[worry]

I watched Finding Dory. Definitely not in the top tier of Pixar films, but still really enjoyable. It takes Dory's memory issues seriously, has a neat flashback structure with a -- dare I say it -- a-dory-ble young Dory and her family, and does a few really neat animation tricks featuring cephalopods. As far as Pixar movies focusing on previously secondary characters, this one is head and shoulders above the Tow-Mater movie.

[QuickTidal]

TEMPLE OF DOOM is the best Indy movie because of how much braver it is than RAIDERS.

[worry]

On the one hand, Doom ups the "classic movie magic" of those childhood serials' explicit racism/Orientalism to unforeseen heights. On the other hand, it has a thrilling & lengthy mine cart chase, the best conveyor belt fight in history, and a rollicking rope bridge fight. That said, 1 & 3 have less racism and both include incredibly disgusting bad guy deaths on top of the solid action. I give this one to champ on the correct rankings!

[Andorion]

th

QuickTidal, on 18 December 2016 - 10:22 PM, said:

TEMPLE OF DOOM is the best Indy movie because of how much braver it is than RAIDERS.

death rattle, on 18 December 2016 - 10:32 PM, said:

On the one hand, Doom ups the "classic movie magic" of those childhood serials' explicit racism/Orientalism to unforeseen heights. On the other hand, it has a thrilling & lengthy mine cart chase, the best conveyor belt fight in history, and a rollicking rope bridge fight. That said, 1 & 3 have less racism and both include incredibly disgusting bad guy deaths on top of the solid action. I give this one to champ on the correct rankings!

Temple of Doom was a cringeworthy watch for me. The basic premise - the human sacrificing Thugee cult who worshipped Kali - was a myth concocted by the British in the 19th C. It enabled them to classify certain tribes as Criminal and imprison them and destroy their culture.

[EmperorMagus]

I just watched The Force Awakens.

This movie could have been so so good. I'm really sad now.

This post has been edited by EmperorMagus: 19 December 2016 - 10:13 PM

[Macros]

[QuickTidal]

Nothing spells Christmas like the gory red band trailer for ALIEN:COVENANT

https://youtu.be/H0VW6sg50Pk

This post has been edited by QuickTidal: 25 December 2016 - 11:39 AM

[Traveller]

So, Sleeping Beauty. (It's on tv, the kids are watching it again).

A witch says the baby will prick her finger on a spindle on her 16th Birthday. So they send the girl away, missing out on her entire childhood; but then bring her back to the castle the day BEFORE her 16th Birthday?

You'd think it would work better the other way around. Also, when she does go to sleep the fairies put everyone else to sleep.. why? This film makes no sense! At least the original Grimm tale didn't suffer from glaring plotholes!

(Yes I'm on the beer. I've aready been told not to rant at the tv as it's only a kids film!)

This post has been edited by Traveller: 27 December 2016 - 06:16 PM

[Primateus]

Apt, on 18 December 2016 - 07:32 PM, said:

We've had this discussion many times.

My position is that the old Indiana Jones films are not as good as people remember them and that, depending upon your reaction to the Fridge scene, you will either love or hate Indy 4. I thought Indy was fantastic.

Typically I then supplement this opinion by stating that the Star Wars prequels are just as good if not better than the originals, and then people really lose their shit.

What insanity is this?

[Andorion]

Primateus, on 27 December 2016 - 07:05 PM, said:

Apt, on 18 December 2016 - 07:32 PM, said:

We've had this discussion many times.

My position is that the old Indiana Jones films are not as good as people remember them and that, depending upon your reaction to the Fridge scene, you will either love or hate Indy 4. I thought Indy was fantastic.

Typically I then supplement this opinion by stating that the Star Wars prequels are just as good if not better than the originals, and then people really lose their shit.

What insanity is this?

Well, Temple of Doom was awful. The other two were tretty good though - especially Last Crusade.

[amphibian]

Temple of Doom is bad, but it's very well executed bad. The specific kind of bad it is doesn't really pop up for someone who isn't in Bangladesh/Nepal/India/South Asia where they say the cult lives.

It's the kind of movie that probably will never get made again by a big name crew.

The entire concept of Indiana Jones is pretty shitty though. He goes around robbing native treasures and we cheer him on. Temple of Doom is the only one of the original three that doesn't have Indy stealing anything first. He's just running from a crime boss.

It's weird how Spielberg keeps making these movies that are nostalgic for times when people treated people of color real shitty.

[Aptorian]

QuickTidal, on 25 December 2016 - 11:39 AM, said:

Nothing spells Christmas like the gory red band trailer for ALIEN:COVENANT

OH COME ON. Now they are just fucking shitting on the audience.

What was the main complaint about the last Alien film? The lack of security and the idiocy of the scientists landing on an Alien planet. What is one of the central scenes they show in this trailer? A bunch of idiots landing on a planet, with no biological protection and a piece of fucking fauna infecting one of them and then another one getting facehugged.

God damn it.

Let me guess, there's also an android on the ship and he's a bad android.

This post has been edited by Apt: 28 December 2016 - 10:43 AM

[worry]

Every one of us has a good android and a bad android inside us.

[worry]

What do you mean?

[QuickTidal]

amphibian, on 28 December 2016 - 07:31 AM, said:

Temple of Doom is bad, but it's very well executed bad. The specific kind of bad it is doesn't really pop up for someone who isn't in Bangladesh/Nepal/India/South Asia where they say the cult lives.

It's the kind of movie that probably will never get made again by a big name crew.

The entire concept of Indiana Jones is pretty shitty though. He goes around robbing native treasures and we cheer him on. Temple of Doom is the only one of the original three that doesn't have Indy stealing anything first. He's just running from a crime boss.

It's weird how Spielberg keeps making these movies that are nostalgic for times when people treated people of color real shitty.

Wtf?

First off, can we not pretend the items Indy has searched for/found are real. They are not. The Ark, the Holy Grail are fictional...but let's pretend they are real for arguments sake to deal with your statement of "robbing native treasures" ..they find the Ark in Egypt (not the location it was originally nor event remotely connected to the people for which it stands as a supposed artifact (Abrahamic Relions, more importantly Judaism. Leaving aside the fact that it was supposedly moved a dozen times since it sat in the place of its creation (Solomon's Temple) so it's not remotely "native" to the county it was found in. And when dealing with the Ark and RAIDERS, he was literally rescuing it from pillaging Nazi supernatural hunters hell bent on having it.

The Grail, a supposed Christian relic, was found is Hatay (which is what Petra, Jordan stands in for in the film) a Turkish province...nowhere near even the closest of the Crusader kingdoms it was supposedly lost amongst...and certainly nowhere near the place of its creation in Jerusalem at the crucifixion, none of which is "native" to anyone in the film.

Young Indy finds the Cross of Coronado in bloody Utah....so I'm not sure how that Spanish treasure is "stolen by Indy from its native land". Sufficed that he steals it from grave robbers and eventually lands it in a museum.

The beginning of TEMPLE actually DOES have an artifact....it had Indy having found the ashes of Nurhaci (Manchu dynasty imperial) for Lao Che....and yes while this was done for money and is fortune hunting in nature...I think it's fair to say he paid for this in the film. But aside from that, finding an artifact in China for a Chinese busniessman/mobster is not exactly robbing it from its native country.

The crystal skulls are a debunked 1970's fakery that were never assigned to any country officially, and were 19th century European manufactured and claimed to be preColumbian in nature. They never were. And the artifact at the beginning of that film is an alien corpse in an Area 51 Warehouse on US soil. So again, doesn't fit your criteria complaint.

The only one in the spat of movies which you might call Indy stealing from a native culture, would be the golden idol at the beginning of RAIDERS...but I say again, it's completely fictional and never exitsted to begin with.

We cheer Indy on because he is artifact hunting around the globe in an era when this was quite common. We cheer him on because he's usually doing it for altruistic/study reasons. He is asked to find the Ark (remember, it's not his idea to find it) to keep it from the Nazis...same deal with the Grail...he is attempting to preserve history most of the time.

Above and beyond all else, usually the treasures being hunted in this genre (tomb raider, uncharted) transcend the countries of their origin simply by nature of how old they are. As a student of history, for example, what country do Roman artifacts belong to? Considering the breadth of what Ancient Rome covered and current political boundaries...what about Mongol artifacts? Again, cosmdierig alll the countires that empire existed over...Alexander? Same deal. Most of the time we are talking about ancient artifacts that just happen to have ended up in the countries they reside in because of geography,...not culture.

Look at the Wetsern Xia. originally the Tangut....but trampled by the Mongols...and destroyed. Who do any tiny amount of remaining artifacts belong to? China? Mongolia? Tibet? Vietnam? The tombs (one thing that remains) sits in China...so it's a Chinese relic....even though it's not. Jurisdictional geography is everything.

I find it's poor logic to assume that because an ancient artifact resides in a certain place that it inhereantly belongs to any one modern culture. And don't get me started on places where the governments won't fund digs...like in Ephesus Turkey...that ancient city is only about 20% uncovered...and the rest is stiting right there...but the govt refuses to give more money to local historians to unearth it to preserve it....but won't let outsiders offering the funds and manpower do the same. Some truly amazing sites around the globe are left to be destroyed by the elements or remain unfounded...simply because modern gov'ts could not give a shit (but won't allow other historians to give a shit either).

So if Indiana Jones, at the tail end of the heyday of world explorations treasure hunting, is out to grab some fictional ones and protect them...I'm well okay with that.

But the bottom line here is that two out of the three main artifacts Indy hunts for (excusing the Chankarah stones as he has no interest in keeping that) In the 4 films, and ignoring that the are fictional...are western religious artifacts anyways....and the third is a well known European fakery...yeah, Spielberg is fine to me. Or would you like to tell the famous Jewish filmmaker that his film about finding the biggest Jewish artifact of all is somehow treating his own people bad? I'd be interested to hear How you'd go about that.

[worry]

Steven Spielberg is Jewish?!?!

[amphibian]

In the beginning of Raiders, Jones is being chased by an angry tribe after stealing idol that's pretty clearly set up to be there and stay there. It looks like the tribe actually struck a deal with another archaeologist which might have seen them get share of any $ or more carefully deal with the statue than "swipe from the dirty natives'n'stick it in a Western museum". The Last Crusade begins with young Indy stealing the fancy cross from people who stole it - thereby "proving" that Indy is the better and more conscientious stealer.

But it's Indy... We don't give a shit really what happens to any things or anyone not Indy or his friends in these movies, do we?

There's long been a model of "Western museums can preserve objects and give context better than the places where the objects came from". This is highly fraught with problems and leads to looting, to the museums and entire countries gaining wealth at the cost of the less developed places, and we're now seeing very complex cases in litigation and in non-legal negotiations about who owns what and where it should reside/be shown to which public.

These are extremely complex things and yeah, Jones is better than Schliemann dynamiting Ilium to get at his desired layer, but... not by much. The 1930s/1940s model of hyped up action-packed pulp archaeology is full of shit and I don't like it, even if I did enjoy some parts of the Indy franchise.

Look at the Hellboy franchise for some "hunting for mysterious local object/monster without exploitation being firmly in the background" pulp archaeology/monster hunting. This type of thing is quite possible to be done and people are now doing it. I'm not moaning that the movies were made. I'm saying that they exist because of a certain mindset from the funders, the writers, the filmmakers, and the audience. We would probably be better people if these movies were different, but we're not.

[Grief]

QuickTidal, on 28 December 2016 - 09:54 PM, said:

We cheer Indy on because he is artifact hunting around the globe in an era when this was quite common. We cheer him on because he's usually doing it for altruistic/study reasons. He is asked to find the Ark (remember, it's not his idea to find it) to keep it from the Nazis...same deal with the Grail...he is attempting to preserve history most of the time.

amphibian, on 28 December 2016 - 10:36 PM, said:

There's long been a model of "Western museums can preserve objects and give context better than the places where the objects came from". This is highly fraught with problems and leads to looting, to the museums and entire countries gaining wealth at the cost of the less developed places, and we're now seeing very complex cases in litigation and in non-legal negotiations about who owns what and where it should reside/be shown to which public.

The justifications given for Indy essentially seems to stem from the way that the narrative frames him. Any moral issues with what he's doing are conveniently eliminated by the fact that he's protecting/rescuing the artifacts from the unambigious "baddies" who are worse than him. This is a common device across plenty of stories and genres, but hardly one that is without problems. We must remember that the creators have control over the whole narrative. They control the whole fictional universe, so it's relatively straightforward for them to present any action as being justified within that universe. It isn't simply a question of whether the actions are justified within that universe, but why the narrative is written that way to begin with (and if it's fine that it is). There are plenty of books where it is 'justified' for colonialists to act abhorrently because within those fictional universes the natives are cariacature barbarians and the colonialist actions benefit mankind. There are plenty of books where it is 'justified' for men to restrict women to their 'sphere' because within those fictional universes that is right and proper and to do otherwise would be harmful. There's a vital distinction between actions being justified in-universe -- by the logic and narrative of that universe -- and narratives being justified in a broader sense.

Does arguing that Indy is fine because he's the 'lesser of two evils' really work when it could have been written in any number of alternative ways? He could just as easily have been written as a local archaeologist rather than a Western adventurer who ultimately moves those artifacts to the West, could he not? I'm not sure that the ways in which the narrative goes out of its way to present Indy as a 'good guy' in-universe (he's doing it to protect artifacts, he's altruistic, he's fighting the Nazi's...) makes a difference when discussing the issue on the level I think Amph is addressing. Indeed, isn't that just part of the issue itself? Does it take a narrative that could easily be seen as morally dubious -- 'Westerners compete to take precious artifacts from elsewhere to the West, and one group succeeds' -- and frame it such that the victorious Westerners end up presented pretty straightforwardly as good saviours and the outcome as positive.

[QuickTidal]

And I think you're all putting far too much stock and thought into what are meant to be pulp adventure serials...but that's just me, I guess. I view them completely differently.

[worry]

No work of art is just itself.