Raiders of the Lost Skull
 a TRUE FANEDIT by njvc A new 1080p BluRay edit of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, aiming to bring the film into the realm of the watchable by matching the tone (music/colour/pacing/characters) from Raiders of the Lost Ark. member ratings: |
(7 votes, average: 8.86 out of 10, rated)
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INTENTION:
To make Indy 4 watchable again. To restore dignity to this great character. To see if it is possible to make Indy 4 feel anything like Raiders of the Lost Ark.
Most of my friends don’t think this film was just ok, they called it unwatchable. The anticipation for this film prior to 2008 was crazy, and arguably it was just as big a letdown as those other Lucas related films. I recall people walking out saying “it was ok I guess”. But we all know it wasn’t. This edit attempts to make Indy 4 at least watchable, and at best enjoyable. I have tried to restore dignity to this character that we all love.
I hope many of you will download the BluRay version, but I will include an HD AVI file as well which can be burned to a dual sided DVD. The BluRay file includes an 1080p copy of the film, and is ready to be burned to a BluRay Disk. But you can still watch the HD file if you don’t have a bluray burner.
EDIT DETAILS:
Having seen a couple of fan edits of KOTCS from this site, I realised I was enjoying the film more and decided it was worth a go of my own. The major reason for wanting to do my own edit was to
a) Do it in 1080p HD using the BluRay, (because I am a sound/picture quality snob), and to
b) try something fairly radical with the score. Most fans of Raiders would agree that the classic score is so perfect, so I decided to integrate it into the film to try and better match the tone of the two films. William’s KOTCS score wasn’t too bad, but it certainly didn’t have the magic that Raiders has. So there you go. That’s my reasoning.
CUTLIST:
There are hundreds of changes, but here is a general feel for the major ones.
Edits to entire film.
1-Film Score: The large majority of the score has been completely replaced with the score from Raiders of the Lost Ark. This was a painstaking process, matching each musical beat to this new edit of KOTCS. The intention was to improve the tone, and evoke the old feeling of Raiders through that classic music. As a result of these changes, many sound effects also had to be replaced to allow the new music to be integrated naturally into the film
2-Colour Correction: The entire film has been colour corrected, scene by scene, toning down the over saturated look of the film. This was achieved by fixing the white balance, and bringing the skin tones back within a more ‘natural’ range. This helps bring the film more in line with the other 3 films colour-wise
Major Changes to Characters.
Indy
-All silly/goofy humour removed (eg falling off the speed train etc)
-cheesy lines removed (eg “I’m sorry, I meant drop dead comrade” “damn i thought that was closer”)
-Poor line deliveries removed (eg “It’s Oriana himself”)
-Removed his captain obvious statements when working things out (eg “their treasure wasn’t gold, it was knowledge. Knowledge was their treasure! – removed last lines like this)
Spalko
-Removed her monologue when she first meets Indy. Straight to business. Also indy doesn’t get introduced, so his “who was that woman” makes more sense later.
-Entirely removed her sword fight with Mutt (obviously)
-Removed as many bad lines as possible
Mutt
-Tried to get rid of his silly over reactions (hey that’s my mother you’re talking about! Etc)
-He no longer sword fights or swings with monkeys.
-Just tried to make him less annoying in general
Marion
-Removed as many silly moments as possible.
-There were quite a few poor acting moments from Marion this time round. Just cut what I could, but it was impossible to fix everything.
Mac
-Got rid of most of his “JONSEY”s from the film.
-Removed painful banter with Indy “bet ya 10 bucks we get out of this etc”
-Removed annoying dialogue like “you don’t know him YOU DON’t KNOW HIM etc”
-He’s no longer a triple agent etc. stupid idea.
-He no longer falls on the ground for no reason, then lies on the ground for no reason before being sucked into the vortex to another dimension. Added an explosion to make a reason for his fall, then he gets sucked in almost straight away.
Ox
-Removed as many stupid moments as possible. You know what they are. Including shortening him dancing with the Russians and twirling that stupid stick around when he first meets indy in the tent.
-The hilarious “HELP” scene in the quicksand is gone too… thank goodness.
Select Changes to individual scenes (not an exhaustive list, but a general idea)
Opening Scene
-Removed Gophers, Elvis Song, Car race to make the tone more menacing. Makes the impact when the Russian attack more intense.
-Shortened dialogue with Spalko.
-Shortened gun powder scene
-Tightened up warehouse chase, and added new sound effects/music etc.
Doom town
-Removed completely. This scene is so bad that even Spielberg admits it was a dumb idea.
FBI scene
-Cut all dialogue alluding to the bomb. This was challenging and required a special effect. Those who know the film well will see it.
Indy’s house
-Cut obvious and unnecessary dialogue “first Marcus, then dad”. just show it.
-Cut stupid expression on indy’s face after “taking them away”.
Diner Scene
-Reintroduced ark theme to replace skull theme
-Lots of small edits, mostly to make Mutt less of a dick.
-Used music from Raiders basket chase instead of “shake rattle and roll”
Motorbike chase
-Many small edits, including tightening the jump from car to motorbike
-Cut library chase.
Traveling by plane (both scenes)
-Replaced music with travelling by plane music from Raiders. This meant replacing all sound effects of planes/boats etc
Graveyard
-Cut idiotic scene with the ‘living dead’ spidermen in the graveyard.
-There would have been no poison on the end of the dart that indy blew into that guys mouth anyway. Just plain dumb.
In the tomb.
-No more CGI scorpions
-Removed stupid unnecessary dialogue
-Indy no longer goes to steal the knife.
-Indy doesn’t do the stupid working it all out scene “he put it back where he found it” etc. This becomes obvious later, and just slows things down.
Russian Camp
-Modelled the interrogation on infodroid’s unfinished edit. Used footage from The Watchmen and Raiders to show what the Russian might do if they used the skull etc.
-Also used the sound design from when the ark is being kept on the ship In Raiders. Seemed suitable.
-Ox is less stupid
-Marion is (a little) less hammy
Quicksand
-Much shorter (no more stupid ox)
-No snake. This was hard to achieve, but I’m willing to live with it to avoid having that stupid snake scene.
Truck
-Shorter, punchier dialogue between the three when having their argument.
-No more comedy triple kick, or losing the knife, or blah blah blah. When indy kicks the guy, he goes down first time, then it’s straight to business. Indy doesn’t waste time.
Forest Chase.
-Very challenging scene to edit. Removed sword fight, mutt in the trees, as many shocking CGI shots as possible, ants, and fight with the Russian, Marion and her stupid facial expressions. This scene plays faster now, but at least feels like an Indy scene, instead one of the worst scenes in cinema history.
-The jump off the cliff has been ‘zoomed in’ to give the impression the jump was not quite so high, and hopefully looks just a little more believable that they would attempt/survive such a stunt.
Waterfall
-Only 1. It’s still stupid, but 3 times less stupid.
Inside the Temple
-The natives no longer live in the fucking walls (who came up with this stuff??)
-Got rid of everyone screaming everyone else’s name.
With the aliens
-The skeletons do not merge into a shitty CGI piece of crap. They remain skeletons.
-Mac doesn’t have a lie down for no reason
-Added “Water! Water!” from Temple of doom as they try to escape the temple.
-Removed Alien ship completely. They went to another dimension through a portal, so no need to see a ship.
The wedding
-Removed the shot of Mutt looking JEALOUS when indy and Marion kiss. Amazing…
-Shortened the ceremony.
So there you go, a bit of a rundown of some of the more significant cuts. Those of you who know the film well will notice many more. I enjoyed this process, and feel the film is now at least watchable. Hope you enjoy it! Personally, I will now try to forget the other version even exists.
RELEASE INFORMATION:
Blu Ray
AVI (HD)
SPECIAL FEATURES:
Cut-Scenes trailer
TECHNICAL INFORMATION:
PC 16GB RAM (to handle the BluRay editing)
Adobe Premiere Pro CS5
Adobe Photoshop CS5
Adobe Encore CS5
Adobe Media Encoder CS5
DVD Fab 8
Disclaimer: You must own the original movie before acquiring any FanEdited movie. We here at FanEdit.org respect the company’s copyrights, and don’t want to infringe on any company’s rights. Thank you, FE!
Maybe downloadable from Fanedit.info (enter and download at your own risk and responsibility)
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I opted for the avi version because I don’t have a BR writer. A lot of the cuts you’ve made I’ve seen in one of the other edits of the film so it was nice to see those decisions get taken into consideration by more than one person. I really liked how you handled the removal of Doomtown, to me it works, you can argue why Indy is suddenly wearing very casual clothes in the next scene or you can endure his ‘miraculous’ escape in the theatrical version. I’ll that first option. You really took on board getting rid of the annoying traits of most characters, Mutt and Marion come to mind, Ray winston is mostly mute now, but it’s a small sacrifice.
Car chase was done well, the bit in class was stupid, I’ve always felt being a professor was Indy’s mild mannered alter ego, so to speak so the mixing of the two in the theatrical cut, never agreed with that choice.
Then the truck sequence, I like it much better like this, I’ve always wondered how it could be made plausible for Mutt to vanish into the trees and crops and come back without making it seem ridiculous. You provided the best option yet, not shortening the sequence, but removing it altogether. It was only when I got to the end of the film I realised how much was missing, like the ants and just about everything, some parts felt a bit odd, like the car’s sort of jump through the air, but it could be that I’ve seen the original several times to pick up on, first timers or casual watchers probably wouldn’t catch on.
From here to the end is just perfect. I got a little occupied with something during the quicksand sequence so I didn’t pay full attention but I seem to remember it played out okay.
From a narrative viewpoint this is the best existing telling of the 4th film. For editing and all that other stuff, I’d prefer one of the other guys who knows what to look for gives this film a watch, I didn’t notice anything particularly jarring.
Review by Omaru1982 — December 15, 2011 @ 5:48 pm
Did you know that there was an Indiana Jones movie hiding in the monstrosity that is Kingdom of the Crystal Skull? NJVC does an excellent job bringing out the good aspects of this film (turns out there actually are some when the garbage is removed) and ditching the silliness.
Utilizing the Raiders soundtrack was a huge improvement. Coupled with edits to the warehouse sequence, the entire mood was changed from being over the top to tense and entertaining. This was true for many other scenes, and I was surprised to find that halfway into the film I still cared about what was happening on screen. A first for Indy 4!
The nuke was skipped over very nicely, and painful but unavoidable scenes such as the rocket train, car chase, and jungle nonsense are handled exceptionally well. Marion, Mutt, and Spalko are no longer irritating, and the obvious faults in the story have been taken care of.
Some favorite parts were the editors changes to Indy’s vision or whatever you call it when looking at the skull and making the ending much, much better. Yes, you can’t get rid of the alien situation completely, but I think this is the best possible solution. I won’t give away the ending, but I was pleasantly surprised that it can be made this tolerable.
There were just a few areas where I was able to sense the presence of the editor, but knowing what was removed made these little things very forgivable. For instance, there is a hard cut in the cafe after Indy says he ‘knew a lot of Mary’s’ and moments like the when Spalko and her men are heading down the cliff on ropes to escape the now absent ants feel a bit odd. These are small problems and still much preferred to the theatrical cut.
Fantastic job on this edit; I think I finally have an Indy 4 that I can watch for the fun of it. Raiders of the Crystal Skull just feels like an Indy movie should, and despite the ‘inter-dimensional beings’ crap, it is now an entertaining Indiana Jones adventure. Thanks NJKC
Review by CK1 — December 18, 2011 @ 2:19 am
This is My Review for the AVI version of this fanedit
Video-Audio:
The Video Quality was perfect. The whole thing looked superb, with no video problems whatsoever, Running smoothly all the way. the only small problem i had is that the video was rendered as 16:9 with black bars on the top and on the bottom. This about the AVI version, i dont know if this is present in the blu ray version as well but i didn’t mind it in the AVI version. The movie would have had black bars anyway when played on a normal 16:9 monitor. And the image wasn’t distorted or anything like that. Just something worth mentioning anyway. The Audio was also superb with no complaints here 9/10
Editing:
Almost all of the cuts were done very well, and most of the time i couldn’t tell where they were made. Some clever editing was done here with some scenes. The only one that comes to my mind and felt a little distracting was the quick sand scene. It felt a little too fast, a little too sudden. But it wasn’t a deal breaker, it was a minor gripe in an otherwise nicely edited and put together fanedit. there were some other scenes that felt a little off, but they were even more minor, not distracting and not really worth mentioning IMO. The audio editing was flawless. No noticeable abrupt audio cuts, the new score that was added fitted perfectly and was well edited to the film. Maybe at some points the music felt a little too loud but you could hear the characters what they were saying perfectly. 8/10
Entertainment:
A Huge improvement over the original and most of the major problems with the original were fixed. Gone are all those stupid over the top scenes (goodbye nuke the fridge, jungle boy with monkeys, flesh eating ants, CGI alien and more). None of the deleted scenes were missed. The film feels now like a proper Indy adventure. I also loved those small cuts in the edit that made Indy look even more badass. Really liked the part at the Camp when Indy looks through the eyes of the alien. Putting the nuke explosion, the alien and other scenes there was really cool! Also liked the edits on many characters that made them more tolerable and likeable. The Edited ending felt so much better than the original. No more spaceship crap. Furthermore i really liked the new soundtrack. Brings back even more nostalgia! In general, it felt more fast paced, more tight, more engaging and overal, much better film than the original 9/10
Presentation:
N/A It was the AVI version
Overall: 8/10
Review by g1orkatsos — December 19, 2011 @ 12:36 am
While I frequently check out what’s new in the FE community, the percentage of edits I’ll actually watch, let alone enjoy is pretty darned small.
I’ve tried to watch other Indy 4 edits and find them just as painful as the original version (which is appalling in itself.)
I watched and am reviewing the avi version.
With apologies to the editor, I usually write long involved reviews, but the thing is, when other people do that I usually just skip to the summary. So I’ll just cut to the chase:
Oh, GOD! YES! Thank you! I watched the entire film and never flinched or attempted to chew my leg off to escape the horror. Indy is a badass again and not a buffoon.
The pluses: Pitch perfect editing. I never saw the seams. I never felt like there were plot holes. I never felt like anything good or important was missing. Midway through I stopped thinking about the original version and what was missing and just enjoyed the film.
The negatives: The black levels were REALLY uneven. In some cases the blackest black was dark gray. This was emphasized by the letterbox borders which shifted with them. In the chamber of the skeletons at the end, the borders actually started flashing. Yikes.
The music… well this was both a plus and a minus. I LOVED how it improved the experience, but it was frequently too loud. Sound effects and dialog during action scenes were frequently drowned out. The action lost its weight and I frequently zoned out on the action because the music pulled me out of it.
I also wouldn’t have minded the editor stretching a bit into Indy 2 and 3’s music where appropriate. (And used a little less of the fanfare (bada da dum, bada da daaaa.) which got busted out too early and often.)
Honestly, 1/2 star movie is now a 2-1/2 star movie. But the editor gets 3-1/2 out of 4 for doing what I would have considered impossible.
Oh, and one more negative: No DVD version. I guess I’ll have to recode that myself (which at least gives me the opportunity to fix the borders).
Outstanding work njvc.
Review by Landstander — December 25, 2011 @ 10:14 am
I enjoyed iit while atching. Good choices espaecially Marion’ silliness. I like the colour correction too.
A/V: 9
Presentation: 9
Entertainment: 9
Overall: 9
Review by ctorbaoglu — December 25, 2011 @ 6:13 pm
Oh, one more thing…
ALMOST nothing felt missing. I never had a problem with Mutt fencing Spalko (that I recall). Without it though Mutt never gets his ‘moment’, even though it is made clear that Spalko quirkily carries a sword, that Mutt has had fencing training and is good with a blade.
The story still works, but the pay-off is missing.
@ctorbaoglu- I agree. Marion is no longer painful. The color correction IS nice.
It is a bit of a shame there’s no way to fix lens flare and all the CG HDR lighting. Mind you if you could remove lens flare, I’d be doing it to the new Star Trek movie).
Review by Landstander — December 25, 2011 @ 7:22 pm
Thanks for the reviews everyone. Just a quick note about the AVI – I realise many of you are seeing this version, but in truth it was only an afterthought so more people could view the film. The Blu-Ray release is the true version of the film (complete with menu and trailer), and reflects the edit as it was intended to be seen. For those of you who can’t play Blu-Ray files, try donwloading the AVCHD version which should be available on the site shortly. It’s better quality (with stronger blacks) but still not as good as the Blu-Ray, which is 1080p and the version I hope many will view. Thanks! njvc
Review by njvc — December 26, 2011 @ 5:21 am
Very entertaining Indy 4 edit. A lot of the terrible moments are gone and what’s left is a pretty damn good movie. Still the weakest of the 4, but at least now it’s almost worthy of being an Indiana Jones movie. Picture quality is dazzling and the editing is perfect.
Two minor nitpicks though. The title “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull” remains at the start of the movie. And, the added line “Water! Water!” is an obvious overdub due to Indy not moving his lips. But no big deal at all.
9/10
Review by Neglify — December 30, 2011 @ 9:41 pm
Let me preface this review by stating I have watched multiple fanedits of this movie previously. I have never liked a single one and didn’t care to ever see any version of it ever again. The only reason I watched this was because I saw you were the first who attempted to remove the ant scene. There are few things I hate more in the entire universe than that ant scene. Truly. I have taken care of many sick and dying people who are less of an affront to my senses than that scene is. Sadly I must report that this edit has not yet proved to me there is a way to salvage this movie, though there are many good things NJVC did worth mentioning:
1) It is edited in HD. Video quality is fabulous. (NOTE: I watched the BD version. I understand other available versions were not rendered to the same quality standards as applied to the BD version, such as border & black issues.) The BD render looks great. No problems of any kind that I was able to pick up on.
2) Any scene with even the slightest bit of putridity got snipped out. The cuts are deep and the movie short.
3) Some of the added Raiders score was pleasant and gave an added illusion of drama.
4) The handling of the visual overlay while Indy stares into the skull’s eyes was well-done.
If I were to over-think it I might question what I saw, but it was a nice use of some of the cut visual effects and I thought you edited the scene well.
As a first-time faneditor here, there is much for NJVC to be proud of.
Now the bad news:
1) The biggest bad news is the audio. NJVC seems to have a good handle on editing video, a good nose for shit, and a decent grasp of narrative. The thing that still needs some work is audio editing. It was a disappointment that the audio was only stereo for a BD release. Additionally (as some have mentioned previously) the added Raiders music is not balanced properly. I also felt that the Raiders music was used a bit too much. It got repetitive and distracting, though I was impressed how well the movie’s actual score was able to be cut out. There must have been no music in the center track?? Lastly on this subject, some of the music didn’t cue up well with what was happening on screen.
2) The other unfortunate (but maybe inevitable) thing on this edit were the inevitable gaps some scenes had as a result of the deep cuts made. Maybe somebody some day will find a way to creatively get over this hurdle, but this edit makes a strong testimony that it may not ever be possible to have a seamless story without all the crap. NJVC clearly demonstrates some creativity and skill, but he still could not find a way to bridge some scenes or shots that were cut. There are numerous cut points that have some distracting component or make it so that the scene no longer makes sense.
All-in-all, is it better than the original? Yes, but so is Smokey and the Bandit 2. Is it better than other fanedits of this movie I have seen? It depends on what you emphasize. There is less stupid writing, but now some of the scenes don’t work the way they have been edited. If somebody put a gun to my head and made me choose, I would choose this edit over the others I have seen because I prefer bad directing to bad writing. NJVC has done the best so far in trying to salvage this dung-heap-of-a-story.
Video: 10
Audio: 5
Editing: 7
Story: 7
Review by geminigod — January 4, 2012 @ 2:15 am
I did want to update that I had a chance to see some of the BD version.
Oddly the image is 1440×1080 which is unlikely to have been the original BD resolution. I saw no compression artifacts and I was unable to find any of the flashing borders present in the 720p version, but I’m not convinced the image is much sharper at 1080 than 720.
I figured the 720p encoding sported down converted audio. I was surprised that the full version was not only stereo but 192kbps. That’s worse than you’d expect from a commercial DVD, let alone a BD.
Finally, my software players completely choked on the authoring and I had to mount/rip/remux. It could be my software, but I’m unequipped to do a BD burn test. So, just a word of warning there.
Review by Landstander — January 4, 2012 @ 6:32 am
Sorry Landstander, but there are some corrections that need to be stated to your last post. First, although I have deleted the edit and can’t confirm, there is no way that the resolution you posted is correct. I can tell as much just looking at it, either with or without borders. No, the resolution is just fine, and I am sure it is 1920×1080 as NJVC stated.
Regarding audio, as I stated in my review, I thought it was unfortunate that only stereo audio was available. That said, 192 kbps is exactly what you would expect for stereo audio and it is not worse than a commercial DVD. A commercial DVD at 448 kbps for 5.1 audio equates to 74.67 kbps per channel as opposed to 96 kbps per channel for 192 stereo.
Lastly, I had no issues mounting and playing the BD image that NJVC provided using Virtual Clonedrive, so it is probably your software.
Review by geminigod — January 4, 2012 @ 9:35 am
Hi Geminigod, thank you for the detailed review, I think it’s very fair and I appreciate the compliments within. On the audio, the decision to mix in stereo was purely because I don’t have a surround sound setup to edit with. Stereo gave me more control. You are correct about the centre channel containing mostly dialogue with only minor spill from the original music tracks (the score is mostly in the left and right speakers), however this also explains why the added music was louder than you might have preferred. In some circumstances, this was a creative choice (I like the score loud in the mix), but other times it was the only way to cover up bleed from the original audio. Interesting you felt the new score was repetitive- only 1 piece was utilized twice, the rest were variations on the same themes, and were different pieces of music. Anyway, not defending so much as explaining! Hope that helps. Thanks again for taking the time to watch and review my edit.
Review by njvc — January 4, 2012 @ 3:54 pm
I’m guessing I was unclear geminigod. The display aspect ratio is correct and the movie plays at 1920×1080, but the underlying resolution is anamorphic 1440×1080 which is stretched on playback.
I also disagree. I’ve seen 192kbps to be common on non-U.S. releases, but except for budget titles, stereo is typically 224kbps. Still, that’s not the point. It’s BD. There’s no reason the audio couldn’t have been mixed and authored as a lossless track or at least a much higher bitrate DD.
@njvc – Thanks for the explanation of the louder score. That makes perfect sense and is completely forgivable. Look, I know I’m nitpicking, but I want to be clear: I really liked your edit. It’s really well done. I will definitely be adding it to my collection as a replacement to the theatrical cut (I consider this the highest praise I can give). I’m just nitpicking because there are no big problems.
Btw, I’m using WinXP with latest version of Virtual CloneDrive. Windows explorer would not open the mounted image (neither would any media player). VLC and media player classic could not play the ISO file directly. I ended up mounting and re-ripping with AnyDVD (which was the only program I could find that would recognize the disc as mounted.)
Review by Landstander — January 5, 2012 @ 7:19 am
Thanks Landstander, I’m still learning about the best way to export audio/video for the best results. The next edit I release will be true 1920×1080. The audio was lower quality because many of the audio sources were not from hd material. I guess it was all downgraded to the lowest quality audio source included in the edit. (including sound effects etc, there were 10 audio tracks in the edit). Anyway, thanks for your positive feedback!
Review by njvc — January 5, 2012 @ 9:25 am
Ahh, sorry Landstander. Thanks for clarifying. Anamorphic is the key word there. Yes that is an unfortunate rendering mistake, though it looks and plays fine, and I didn’t pick up on any sort of framerate issues.
Regarding the audio compression rate, I was (rather stupidly on my part) referring to DVD specs. You are right that for blu-ray, since there was no shortage of disk space, it should probably have been a lossless PCM track. Just because some piece of music added was at that quality level doesn’t mean the whole audio track needs to be pulled down to that level.
Still no apologies though for the mounting problem rebuttal.
With Win7, Virtual CloneDrive, & Cyberlink PowerDVD 10 playing the mounted BD image I had no problems. It might be a winxp issue, though from your description, maybe a media player problem. Last I checked VLC doesn’t play BD at all and media player classic is temperamental and doesn’t do well with menus. At any rate, this type of discussion is probably better left for the forum page.
Review by geminigod — January 5, 2012 @ 10:35 pm
Review of Raiders of the Lost Skull by NVJC
I haven’t watched the theatrical cut in a couple of years, so I wasn’t able to fully compare this to the original. On the other hand, this allowed me to watch this film in it’s own right, without constantly noticing what was present and absent.
On the whole, this greatly improves on the original, which I never hated but thought had some pretty major weak spots. Removing of the ‘nuking the fridge’ scene was excellent, nothing appears to be absent, and while I initially missed the iconic mushroom cloud shot, I was very happy to see it incorporated later.
The first half of this film is very much tighter than the original. The warehouse, the interogation by the FBI, and the scene in Indy’s house all run much smoother now. Also, the use of Raiders score definately helps the film! The motorcycle chase definately benefits from a lack of library, which always made it seem silly to me. I would have preferred a different piece of music to the one used here as it feels a little goofy (although I understand your reason for using it).
Once the adventure gets going, the absenses are once again for the better. I can’t remember preciely what was missing from the various tomb raiding scenes, but I remember disliking parts of them while now there was absolutely nothing to dislike. Mutt and Indy’s relationship is nice, it is reminiscant of his relationship with Short Round (which many hate but I consider to be fine) and the parallels with his own relationship with Sean Connery play out nicely (they were always there, but there’s less distractions now). The only problem is these scenes feel a little light and go by too quickly… but that can’t be helped and the original had the same problem. Trimming the fat is only a good thing.
At the half-way point when we meet up with Cate Blanchet again, the editing continues to be good. Marion is less annoying, Indy is less goofy. Returning to what I said about the skull scene and the overlaid montage; this is really excellent. The use of watchmen was very good, and this really addresses a major criticism of the film (later addressed by Red Letter Media), the Russians pose absolutely no threat. You also use the footage from the end of the the film excellently, the CGI alien is horrible but it works well as a sillhouette, and the flying saucer is nicely used also.
The quicksand scene is marvelous and beatifully cut, it simply appears that Mutt thorows them a rope, they are then recaptured by the Russians. Well done, you have gracefully fixed one of the worst scenes in the film.
Now, the jungle chase scene. This was the only part where the edit loses its way. I’m not sure if this scene *can* be fixed, and maybe you’ve done the best that can be done, but it still doesn’t work. Its messy, Spalko keeps popping up in different places and its not clear what she’s supposed to be doing, Mutt dissapears for half the scene then reappears at the end. The original is terrible, but IMO this cut is quite messy and is the lowpoint of the film.
The car tree/cliff scene isn’t great but is a massive improvement over the original. The waterfall scene is greatly improved by being reduced to one.
The scenes in the temple are fine. The original material isn’t great and there’s not much you can do.. I dislike everyone being casually hit with bolas and not being injured but again, what can you do.
The final scene with the skulls works a lot better now. The original film has a generally poor climax so there’s only so much you can do, but it is still vastly improved. Removal of the CGI aliens makes the ending far more watchable (although why can the skeletons talk/think, Mr Spielberg?) and Mac’s death is greatly improved. I thought i’d miss the saucer shot (I’ve always liked it) but having placed it in the flash forward, the ending where everything has collapsed actually works even better. The wedding at the end is still far too white and glowing, but meh.
One big problem I did have, however, was the sound. The music is far, far too loud! I had to literally halve my volume when it came on, then turn it back up so that I could hear what was being said in the next scene. While I do like music to be cinematic, overly loud music is a common problem now. Spielberg may have made a dud movie but he’s still no Michael Bay, and I’d rather Indie felt like Indie and not Transformers.
After watching Red Letter Media’s review, for a while I thought he might be right: the problem with this film is that it exists at all. But watching this edit reminded me that there is still a lot of decent ideas in Indie 4:
- Despite what RLM thinks, the film really does focus on character. There is a genuine love for Indie in this film, a sadness at his ageing, his acceptance of death, the mirroring of his relationships between his son and his father, and just how his character has changed over time.
- The use of the 50’s setting, Indie looking out of place, the changing roles of society, the contrast between the pre-WW2 and post WW2 world, between the USA and Russia; all of these are wonderful aspects of the film.
- Spielberg is still a damn fine director and a lot of this film is beautifully shot
- And of course, some really classic Indie. Without the distractions, you can see how nice it is to watch him crawl through tombs, caves and temples, to retell old legends and travel through exotic lands.
There is a lot to love about Indie 4, and NVJC has succesfully highlighted them. I can’t say whether this will be my definative cut, as 1) I haven’t seen any other IJ4 edits, and 2) I need to rewatch the original again, but its prospects are certainly good, and I’m pretty happy to consider this film a legitimate part of the Indiana Jones franchise.
8/10
Review by gugliemo — January 18, 2012 @ 6:21 pm