Tuesday, May 20, 2008

The morning after

OK, some time has passed and I've formed some criticisms of "Kingdom of the Crystal Skull" (see my earlier review from last night).

My biggest nitpick is that Karen Allen, returning as Marion Ravenwood from "Raiders," is grossly underused. She and Indy have some worthwhile exchanges after she first shows up about halfway through the film. But then for the rest of the movie she has nothing to do but alternately stand around or run behind the other characters. There is a big action sequence about two-thirds through involving a chase through the jungle, culminating in a fist-fight between Indy and a big Soviet soldier while surrounded by a swarm of killer ants and then a tumble over a waterfall. From that point on, I'm not sure I can recall Marion having any significant dialogue in the rest of the movie. It's as if they needed her as the catalyst to introduce the Mutt character and then she wasn't needed anymore.

I was also expecting a little more from composer John Williams. His scores from the first three movies are etched in my memory. This time around he does a lot of recycling. Obviously we hear plenty of "The Raiders March" and some of the other themes from "Raiders" and "Last Crusade" are used again. That's fine. But there is nothing new that stands out in my mind. Nothing like the memorable music from the motorcycle chase in "Last Crusade" or the slave children music from "Temple of Doom."

There are a couple of other plot holes I'm wondering about, but I don't won't to get into them without giving too much away.

But for the most part, what I wrote last night still stands. I still loved it!

1 comments:

Anonymous said...

I think the reason that Williams' score was so derivative is that he's slowing down due to old age. He's hand-picking the few projects he does these days, and if it's something for a continuing series, he tends to simply add bits and pieces to the existing works - after all, as you said in your first review, why reinvent the wheel?

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