So we have no reason to believe Mutt Williams has any globe-trotting experience whatsoever. He’s a motorcycle repair-guy/greaser. When he sees a scorpion in the cemetery, he reacts with an “I’m a city mouse” look of horror. Anyway, 45 minutes later, Indy and Company are trying to escape the Ruskies, when he and Marion get caught in quicksand. They tell Mutt to go find something to pull them back up. And what does he bring?
A giant, giant snake. Which he somehow knows is not poisonous.
Perhaps he once found a snake like that inside the transmission of a motorcycle, and learned all about it? Or perhaps his gang is known as “The Snakes,” and each member had to research his own personal snake nickname (a la Kill Bill)?
Can you sense my disdain for this sloppy, sloppy film?
My guess is, they really wanted a hilarious scene where Indy is afraid of a snake, and they were too lazy to figure out a better way to do it. But it’s okay, because the scene was so very funny. Oh wait, it wasn’t. I’m going to go lie down.
For the record (and Carlos Hann can vouch for this), before the movie started, I said, “I guarantee that they will find some way of having Harrison Ford NEED to touch a snake in this film. Either he will use it as a rope, or, more awesomely, he will have to use it as a whip.”
Sadly, my dream of snake-whipping didn’t come true.
We were also both relieved when my other prediction (Indy will give his hat to Mutt at the end of the movie) was thankfully thwarted. But Indy and Marion getting married? In a church? Whatever.
You should make a commitment to posting a new complaint about this movie every three months for the next five years.
I like fenzel’s idea.
I was more-than-half expecting Indy to give Mutt a new bike at the end, and was a little pleased when this didn’t occur.
Here’s ME overthinking it. I sort of thought he was the rebellious kid that, alas, simply hadn’t been living up to his potential until this coming-of-age adventure takes place with his, gasp, DAD. Doubtless, Marion didn’t really want him to be a biker buffoon. His mentor, after all, was a big-name archaeologist (that we, of course, had never heard of before, despite his being such an allegedly close friend of both Marian and Indy– I’m reminded of 006 in “Goldeneye;” I remember my dad laughing in the theater when they said “006” during this trailer: http://youtube.com/watch?v=HHFXthl5IJo and I realize why now: who the eff had ever heard of 006 before?). Hanging out with his mom and Prof. Ox must have had *some* positive effects on his character and general knowledge. Do you really think Marion would raise a moron? No! She had tried to make him go to school and he quit, remember? His dumbassity is self-imposed because he chooses the greaser lifestyle as a way to rebel and stick it to whomever he thinks deserves the sticking. Rebelious teenager may be a totally overdone stereotype, but c’mon, it isn’t like Spielberg was actually trying to win any Oscars here– it was all about leeching off of a franchise and making a profit (“Clone Wars” anyone?). So the easy way out was making a kid like him that is, *I* think, flat in the complexity written into him. It’s convenient for the writers, after all, to have a kid that makes wise-cracks one second and then can finish Indy’s sentences the next.
And speaking of Spielberg and franchises, you’ve heard about Jurassic Park IV, right?
I think Spielberg misses being the box office king. In the last 15 years, he hasn’t had any monster hits – not since Jurassic Park, right? War of the Worlds barely cracked 200 million. I personally love his recent stuff, and so do a lot of critics. But this guy once made a string of massively popular films, and I think THAT kind of popularity is important to him. He made Crystal Skull NOT for the money, but because he wanted the biggest movie of the summer.
And you know what’s great? He got beaten by Jon Favreau:
http://www.boxofficemojo.com/yearly/chart/?yr=2008&p=.htm
I had an intense migraine after watching this movie. Here’s why:
1. The Russian chick apparently forgets she’s Russian half way through the movie and yells “Pronto” to an underling! Not as bad as Sean Connery’s Russian in Hunt for Red October, but right up there.
2. Aliens. Seriously, there could have been a less lame way to approach it, but then they would have had to drop the Mutt\son angle. One of these things is not like the other….
3. A refridgerator that survives an atomic blast. Really? Mine was dented from a hockey stick slash.
4. Shia Laboeuf was the best actor in the movie. Everyone else seemed to phone it in. Apparently he didn’t get the memo that it was all about getting paid.
5. Telepathic chick- they could have done so many cool things with this, but instead they dropped that ball. Maybe they spent all the money on Russian Chick’s wig.
6. Triple agent? Betrayal is nothing new, but holy cow they could have done this better! If Harrison Ford was on some sort of old age medication, why not make him the one to be rescued? Then we would have gotten the son storyline, the weird aliens and the betrayals with equal weight.
God help us all if they decide to make another.
Also,
Why didn’t someone go, Hey, The ark of the covenant, lets take that too?
Seriously.