Fuck...I actually kind of like it. No it's not Raiders or Last Crusade, but neither was Temple.
Shia isn't nearly as irritating as I expected. His character is cock-sure of himself where it makes sense, and genuinely interested where it counts. If anything his character is a good mix of Marion's characteristics and Indy. I found myself not being able to hate him entirely, which I went in expecting to do.
Plus, It's 20+ years after the originals where Indy was already in his 30's. It would have been ridiculous to expect him to be the exact same.
If anything what bothered me was the modern day effects (fucking bloom everywhere, cgi animals, the cgi in general), Cate Blanchett slipping between Russian and British accents, Ray Winstone's character every time he showed up after the first 20 minutes.
If they had went easier on the green screen and cgi, and stuck to a filming style more like the first 3, I would have liked it a lot more. As it stands, I feel it is on par with Temple. If I was told I had to watch an Indy movie that wasn't 1 or 3, I'd really have a hard time choosing between 2 and 4. I'd throw either on and leave it if they were on TV.
EDIT: On second thought, I still probably Place it at the bottom. Only because Temple, while being my least favorite before this, still had more "suave, asshole" Indy in his interactions with Willy that are so core to the character. That alone makes it more essential to the series.
EDIT 2 (Copying my comment from below: The whole movie feels like he forgot the series was an homage to old adventure films, and instead he made an homage to Indiana Jones.
Another key point was that every other film, the "magic" goal at the end was up in the air. You could believe it or side with Indy in the scientific archaeology approach until you couldn't deny it anymore. The movie kind of forced you to accept the paranormal twist the whole time. Which seemed really out of stride and took the impact away from being there with Indy as he realizes there's more to the world.
Submitted November 23, 2017 at 12:22PM by NoOne0fConsequence http://ift.tt/2mWMrGs
