Response to RedLetterMedia's TPM Review (108 Page PDF)

[Havok]

Really which one? They are all fantasy. The only thing they all have in common is that they prove that, in universe, that they aren't just fantasy.

The overall tone of the films is that Indy goes from a non believer to a believer. The 4th movie fits fine in the overall tone of the films.

Edit: And since you changed your post while I was writing mine, no, retard it is nothing like flying saucers showing up in the LOTR, as that is one coherent story and Indy is a series of separate adventures that specifically address subjects that have zero proof to back them up until Indy finds it.

[Bakustra]

Crystal Skull's fridge scene was silly and the stuff about aliens seemed foreign to the Christian religious mythos of the series. Totally unlike Temple of Doom, with realistic scenes like falling out of an airplane and hitting a mountain being okay because you're in a rubber raft, and evil Hindu wizards with real working pagan sorcery that can actually rip your heart out. Hur hur.

The question then becomes "Which fits better with the overall tone of the films better?", not "Which one was more realistic?". It'd be like if in Lord of the Rings, flying saucers suddenly came and abducted Gandalf; both flying saucers and magic and equally unrealistic, but one of them fits in with the rest of the story better.

Also, going through the other posts here, I would not have expected a forum for Star Trek and Star Wars fans to hate geeks so much.

I guess you might not have noticed this, but the first three Indiana Jones movies were set in the 1930s, and featured elements of 1930s pop- strange cults, savage natives, exotic locales, lost historical treasures, the Nazis, all the elements of the pulp magazines. Crystal Skull was set in the 1950s, and featured elements of 1950s pop- the Red Menace, aliens, nuclear weaponry, and spies, the elements of the early Cold War. This was an explicit, deliberate decision by Lucas and Spielberg to work with Harrison Ford aging. Would you have preferred Indy suddenly aging twenty years between Last Crusade and a hypothetical Indy 4 without any acknowledgment of that gap in time? Or would you have preferred to pretend that the 1950s were exactly like the 1930s and so the tropes and elements of the earlier films would mesh well with the different setting? Even nuking the fridge can be argued to fit in well with the general lack of understanding about radiation at the time- witness Leslie Groves and Robert Oppenheimer inspecting the Trinity site with only plastic overshoes for protection, or the Ford Nucleon.

The Indiana Jones movies are very consciously period pieces adapting aspects of the pop-culture of the time. See the raft ride from the abandoned plane in Temple of Doom, the guys with swords out of nowhere in Raiders of the Lost Ark, or Indy stumbling into an impromptu meeting with Hitler and/or the Brotherhood of the Cruciform Sword in Last Crusade. None of those are realistic things, but they are part and parcel of the pop culture of the time. Oh wait, but those don't count for... some reason that boils down to personal taste. Personal taste is well and good. But when personal taste is propped up into a sham of universality, that is a problem.

[Vympel]

Oh wait, but those don't count for... some reason that boils down to personal taste

I think that's being too charitable. I think its down to "it doesn't count because they weren't new so its not hip to think they suck."

[Elfdart]

Really which one? They are all fantasy. The only thing they all have in common is that they prove that, in universe, that they aren't just fantasy.

No kidding! I've made the point before: It doesn't make any difference if you refer to little green men with superhuman powers as Martians or Leprechauns since for all practical purposes they are the same thing.

[Batman]

It does to me-for the green men with superpowers to be Martians, they have to be roughly human sized

[DonZabu]

Really which one? They are all fantasy. The only thing they all have in common is that they prove that, in universe, that they aren't just fantasy.

No kidding! I've made the point before: It doesn't make any difference if you refer to little green men with superhuman powers as Martians or Leprechauns since for all practical purposes they are the same thing.

Yes it does. One abducts people and stick probes up their asses. The other carries a crock of gold around and gets drunk at football games. And as separate entities, they're more suited to certain kinds of stories and settings than the other.

Oh wait, but those don't count for... some reason that boils down to personal taste

I think that's being too charitable. I think its down to "it doesn't count because they weren't new so its not hip to think they suck."

That's not how I judge things at all. Ix-nay on the umping to conclusions-jay.

[Elfdart]

Yes it does. One abducts people and stick probes up their asses. The other carries a crock of gold around and gets drunk at football games. And as separate entities, they're more suited to certain kinds of stories and settings than the other.

As Carl Sagan pointed out in The Demon-Haunted World, stories of aliens abducting yokels, fondling their privates, imparting "wisdom" or some other boon or gift, then turning the lone bumpkin loose are no different from those involving fairies, leprechauns, elves, sprites, nymphs or other creatures that only exist in the overheated imaginations of hicks.

[Havok]

I love how people think that the 'stories' about aliens are any different than the 'myths' about other things before aliens were 'invented'.

[DonZabu]

Never have I seen the smiley be used so many times in a single thread.

[Bakustra]

Never have I seen the smiley be used so many times in a single thread.

Out of curiosity, do you have a substantive response to the post I made in response to you?

[The Romulan Republic]

I love how people think that the 'stories' about aliens are any different than the 'myths' about other things before aliens were 'invented'.

There's a difference. Science does not forbid the existence of aliens, nor, theoretically, aliens visiting Earth.

[DonZabu]

Never have I seen the smiley be used so many times in a single thread.

Out of curiosity, do you have a substantive response to the post I made in response to you?

Oh, sorry.

I suppose you could make the argument that aliens and nukes fit well into a 1950's setting, but the fridge and the standing-within-50-yards-of-the-mushroom-cloud-and-surviving thing is really pushing it in terms of suspension of disbelief, especially when the media at the time was all about avoiding nukes.

[Bakustra]

Nah, it's fine. I think that the scene was over-the-top, but on the other hand, you have the entirety of Venice in Last Crusade, which is still pretty out there, or the parachute-emergency-lifeboat in Temple of Doom... I just can't get too mad about it.

[Havok]

I love how people think that the 'stories' about aliens are any different than the 'myths' about other things before aliens were 'invented'.

There's a difference. Science does not forbid the existence of aliens, nor, theoretically, aliens visiting Earth.

I'm not talking about the probability of alien life, I'm talking about Hickwood McRedneck claiming he was kidnapped and anal probed by Mulder's greys.

And unless science has somehow not forbid FTL, there have not, nor will there be visits from aliens, ummm, ever.

It is just modern day Leperchauns, or unicorns or faierie folk.