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seaside-writings · 11 months ago

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Hello, hello, all you holly jolly people! It is the first day of my “12 Days of Prompts” event and we're starting off with something a little scary.

Every Christmas season there are two horror movies that my family and I watch over and over again. The first one as you can call see is “Krampus” and the second you’ll see later on!

Krampus is by far one of my favorite Christmas movies, I know that sounds strange, but it’s the truth. I love the monster designs, how the characters a portrayed, and how it still feels more like a Christmas movie than a horror movie, even during some of the actual horror parts. Plus, I like that it doesn’t try and take itself too seriously.

So if you haven’t seen it yet, I highly recommend it!

Like always if you do use these prompts please tag me so I can see what you’ve made!

I hope you all stay blessed and safe throughout your day.

Merry Christmas & Happy Holidays: Celia ❤💚❄⛄🎄

“It started with the wind, on a cold night, much like this,” - “It's Christmas. Nothing bad is going to happen on Christmas!” - "That's what a family is, baby. People you try to be friends with, even when you don't have a lot in common,” - “You're not thinking of going after that snowplow alone, are you?” “A Shepherd's gotta protect his flock,” - “It's the blizzard, honey, nothing's working right now,” - “They can see dust specks on Mars, but no one noticed a giant blizzard hurtling towards us,” “Well, as soon as the power's back, you can write an angry e-mail to the National Weather Service,” - “I would just be calmer if I knew how we were gonna survive Christmas with 12 people stuck in a house with no hot water, no heat, and no electricity,” - “You know, she and I, we butt heads, but I can't imagine life without her,” Yeah, I know what you mean,” _ “And that night, in the darkness of a howling blizzard… I got my wish,” “Oh, lay off of him! The kid deserves a prize for telling the truth!” - “It's just a scratch,” “Oh, my gosh,” “It looks like something bit you.” “Nope! Probably a bear trap under the snow or something,” “We don't have bears here,” - “Dear Santa, I know I haven't been great this year and I'm sorry for that, but I was really hoping you could help out me and my family this Christmas,” - “So, where’s the nog? I need to get merry,” - “Come on, kids, I'm gonna teach you how to make peppermint schnapps,” - "A little sugar, a little spice, makes everything nice." - "I haven't been this hungover since the Pope died." - “But Krampus didn't take me that night… He left me, as a reminder of what happens when hope is lost, when belief is forgotten… and the Christmas spirit dies,” - “They too had given up. And eventually, so did I,” - “What’s she saying?” “This… This is all our fault… he’s come for us all... He?” - “And for the first time, I didn't wish for a miracle, I wished for them to go away… a wish I would come to regret,” - “I'm old enough to know when life is coming at me with its pants down,” - "Listen, why don't we just leave? Right? We can all pile in the truck and we'll just see as far as we can get, and we can pick up-” “The truck's gone,” - “And I just wanna say I’m sorry for… thinking you’re such a spineless dick all these years,” - “Poor bastard must have sailed clear through,” “Looks more like the opposite,” “What’d you mean?” “The glass is punched in,” - “Don't suppose you got me a backup generator for Christmas, did you?” “Yeah, it's under the tree next to your ties and underwear,” - “Blah blah blah. Bullshit, bullshit. Ah, here we go, the wishlist!” - “Enough with the sappy crap, let's open up the damn presents,” - “See? Let them out of your sight for one second, and boom, shotgun wedding,” “Can you not, please,” “Well, you ought to know,” - “What did you see up there?” “You don't wanna know, sweetheart,” "Honey, I just got my ass kicked by a bunch of Christmas cookies, so trust me when I tell you I can take it!" - “It's not starting! It's not starting! Why isn't it starting!?”

“I think our best bet is to stay put, board up all the doors and windows, and as soon as the weather breaks, we'll go find her,”

“Hey, asshole! I take back my wish, I take it all back! Give me back my family!” - “I, um-- I just wanna say thanks for, uh, you know, saving my ass back there,” - “Twisted fairytale horseshit!!” - "I've hunted a lot of game in my day, those are hooves. Big ones too. Could be an elk or a goat,” What kind of goat walks on its hind legs? - “How much ammo do you have?” “A couple shells still loaded, maybe a dozen in my pocket. Why?” - “What? “She said we're screwed,” - “They had forgotten the spirit of Christmas, the sacrifice of giving. And my family was no different,” - “And as he had for thousands of years, Krampus came not to reward, but to punish, not to give, but to take,” - “I tried to help them to believe again, but we were no longer the loving family I remembered,” - “I knew Saint Nicholas was not coming this year. Instead, it was a much darker, more ancient spirit. The shadow of Saint Nicholas. It was Krampus,” - “I just wanted Christmas to be like it used to be, but forget it! I hate Christmas! I hate all of you!” - “Evil Santa? She’ll be yammering about a rabid Easter Bunny come Spring,” - “What are we gonna tell the kids?” “I don't know. The truth?” “Sure, which version of it?” - “Yeah, well, you know-- she always gets a little weird around Christmas,” - “Baby, please don't do this, listen, we can figure something else out,” “This is how I figure things out,” - “You had mom's angel this whole time?” “Yeah, I thought you knew,” “No,” - “It was almost Christmas, but this Christmas was darker, less cheerful. But I still believed in Santa, in magic and miracles, and the hope that we could find joy again,” - “I'm sorry, I just wanted Christmas to be like it used to be,” - “Our village had given up on miracles, and on each other,” - “Remember we used to fight over who got to place her?” “Yeah, you fought dirty, I still have the scars,” “Where do you think my girls get it from?” - “I don't like this,” “Whoever did this is a demented son of a bitch,” - “Come on, come on, please,” “I'm trying! I don't even know how to drive a stick! We have a hybrid! - “The snowplow?” “The keys were in the ignition-” “And it was beat to hell!’ “But if it runs, I drive it back here, and then everyone piles in the car and follows while I clear a path in front of us,” “And go where?” “The mall doubles as an emergency shelter, and if it's empty, we'll try the police station,” “And what if they're gone too?” “Then we keep driving till we see lights or people, plowed road, somewhere safe for the kids,” “And then we bring help back here,” - “I think it's panicking, trying to get outside,” “Well, we boarded everything up,” - “What are you doing? We've got four other kids here to protect,” - “It's not what you do, it's what you believe, and what you've given up," - “I think all this might be my fault,” - “What are we gonna do now?” “We keep the fire hot,” - “Oh, hey, there you are! Hey, kiddo. we thought the sugarplum fairies may have gotten you,” - “Everybody, hold on to each other,” - “Be good,” - “Wow, what's this all about?” “It's nothing just… merry Christmas,” “Merry Christmas to you too, baby,”

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tygerbug · 1 year ago

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INDIANA JONES AND THE DIAL OF DESTINY (2023) - A local carpenter and weed dealer who transitioned into bit-part acting in the 60s, Harrison Ford is now 80 years old, and still somehow unretired. Indiana Jones, meanwhile, is supposed to be about seventy. The equivalent would be if Indy's father, Sean Connery, was still playing James Bond in 2010. I'd say that Ford (and by extension all Boomers and above) should step aside and let someone like Chris Pine, Ryan Gosling or James Marsden make a movie like this, but we'd probably get Chris Pratt, Jared Leto, or Shia LeBoeuf instead, so I'll just have to let it slide. This time.

With a $294.7 million budget (Raiders of the Lost Ark cost 20 million in 1980), a large amount of CGI has been employed, along with green screen, stunt doubling, deepfaking, de-aging, and Phoebe Waller-Bridge, to make it seem like Harrison Ford is still a viable action hero. To be clear, he absolutely is too old for this, and it is absolutely a bad idea to make this movie. The $185 million "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull" was an equally bad idea back in 2008, and it has somehow been 15 years since then.

I don't know if it's elder abuse or simply audience abuse to keep making these, but in both cases, an aging Harrison Ford is more engaged and interested in this role onscreen than he is in just about any other. 1982's Blade Runner gave us Harrison Ford in his prime, sleepwalking, disinterested and sullen. Now in 2023, Ford is visibly too old to be doing this CGI superhero bullshit, in a sequel that is forty years too little and too late, but he's committed to the role enough that he just about gets it to work. After a tepic reception at Cannes, the film is getting very good reviews and buzz, so I'll be the one to break from the pack and say that it doesn't work for me. Oh, no one involved embarrasses him or herself. Under the circumstances, it's a miracle that the movie is as good as it is. It's a bad idea that just about justifies its own existence.

A small caveat here: There may have been something wrong with the sound setup at the theater where I saw this. I couldn't understand a word being said for large chunks of the runtime, starting with a chaotic sequence in Morocco. But I don't think I actually missed anything. Maybe the sound mixing is just like that, Chris Nolan style. The opening sequence, with a younger Ford de-aged via CGI, was very dark and murky visually. In Imax, I could see the pixels on the screen, especially the bright white on black titles.

But I think the key problem for me is that I guess I don't like James Mangold as the director for this sort of thing. I haven't seen his full filmography, and he's clearly well regarded. But I have seen his dreary films about an aging Wolverine. 2013's "The Wolverine" sees the Hugh Jackman X-Men character travel to Japan and murder every single person he meets with his adamantium claws. At one point the female sidekick is mulching guys into paste with a snowplow. In 2017's Logan, he's older and unhappy about the situation, as he gets into danger with a child. These were, for me, examples of taking a superhero film way too seriously, as if gunning for the Oscar with a script that doesn't stand up to thinking about it for more than a minute or so. You wouldn't see a movie about Superman murdering a few thousand Japanese guys, because it's not a fair fight. "The Wolverine" (2013) wounds Logan just enough that he can plausibly act like the underdog, but he's a more-or-less immortal killing machine with knives coming out of his wrists.

It's hard to make a good film, and these films are polished, stylish, action-packed and memorable in many ways. But they also leave a bad taste in my mouth, comparable to the work of Zack Snyder. There's a lack of humanity to them. I could have predicted that in this Indiana Jones movie, Indy would constantly be murdering people, and that people would constantly be getting into accidents that kill them in horrific implied ways, and that the bad guys would kill any notable character that the plot isn't relying on.

That is what you get here, and admittedly it gives the film a certain energy. You don't get the sense that this is the cleaned-up Disney version of Indiana Jones, where everything is censored. You feel the danger. But it also forces me to be the party pooper and point out that this film lacks the magic that Steven Spielberg and George Lucas brought to the property. Steven Spielberg is hard to replace. He is the most famous and beloved film director of our time, and he has always brought an aura of wonder to the screen that other filmmakers can't really imitate … with only occasional exceptions like the uncanny valley animated "Tintin" film.

It's unfair to expect James Mangold to fully replace Spielberg, and under the circumstances I'm not surprised they went with a director who presumably considers his work to be Very Important Cinema. Mangold manages to deliver lots of action, and make it feel like "an Indiana Jones movie," when forty years later it probably shouldn't. But it's just not the same, for a lot of reasons.

Spielberg's Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) is an extremely tight two hours which works like clockwork. There's a lot of wit and character to it, but it's that precision filmmaking which makes many people call it "a perfect film." It doesn't slow down very often. It's always doing something interesting visually, and always moving forward. Every Indiana Jones film ever since has tried to recapture that.

We have a problem here, which is that an eighty (or seventy) year old Indiana Jones is more of a character role, who we could expect to talk about what he's learned over the years. And an Indiana Jones movie cannot slow down for something like that, even for a second. Or at least this movie can't. The script is also not funny enough to lend much character to the proceedings, so we don't get much sense of who these people are as they're speeding around on green screens at a hundred miles per hour. The end product is chaotic, often to the point of incoherence. Everyone is almost always moving at great speed, for reasons which aren't always adequately set up. To repeat, they're moving at great speed whether or not there is a good reason for them to be doing so. They are often on green screen, or visibly stunt doubled, and one of them is eighty years old.

There's also a lot of fighting on the tops of trains and from moving vehicles. Why do the bad guys take a wounded Indy along with them as they enact their entire plan? As far as I can tell, no reason is given, except that it's a movie and Indiana Jones needs to be there for it. Helena also manages to board the plane while it's in flight, and Teddy manages to get another plane going, for the reason that these are the characters who are in the film, and they need to be there for the end of it.

The script contradicts itself constantly, and feels like bits of different drafts were combined with one another randomly. Why is Indiana Jones teaching in July, preparing his students for mid-terms or finals, then also retiring in July on the same day? Why is he coincidentally teaching his disinterested class about the same subject that the film is about, when it's a touchy subject which secretly tore entire families apart in the film's backstory? Why do we keep meeting his close friends, that he's apparently spent decades with, for about two lines of dialogue before they get shot?

The result lacks character. As with the Crystal Skull film, stunt casting is used in place of giving us scenes that show who these characters are. I can believe that Antonio Banderas is a salty old scuba diver who has had many good times with Indiana Jones over the years. I can believe that because he's Antonio Banderas, but the film expects that to be enough for us, and gives him very little of interest to do. And Toby Jones' character, an academic who's not cut out for being an action hero, would be very uninteresting if it wasn't played by a character actor like Toby Jones. (Crystal Skull pulled similar shenanigans with Jim Broadbent, John Hurt, Ray Winstone, and Cate Blanchett.)

John Rhys-Davies shows up briefly as the returning character of Sallah, looking every day of his 79 years of age. I expect they wanted to keep any action with Rhys-Davies to a minimum, so we find him appearing in the movie for no real reason, except that this is an Indiana Jones movie and therefore he ought to be in it. I agree with that, but bringing these characters back one last time has an eerie David Lynch quality about it.

Mads Mikkelsen plays the memorable (if very standard) villain, a semi-retired Nazi called Dr. Voller. It's ideal casting, although it raises questions to have the 57-year-old actor playing the part in both 1944 and 1969. He is noticeably de-aged in the 1944 scenes, with a few less lines and wrinkles, but Harrison Ford manages to age 35 years in the same time (ten more than he ought to). A whole lot of CGI is used to give Indiana Jones one more adventure in 1944, and it's technically impressive, if still a bit noticeable and distracting. Toward the end of the sequence, a little too much of it takes place in the dark - not to hide the quality of the CGI but because movies tend to be too dark now.

Boyd Holbrook is memorable as a trigger-happy American who gives off Neo-Nazi vibes which aren't deeply explored. Ethann Isidore plays the sidekick, a thieving street rat kid called Teddy. Shaunette Renee Wilson plays a CIA agent, I think. Olivier Richters plays the guy who is 7 foot two. You know, I'm not sure that an 80 year old Indy and a 16 year old Teddy are really a match for this guy.

It is getting into spoiler territory to say that Karen Allen appears as Marion, although that won't surprise anyone either. It is definitely getting into spoiler territory to say what became of their relationship after the Crystal Skull film, and these are some of the only moments in the film where Harrison Ford really gets to act and lay out his character's backstory. I wish we'd gotten more of this. I've seen complaints about this storyline, saying it robs the character of a lot of his charm, and is too similar to plotlines in the Star Wars sequels, and the Blade Runner sequel. I can see that, but when sequels come this late, they really have to be about regret, and this storyline works better than anything else in the film. Although I couldn't help but think that this elderly couple began - in Raiders - with Marion punching her former Professor, who had clearly had an inappropriate relationship with her when she was a minor. The 30s were a different time, and so were the 80s. Marion's role is also very small here. It is crucial that she be present, but the film is not interested in exploring her character any more deeply than that.

We don't get Ke Huy Quan's Short Round, as his career only picked up this past year with a memorable role in Everything Everywhere All at Once. It's easy to imagine the character showing up in either Crystal Skull or this film as one of the leads, rather than these new characters, but that wasn't something they considered writing for the slightly embarrassing kid sidekick from "Temple of Doom." And speaking of embarrassing …

The "Crystal Skull" character of Mutt, played by Shia LeBoeuf, was covered in the press at the time as a character who could replace Harrison Ford in the Indiana Jones films, played by an up and coming young actor whose career was given a huge boost by the Spielberg seal of approval here, leading to the equally annoying character of Sam Witwicky in the Michael Bay Transformers films (the first in 2007). And yes, in the actual film, Shia LeBoeuf is deeply uncool and mostly just a nuisance.

Pretty much every male nerd of a certain age wanted, and still wants, to be "cool" like Indiana Jones. Any internet reviewer, of the Angry Video Game Nerd variety, will put on a complete Indiana Jones cosplay for their review of this film, as they did with Crystal Skull, and they'll think they're being slick with it. The leather jacket, the shirt, the hat, the whip. All clothing items that they already, apparently, had. Nobody wanted to be Shia LeBoeuf's Mutt Williams. He's got a 50s greaser look which doesn't suit him, making him look less like Marlon Brando than like Michael Cera's Wally Brando, from Twin Peaks. Indeed Cera might have been better in the role. Shia is a very reactive actor, and could theoretically have pulled off a Michael J. Fox type role which required that. But planting the idea that he could replace Indiana Jones nearly ruined his career here, because he very clearly doesn't have the necessary swagger. The movie itself even confirms this. In the end, Mutt picks up Indy's trademark hat, and Indy grabs it right back from him. This can be seen as a metaphor for how this series has gone, and also for how the Boomer generation, and older folks who came of age in the 60s and 70s, have refused to retire and let the younger generation take over for them.

Okay, so maybe Shia LeBoeuf was never going to replace Indiana Jones, a character originally offered to the hairy-chested Tom Selleck. But perhaps another actor could have. Harrison Ford seems iconic and irreplaceable now, but in the 70s he was a weed dealer and carpenter who did bit parts on the side. While it's fun to see Indiana Jones come back one last time, it's also a metaphor for Hollywood leaning back on successes from over four decades ago, and refusing to create anything truly new. Shia was set up to fail, because he looks and acts young in a movie that sees his youth as embarrassing. It didn't actually give us a "new Indiana Jones type," and Dial of Destiny doesn't either.

Shia LeBoeuf eventually left the Transformers franchise. We're told that he was killed off between films. And then there were the allegations, as his behavior, according to the newspapers, became ever stranger and more erratic. "FKA twigs Sues Shia LaBeouf, Citing ‘Relentless’ Abusive Relationship. The lawsuit, filed in Los Angeles by the musician, accuses the actor of sexual battery, assault and infliction of emotional distress."

Shia LeBoeuf does not appear in this film.

(ROT13 because of spoilers) Guvf vf npghnyyl n znwbe cybg cbvag. Zhgg Jvyyvnzf, yvxr Cbbpuvr ba Gur Fvzcfbaf, qvrq ba gur jnl onpx gb uvf ubzr cynarg, be engure va Ivrganz. Vg vf Vaqvnan Wbarf' terngrfg erterg gung ur qvqa'g fgbc Zhgg sebz rayvfgvat, naq vg qrfgeblrq uvf zneevntr. Ur gryyf hf gung Znevba jnf ybfg va ure tevrs, ohg vg vf irel pyrne yngre ba gung Vaql jnf gur bar jub tbg ybfg. Ubjrire, gur cybg bs gur svyz nyfb tvirf Vaql gur pyrneyl-fgngrq bccbeghavgl, ivn gvzr geniry cbjref, gb vagresrer va gvzr naq fnir Zhgg sebz qlvat. Gur svyz arire fybjf qbja ybat rabhtu gb tvir Vaql gvzr gb npghnyyl qb guvf, ohg jr pbhyq nyfb pbapyhqr gung Vaql ernyvmrf gung ur unf gur cbjre gb oevat Zhgg onpx sebz gur qrnq, naq pubbfrf abg gb qb fb. Haqrefgnaqnoyr, unir n avpr qnl.

V ernyyl gubhtug jr'q trg gjb Vaqvnan Wbarfrf gubhtu. V gubhtug gung'f jul gurl jrer frggvat hc gur gvzr geniry ryrzrag naq gur qr-ntrq Vaql ng gur ortvaavat. V gubhtug gung jr jrer tbvat gb ybbc nebhaq naq trg zber jvgu obgu Vaqvrf. V jnf abg rkpvgrq nobhg jung jr npghnyyl tbg.

I have not yet mentioned the rest of the plot, which involves the Greek mathematician Archimedes and is stupid. At one point there is a dull scuba-diving sequence where Indy is attacked by equally dull CGI eels. At another point we get the welcome return of the red line on a map which marks which country Indiana Jones is going to next.

There's also the matter of Phoebe Waller-Bridge, who wrote and starred in Fleabag on the stage in 2013, and on television in 2016 and 2019. Her character is equal parts charismatic and off-putting, attractive and reprehensible. (Phoebe also appeared in "Broadchurch," contributed to "James Bond 007: No Time to Die" and created Crashing and Killing Eve.) Despite a strong outing in Fleabag, it took Lucasfilm some time to do anything interesting with her. Her voice role as feminist android L3-37 in "Solo: A Star Wars Story" (2018) is baffling. It may have made more sense before rewrites and reshoots replaced directors Lord & Miller with Ron Howard. But it also runs afoul of a recurring problem in Star Wars, which is that droids seem to be fully developed, intelligent, sentient beings, who are never treated as if they're deserving of human rights. Star Wars never deals with this in any meaningful way, and it's an exposed electrical wire that they often get tripped up on, especially in animated television shows like The Clone Wars.

Anyway, I think this movie, the Dial of Destiny, has a problem with women. There are a lot of characters in this movie that aren't deeply explored or explained, but none of them quite like Helena Shaw, played by Phoebe Waller-Bridge. Unless I missed something during all the dialogue I couldn't understand, this doesn't feel like an actual consistent character. It feels like several very different characters from several very different drafts of several very different movies, all stapled together more or less randomly.

The performance is fine - Phoebe Waller-Bridge is charismatic and delivers every line with a wink and a twinkle. Her character is also just deeply insane, and her motivations never make sense. She is also, I think, playing an entirely different character by the end of the film, who is a more traditional hero, and expecting us to believe that she's been playing that character the entire time. As with her character in Solo, this should probably be funny, but isn't, because it's not written to be funny or make very much sense. Helena is, depending on the scene, the puppetmaster in charge of the entire adventure, or coming along reluctantly and making it up as she goes. She is also, depending on the scene, only in it for the money, or very deeply invested in this academic mystery and adventure. She is ready to sell off the Dial of Destiny to pay off gambling debts, because it's either the most meaningful thing in the world to her, or not meaningful at all. Sometimes she's a straightforward hero, or sidekick to the hero. She is also just deeply insane and often untrustworthy, going goblin mode in a way that may have been funny or interesting in a different draft of this script.

It is likely, considering her repeated lines that she's "in it for the money," that they intended Helena to be similar to Harrison Ford as Han Solo. But I think this movie has a problem with women, and failed to write her as a complete person with motivations that make sense. There is one scene in Greece where, to test how a location echoes, Helena starts shout-singing Beethoven's Fifth. Phoebe plays this a little bit wacky, so this feels like the setup for some comedic banter, probably with Indy being annoyed by this. But he just goes along with it and does the same. Helena Shaw is an eccentric performance in search of a better script which would actually explain what she's doing, or make it funnier.

The character clearly has a sense of humor, and is carrying a lot of trauma, and has a lot going on in her backstory, and none of it matters. This could have been a journey where her character changes over the course of the adventure, and maybe they think that's what they accomplished here. It feels more, to me, like this is four different characters held together by one performance.

The character we get as a result is acceptable, and at least she doesn't have the weight of having to possibly replace Indiana Jones, which made Mutt Williams so worrying. But it's also a character delivered with a wink to the audience, and another wink to Indiana Jones himself, as if this is all one grand joke that we're all in on. At no point was I in on this joke, so that didn't work for me. Throughout the film she does things that could easily cause the death of the very elderly Indiana Jones, as well as herself, and it just never matters because this script was rewritten a thousand times and has inconsistent internal logic.

Early scenes in the film set Indy up as a man out of time in a changing world, an interesting character note which is largely forgotten once he puts that hat back on, something he only does because it's an Indiana Jones movie and that's what Indiana Jones wears. For all of the film's chaotic, frenetic action, it's at its best when it's about an old man complaining about his life. There's a brief scene where Indy complains to Helena about the state of his body, and this angle really is curiously underexplored in The Dial of Destiny. At 80 years old, Harrison Ford is not a young action hero. This has become, whether Lucasfilm likes it or not, a character actor part. Phoebe Waller-Bridge is also performing Helena as more of a character-actor part. So I think this could have been a better movie than it is if they stopped pretending that this is an Indiana Jones movie and let it go completely off the rails and become a disaster. Like when a Sam Raimi or David Lynch film loses interest in what it's supposed to be doing, and pursues something more nonsensical for awhile. I think that would be better than what we got. I don't think the Dial of Destiny is bad, but I question all of the cultural decisions that led it to be made in the first place.

Does Indiana Jones, even at eighty, deserve one last hurrah? Sure, but we all deserve one last hurrah and we don't usually get them. If you wanted to make this movie, the time to do so was in the 1980s, or 90s if Ford was interested then.

Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade came out in 1989. (Remember "It belongs in a museum!" "So do you!") It was intended as the last hurrah for an aging Indiana Jones, and we've now gotten three of those, which is more than the two movies that preceded it, both of which purport to be Indiana Jones' first adventure. If you take into account the Young Indiana Jones TV series, all of Indiana Jones' live action adventures are either his first ever adventure, or his last ever adventure. Sometimes they're both - Last Crusade has a Young Indiana Jones segment (the weakest part of the film), Dial of Destiny has a Relatively Young Indiana Jones segment, and The Young Indiana Jones has Indy as a one-eyed old man. Or at least it did; George Lucas has cut those scenes from re-releases. At least we get one episode in season 5 where a bearded 1993 Harrison Ford plays the saxophone.

That wasn't what we wanted either; we wanted Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis in 1993. The Indiana Jones film series was based on older adventure movies whose influence is, I think, nowhere to be found in the new film. Those films were probably familiar to audiences in 1981 but unfamiliar to even the filmmakers in 2023. Enough time has passed that many other series trying to recapture the Indiana Jones formula have come and gone. We've had The Mummy series. We've had multiple Lara Croft Tomb Raiders. We've had multiple Scrooge McDucks. Everyone is trying to capture that sense of old-fashioned adventure with a little comedy, and they're usually better at the comedy than Dial of Destiny is.

Full disclosure: I don't think Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull is as bad as its reputation, or at least I didn't when I saw it in theaters in 2008. I've not bothered with it since. As I recall, I was invited to see it in Los Angeles, with a friend from high school and his friend group. We couldn't all get tickets together, so I was separated. I was in either another row, or in another theater entirely. After the show, they greeted me with sarcastic feigned enthusiasm, saying "Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull rocks!" and high-fiving me. I hadn't especially liked the film either, but soon realized that I'd made a complete fool of myself, in their eyes, by having any opinion about it more complicated than "wow, that was complete garbage."

Folks, Harrison Ford was 66 years old at the time. It was two decades late to be as good as "The Last Crusade." Steven Spielberg and George Lucas had both gone to some weird places in their careers, and George's contribution was always going to include some peculiar story beats and very obvious CGI. It was about aliens.

The writers included David Koepp, who as far as I could tell is a terrible writer who was often paid a lot of money to write films that turned out very good in spite of him. David Koepp was also a writer of The Dial of Destiny. It's hard to tell, from a finished film, whether the actual screenplay was well written or not. People in Hollywood know this - that a bad movie can come from a good script, and that sometimes they know enough to judge a writer for that script rather than that film. David Koepp is credited for writing films that I like, so I might wonder why I was so convinced he's not a good writer. But those movies were mostly based on strong IP which did a lot of the work for him. It felt like Panic Room and War of the Worlds (2005) succeeded in spite of their screenplays. And what about the Johnny Depp thriller Secret Window (2004)? Show me what he can do without Steven Spielberg to clean up his messes.

Anyway, my expectations were not that high for Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull. I wasn't expecting something as good as Raiders or Last Crusade. I was expecting an elderly Harrison Ford, with a pretty bad script, and pretty obvious CGI, that would be trying to look like a vintage adventure visually but be easily dated to 2008 throughout. Dated before it was even released. I expected some distracting casting, of recognizable famous faces. I expected that Steven Spielberg and George Lucas would both be so successful now, and so deeply into their own individual eccentricities, that they wouldn't have been able to agree on what this movie should actually be, and that it would show.

I think it was a bad idea to have made that movie. I expected, more or less, what we got. And Steven Spielberg happens to be a great director who gave us, under these unusual circumstances, some of that Spielberg magic.

That magic is not present in The Dial of Destiny. As a movie, The Dial of Destiny is reasonably well made. It's action-packed. There is some obvious CGI, but it's trying to do things which are very difficult and expensive to do, like de-aging Harrison Ford or a cartoonish parade for the Apollo 11 astronauts.

Dial of Destiny is an okay movie. A lot of people are saying it's better than The Crystal Skull. I don't think The Crystal Skull is as bad as people are saying, and I don't think Dial of Destiny is as good as people are saying. I don't think either are fully successful in what they're trying to do. Indiana Jones really was too old for this, and Hollywood could have let some writer come up with a new idea instead.

I think it was a bad idea to have made both of these movies. I'm not sorry I watched them, because I'm old enough to be nostalgic for the property, but I also think they're trying to recapture something which they would have struggled to recapture forty years ago. I think, under the circumstances, both movies are pretty good and have some pretty good stuff in them.

I am also begging, begging, begging Hollywood to stop making movies like this.

These sequels that come twenty, thirty, forty years late. We watch them because they're familiar, but we don't need Indiana Jones, we need the next thing that could be as big as Indiana Jones. There won't be a sequel to the Dial of Destiny forty years from now, with a 120 year old Harrison Ford. Or maybe there will, because Hollywood wants to keep repeating itself. And we'll all be dead or dying from climate change by then, so what does it even matter?

I love slop, I love garbage. Pour it into my mouth.

#indiana jones #indiana jones and the kingdom of the crystal skull #dial of destiny #harrison ford #steven spielberg #phoebe waller bridge #indiana jones and the dial of destiny #george lucas #karen allen

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