INDIANA JONES AND THE KINGDOM OF THE CRYSTAL SKULL Featurette - "Pre Production" (2008) 

Just !

Stephen Spielsberg is the bomb ,Star Wars ,E.T and Raiders of the lost Arch

Even the sword fighting on moving vehicles, monkey vine-swinging, refrigerator-surviving a nuclear blast and cliff jumping? Except for those things, I think it's pretty good.

Certainly didn't fail financially.

I agree. Some of Crystal Skull was corny, and other parts were brilliant. Lets Hope the next chapter is well worth the ticket price and 2.5 hours in the theater.

they can see if the scene works and build sets very easily and try out rough ideas its a great way to do it and impressive that they did it like this back then already

Complete agreement.

What did you think about Dial of Destiny?

Wtf?

@@BroughtCat I understand and agree completely. The movie is incredibly frustrating and badly paced. What's more the story somehow feels like it just never gets started. It sputters along and never gets anywhere. It's all surface level filler. One aneurism inducing nightmare after another. The most agonizing example of this is the "it drops three times" waterfall sequence, which is so bereft of cinematic ANYTHING that it's astonishing to me Steven Spielberg had anything to do with it. It feels like what would result if a bunch of people who'd never made a movie before sat in a room banging their heads trying to come up with ideas, and then wrote down anything they could come up with. All these years later I can't believe an Indiana Jones movie is not only the worst movie of Spielberg's career, but one of the worst movies I've ever seen.

It just helps them make sure the scene is going to "work" before they get to set and start shooting, saves a lot of time while shooting. Especially for big action set pieces.

It's called pre-visualization. People have been doing it since the beginning of cinema. It's so you know before you get to set where you need set the camera, what lense to use, where to put the lights. It saves a lot of time and money. Stars are expensive, so you need to have it all worked out before the talent arrives on set. Hitchcock used to storyboard his entire movie, shot for shot. He would say to his actors, "would you like to see the movie?" He would open a large book, containing every shot drawn almost graphic novel style. Really cool!

I think ILM and Lucas were definitely responsible for the cheesiness - notice how there's an abundance of stupid CGI critters (groundhogs, monkeys, ants) that just pull you out of any drama and make you think you're in a lighthearted kid's film. There's this strange color-grading done afterwards and additional lighting that puts a cartoonish haze over the whole thing. But Spielberg had to approve that stuff, maybe a lot of it was done thinking "well I've got the might of ILM behind me and they say yes to anything, so what's stopping this particularly ridiculous set-piece idea from happening". The mechanics behind the stone temple were VERY stupid, as you said. People complained about this film when it came out because it had aliens in it, as if that were the breaking point in a series that featured ghosts shooting out of boxes and melting peoples' faces, hearts being ripped out of chests with bare hands, and a magical cup that endows everlasting life. That's not too much to ask an audience in one of these films because the crux of the stories revolve around discovering the fantastical, esoteric, mythical... But it's the stupid oversights of what's impractical or impossible for stuff that's meant to be based in our own reality that pull you out - a guy swinging on a bunch of vines through a jungle with a bunch of monkeys, a ridiculously convoluted mechanized hidden entranceway on a stone pyramid that defies any possibilities for construction methods of the era, surviving a nuclear blast in a fridge that's tossed across a desert, the breakaway stone trapdoors that some guy can just push his face through with ease. Then there's my hatred for the character of Mac...it goes on..

@@joelbennett9014 Since the release of Indy 4 I was reading comments about whats wrong with that movie and just everybody is right. Its just too cheap and childish to be a real Indiana Jones movie. In that time Spielberg had his "filter period" I would say. He did it with Minority Report 2001 and War of the Worlds 2005. I guess this strange filter is only there to hide most of the bad animations. And I saw the whole Making Of from Indy 4 - Harrison Ford didnt needed so many sidekicks. He was in a very good shape to fight alone against the russians. Irina Spalko is not evil enough, she didnt do anything bad. She looks more like a teacher. I cant believe that this movie was from the same people. The same great Mr. Spielberg. Nothing of this is his style. There is no heart in that movie.

​@@ranulf8477 Come to think of it, Minority Report did have a lot of that extra washed out lighting added in post. I thought it worked OK for that film because it kind of lent to the futuristic/dreamy feel, bright lights washing out color. I thought that was all ILM in this film but maybe Spielberg had a hand in it after all.. Anyway, I'll be very surprised if #5 is any redemption. Temple of Doom was kind of a let-down compared to Raiders though (not nearly as down as this one), and then they made Crusaders which for me is the best of all. But Harrison is 80 now...I don't think it's possible without a story that works around his age, I don't want to see any geriatric curb stomping like DeNiro in The Irishman...that was just sad.

@@joelbennett9014 Temple of doom is just awesome

​@@laiobiwan It's still a great fun film with lots of memorable moments, but in comparison to 1 and 3? It gets a tad too shlocky at times. The female protagonist was such a terrible choice too. That's just my opinion in retrospect though, I loved it as a kid.

I know. Chief among this movie's sins is how repellently ugly it is. I can't believe they have the audacity to say they were mimicking Slocombe's look. The opening credits sequence to Last Crusade alone, even before we meet young Indy, contains better cinematography than does the whole of Crystal Skull. An unwatchable nightmare.

100%. It's what I always say about "Skull"; there was a lot wrong with that film, but the cinematography was just hideous. From the moment Indy's standing in front of the warehouse, it was apparent that Janusz had sucked every bit of nuance and shadow from the cinematography. It's honestly shocking that Spielberg looked at that and thought it worked. Thank God that Papamichael brought back the cinematic shadows with the new one.

@@redadamearth Idunno man. Papamichael is no Slocombe. Everything I've seen so far looks like a video game or an HBO Max limited series.

I blame Lucas. Spielberg clearly had it together, but gave too much leavage to him. The aliens for example was Lucas's idea, and no doubt the stuff like monkeys and the groundhogs as well. Feels like the campy stuff from Prequels, which weren't really at home there either.

I agree that the first 3 are the REAL jewels of the entire Saga! The Last 2 will always be looked at as not a "Cherry on the Top", but movies that were good enough to Rent on a Saturday night, but not great enough to fork over $10 bucks at the movie theater. And i also would have preferred a slightly longer Indy 4 as well, instead of hitting the exact 2 hr. mark. If i'm correct.

Guess you aren't a true Indy fan 🤷‍♂

It's much, much worse. GB16 is a reboot that didn't touch the original story. I don't care about some tangential reboot, however bad it was. This thing messed up the original trilogy. Ghostbusters Afterlife is by far the bigger offender when it comes to Ghostbusters. Reboots can be ignored. A soulless, corporate sequel that says Egon lost his marbles and Ray turned against him is a travesty.

Because Spielberg literally didn't give a shit. He never wanted to make a fourth Indy movie. And he DEFINITELY didn't want to make this one. Lucas pressured him for years with this ridiculous story about aliens and every time, Spielberg would say, no way. Finally, after relenting to Lucas, who wouldn't let it go, Frank Darabont wrote a VERSION of what Lucas wanted and his script was far superior to the one they eventually wrote. Marion was in it from the beginning, practically and the tough as nails character she always was, the alien stuff wasn't so corny, Sallah was in it, it had great dialogue - it was the best possible version of what Lucas wanted - and both Spielberg and Ford LOVED Darabont's script - but Lucas rejected it immediately for some inexplicable reason. So they had David Koepp, one of the worst screenwriters in Hollywood, come in and re-write it into the travesty it became and because Lucas has TERRIBLE taste, he said, "Let's do this one". But Spielberg and Ford BOTH hated Koepp's version. But because Lucas was still trying get all the money back from his divorce (the prequels didn't earn him enough, apparently), Spielberg relented and convinced Ford, so they did it. In other words, this was NOT a movie that Spielberg was happy with. He hated the script. He hated the idea. So he basically just did it for Lucas. That's why the film looks and feels so lazy. Not even Ford looks happy to be there. It ended up making a fortune, because there hadn't been an Indy movie in so long (and because a lot of people forgot just how great the originals were in comparison), but I knew from the moment I saw the how the scene in front of the warehouse looked that something was REALLY off. In the performances, the lighting, everything. The thing is, Spielberg's such a good director that he's always going to know how to frame a shot, so it's not that the film is badly directed, necessarily (although I'm convinced that many scenes were shot by a second unit), it's just that almost every decision made it in was wrong. And the EDITING is just totally off, with glaring continuity mistakes in many scenes. It's just a disaster. The Mac character makes no sense. The Oxley character makes no sense. It makes ZERO sense how and why Marion would be where she is in the film. It was a wreck.

@@redadamearth "So they had David Koepp, one of the worst screenwriters in Hollywood" Jurassic Park, Mission: Impossible, Snake Eyes, Panic Room, Spider-Man (2002)... Right, one of the worst LOL

I actually agree. I grew up loving the series and over the years I’ve liked the sequels less and less. Especially Last Crusade when you realize it’s a poor man’s remake of Raiders.

Not even close. Temple was ballsier.