacall in Dark Passage. Cripes, does Raiders look as dated today as Dark Passage did in 1982, or the others, cool as they were...?

The problem with that comparison is that *Out of the Past and Dark Passage were set approximately in modern day for their era, i.e. 1946-47. Raiders was a period piece, filmed in 1979-80 (best guess) but set in 1936, so it's more difficult to say whether or not it looks dated for a movie released in 1981. That being said, I do think the special effects used during the climactic "opening of the Ark" scenes look at least a little dated, especially since they would likely have used CGI for those scenes if Raiders was being made today.


*I haven't seen The Lady from Shanghai, so I didn't include it because I don't know if it used a "modern day" setting or a "period" setting.

 

[scottyrocks]

I do think the special effects used during the climactic "opening of the Ark" scenes look at least a little dated, especially since they would likely have used CGI for those scenes if Raiders was being made today.

They still looked better than the CGI in KotCS.

 

[Edward]

I don't know, it's become very fashionable to knock CGI these days.... ironically, in the era when it has gotten better. I remember when Babylon 5 debuted, and it, unlike its Star Trek competition, went CGI instesd of models. The spaceship scenes in that did indeed look dreadful - like animation - but by 2008 it wasw much better. No worse than the action figure minecars in Temple, or the ark-opening in Raiders. Ultimately, though, I'm fairly forgiving on whatever effects as long as the story is good and it fires and holds my imagination. I'd even have hated the papier-mache Predator face a whole lot less if the film itself hadn't been such rubbish!

TBH, the only real reason I can honestly say I have for preferring models is the notion that maybe, possibly, just with a miracle, one day I might somehow manage to be able to own a model that was used in an iconic scene I love.

 

[MikeKardec]

I don't know, it's become very fashionable to knock CGI these days.... ironically, in the era when it has gotten better. I remember when Babylon 5 debuted, and it, unlike its Star Trek competition, went CGI instesd of models. The spaceship scenes in that did indeed look dreadful - like animation - but by 2008 it wasw much better.

There is often some confusion about exactly what CGI is, so sometimes people have a hard time agreeing on what they like and what they don't. Much of the time you use a computer to do exactly what you used to do with the old blue or green screen (Chroma Key) process. It's really no different than techniques that were used all the way back to the earliest days of film making. Doing the process using different elements scanned into a computer and composited allows for a LOT more control, however. Managing the area where the images combine, adjusting the lighting values of each, takes an old technique and perfects it. It's no different than anything you've ever seen ... just better.

The second level is manipulating actual images: Some of the earliest experiments were actually done on Young Indiana Jones where the numbers of crowds were enhanced or a group of horsemen doubled or tripled by duplicating an existing image, some times flipping the new piece right to left, to keep it from looking exactly the same, and then merged and the computer used to also erase indications of the edges of the flipped section. MANY other images also can get morphed in this way. In the somewhat unfortunate but beautiful looking Micheal Bay movie Pearl Harbor, actual period aircraft doing actual stunt flying were shot from various angles and then added to footage of the primary aircraft. It's a confusing film when it comes to effects because there are so many different processes used and some of the stunt flying was so radical that most audience members barely would believe they took the risks they did when Computer Animation, the next category, was available ... but they didn't have the money or time for much of that.

Actual computer animation is what people usually complain about. It can be good at simulating real life in small chunks and is best composited into live action footage if you want to hide it. Because it is two dimensional from the get go, perspective and angle and just the plain old artistic rendering of the subject can all be off. Many times the out of focus aspects or "bokeh" are not managed well, this was an issue with old chroma process shots too. It takes a lot to get all of this right and to misdirect the audience to not look at the flaws.

I produced a (terrible) TV pilot back in the '90s where we started with a completely CG shot of the 1870s NY waterfront and "panned" into a live action scene shot in a old train yard. The transition was good but there was something about the perspective of the ship along the waterfront that was off. Also the smoke coming from it's stack was real (composited in) and you've all seen that before, it really doesn't work but there's no replacement, smoke is nearly impossible to "draw" in motion. I complained about it and the Effects Company typically said that they didn't see the problem but they'd be happy to fix it for more money. We didn't have any, this is often a problem with effects, they are done at the end and suffer from "outta cash" syndrome. Anyway, my business partner, who had spent years doing commercials where this sort of technique was perfected prior to ever showing up in a movie, came up with a great idea. He conned them into animating in a seagull flying at an angle deeper and deeper into the shot. Your eye follows the bird and you don't loot at the flaws. Even I, who was familiar with everything that was wrong, couldn't stop myself from looking at it.

One of the best jobs of managing full on Computer Animation composited into live footage is Terminator II. James Cameron had been a visual effects artist before becoming a director and he wrote the script with the idea of hiding the troublesome aspects of the effects in mind. Where animation really gets you in trouble is when you have a producer or executive who insists "Those Effects Guys Can Do Anything" and the various processes get used in places they shouldn't or you just have to do it somewhere to tell the story even though you know it's going to be a problem. Just like in the old days you have to say it's all in fun and bite the bullet.

 

[scottyrocks]

Yes, and the computer animation in KotCS was full of these flaws, and some of them were either so upfront, or so impossible for a story with reality-based characters, that many people just went, 'Argh.'

The scene with the monkeys, and Mr. LaBoeuf swinging through the trees. The scene with the ants. The sword fight with Mr. LaBoeuf perched between two moving vehicles. The machines that cleared a path through the forest with a simple drive-through.

It was way too obviously not possible, which is what made it objectionable, at least to me.

In a superhero movie, most of what you see is impossible, so anything you see can be accepted as suspension of disbelief.

The action scenes in KotCS that worked (somewhat) were the ones where some of the visual was left up to the imagination of the viewer, whether the computer was used or not. For example, the warehouse chase where IJ is running on the overhead beams was highly unlikely, if not impossible, but it was shown with multiple cuts and varying focal lengths. By the time he landed in the front seat of the truck, it looked like it was going to be a genuine Indiana Jones film. If the beam run had been a long shot that scene wouldn't have worked.

 

[MikeKardec]

Yes, and the computer animation in KotCS was full of these flaws, and some of them were either so upfront, or so impossible for a story with reality-based characters, that many people just went, 'Argh.'

The scene with the monkeys, and Mr. LaBoeuf swinging through the trees. The scene with the ants. The sword fight with Mr. LaBoeuf perched between two moving vehicles. The machines that cleared a path through the forest with a simple drive-through.

It was way too obviously not possible, which is what made it objectionable, at least to me.

In a superhero movie, most of what you see is impossible, so anything you see can be accepted as suspension of disbelief.

The action scenes in KotCS that worked (somewhat) were the ones where some of the visual was left up to the imagination of the viewer, whether the computer was used or not. For example, the warehouse chase where IJ is running on the overhead beams was highly unlikely, if not impossible, but it was shown with multiple cuts and varying focal lengths. By the time he landed in the front seat of the truck, it looked like it was going to be a genuine Indiana Jones film. If the beam run had been a long shot that scene wouldn't have worked.

Not to say that I demand realism in my movies but I always cut a film some slack if you can imagine that what is presented on screen is "what it is supposed to have felt like," rather than literally was. I enjoyed the fight sequences in the Doug Liman directed The Bourne Identity because of this, they offered a visceral "feel" of a high stakes fight between people who really know how to do it. Film is supposed to be subjective but you don't stay engaged unless you can, as you say, "suspend disbelief."

As we were discussing earlier, I really doubt that the later artists involved in the Indiana Jones series truly understood the genre that Raiders paid homage to ... or perhaps they were arrogant enough to imagine that they could create their own.

 

[Tiki Tom]

As we were discussing earlier, I really doubt that the later artists involved in the Indiana Jones series truly understood the genre that Raiders paid homage to ... or perhaps they were arrogant enough to imagine that they could create their own.

As noted in another thread, right now I am reading "Night Over the Solomons" by Louis L'Amour, which is a collection of some of his Indiana-Jonesesque stories that were written in the late 1930s and 1940s. Secret Japanese bases in the Pacific, the search for a tramp freighter carrying nazi arms to the Japanese, discovering a lost city in the Amazon jungle while exploring for oil, a lost plane in Tibet that was carrying secret scientific equipment; great stuff! I certainly hope that today's generation of smart-phone-addicted Disney story-board artists goes back to some of this original source material. It's not a long book; despite the fact that it tops their 140 character at a pop attention span limit, it might help them get back on track. The stories have tight/limited objectives and the action is very much framed by what was possible back in those decades. Nothing was as grandiose as saving the world or as sci-fi as finding a flying saucer. Any one of these stories could work as a basic plot concept for Indiana Jones V.

 

[MikeKardec]

As noted in another thread, right now I am reading "Night Over the Solomons" by Louis L'Amour, which is a collection of some of his Indiana-Jonesesque stories that were written in the late 1930s and 1940s. Secret Japanese bases in the Pacific, the search for a tramp freighter carrying nazi arms to the Japanese, discovering a lost city in the Amazon jungle while exploring for oil, a lost plane in Tibet that was carrying secret scientific equipment; great stuff! I certainly hope that today's generation of smart-phone-addicted Disney story-board artists goes back to some of this original source material. It's not a long book; despite the fact that it tops their 140 character at a pop attention span limit, it might help them get back on track. The stories have tight/limited objectives and the action is very much framed by what was possible back in those decades. Nothing was as grandiose as saving the world or as sci-fi as finding a flying saucer. Any one of these stories could work as a basic plot concept for Indiana Jones V.

HA! If you were to look at the collection West From Singapore (or The Collected Short Stories of Louis L'Amour Volume Six: The Adventure Stories ... which includes all of them) you would find what might be the inspiration for Indy's fight with the German boxer on the airfield in Wings Over Brazil and the temple with the snakes scene in South of Suez ... though that might also have come from one of the Burroughs Pellucidar stories.

Saving the world is always deadly in a series ... it nearly killed the Bond movies

 

[Tiki Tom]

At least he has got a sense of humor about it.

David Koepp previously revealed he has begun writing the script for the hotly-anticipated movie. He said: 'I'm deeply immersed as we speak. All I can say is that there's lots of aliens and Indy dies at the end. Lots of hiding in lead-lined refrigerators, aliens, and he dies. Should go over very well.'

'I really like our idea; I think it's clean and simple and makes a lot of sense, and I feel like the writing is going really well.'

http://www.skynews.com.au/culture/s...indiana-jones-5-gets-a-2019-release-date.html
​

Hopefully Mr Koepp has been lurking at the FL and reading this thread.

 

[Tiki Tom]

Karen Allen is the first thing that makes sense about this project in a long time. I hope David Koepp writes her in.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/karen-allen-is-ready-to-punch-more-nazis-with-indiana-jones

 

[Seb Lucas]

Hmmm. The problem for me is she is now married to Indy. Fallow ground for an ongoing narrative. Mr and Mrs Indy... Domestic kitsch doesn't belong in an action film.

 

[Edward]

She could appear alongside him in bookending sequences, flashing back to a younger Indy.

 

[Lean'n'mean]

She could appear alongside him, flashing

Sounds interesting but who would pay to see that ?

 

[Doctor Strange]

Spotted this earlier today:

http://www.vulture.com/2017/09/indiana-jones-5-will-definitely-not-include-shia-labeouf.html

That's good news. But I am still having real difficulty working up any enthusiasm for another Indy film at this point.

 

[Edward]

My biggest problem remains that I just don;'t think Indy represents a character type that makes sense much after 1957. I am one of those who rather liked Crystal Skull, but I would find it absurd to have Indy (Ford or anyone else playing him) carrying on into the 'modern' world. The other thing would be how they'd do it.... Personally, I quite liked that they pastiched the sci-gi films of the eras in which it was set, just as they had originally pastiched the 30s pulp adventure tropes. That said, I don't know what they'd do next.... I could see them deciding to set it in say 1962, for example, the Cuban Missle Crisis, make Indy a Bond-style super-spy (didn't they already say he was a spy during the war?). I don't think tht would work, though.

The other thing I wodner is how keen Ford really is to do it all again, rather than a few scenes to bookend it. Seems he only agree to do Star Wars 7 if they killed off Solo....