Kevin's Watch

As memorable as these movies are, they can get pretty corny/bad/annoying. But which one takes the cake as 'worst Indiana Jones Movie'? Let's look at our contenders:

Raiders of the Lost Ark: My main issue with the movie? The whole plot is pointless. Dr. Jones never had to go through anything to get the Ark before the Nazis. The ending would have been pretty much the same, except instead of having a bunch of Nazis with hostages going to an island and only the hostages coming back, you'd have them go to the island... never to return. Sure, the Ark gets stored in the warehouse, but the only people who could ever use it without melting and exploding are Levites, soooo... what?

Temple of Doom: You have annoying sidekicks, a scene filled with bizarre 'food', a forgettable plot element (I keep forgetting magical stones and a grudge between two 'Hindu Gods' is involved) and just corny to the extreme. Frankly, if the villain hadn't torn that guy's heart out and burnt him alive in a lava pit, I do not think anyone would remember this movie.

The Last Crusade: Here only for sake of completeness. The movie is good, and if you vote it as the worst, you have no soul

The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull: Has a bunch of CGI which really separates its from the rest of the series, a lead-lined fridge, Shaila leBuff or whatever that annoying kid's name is, and perhaps the most jarring of all, aliens. No other science fiction elements exist anywhere else in the series, but here, out of nowhere, we have aliens.

So, which is the worst, and why?

To wit: I voted Temple of Doom over Kingdom of the Crystal Skull mainly because Temple of Doom was sooo insufferably boring for about half or more of the movie. That is the unforgivable sin in Indiana Jones movies.

I voted for Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. It was one of those "everyone in the pool" movies where they try to cover every base. A little adventure, a touch of serious (50's paranoia), a sprinkle of romance, and wait....just incase we missed a possible audience, lets throw in the aliens.

Stupid waste of some good talent and reprising a role some 30 years later looks just plain desperate.

Crystal Skull without a doubt.

Granted, the whole series is silly, but CS took it to a whole new level. The fridge is no more or less ridiculous than lashing oneself to a submarine periscope, but aliens?

I'm one of the few people who really enjoyed Temple of Doom. I think it's the best of the series, even with the annoying sidekicks.

It's not so much the lead-lined fridge, it's that he wasn't crushed to death when the thing landed.

I dunno. I suspend disbelief when I see such movies anyway.
But Temple of Doom bored me to tears...

Cail wrote:It's not so much the lead-lined fridge, it's that he wasn't crushed to death when the thing landed.

Okay, he should have been crushed to death, but being able to catch up to a truck carrying a handful of soldiers, get thrown from the truck, manage to hang on to a length of rope hooked to the underside of the truck, climb back onto the truck, and then throw the driver from the truck after having been winged in the arm is acceptable?

Different movie viewers have different levels of suspension of disbelief, I know, so it really isn't that important. I was more perturbed by them calling it a "nuclear" bomb--in 1953 they would have called it an "atomic" bomb and nothing else.

Technically, he would have been smashed into jelly when the blast wave first hit the refrigerator, which would never have been thrown clear of the immediate blast radius. This, of course, presumes that the heat didn't melt the refrigerator around him in the first place.

I vote for ToD as well, mostly relying on my memory. It holds nothing on the subject but some Indian decorations and scenery, and no feelings of loss, no wishes to refresh it. Should be saying something. Seeing things posted on it here didn't help remember anything good in it either)

As for disbelief - I think if I'm watching something like Indiana Jones, credibility is not something to concern me most. Some films are just not made to have it.

You guys are what made me stop reading comic books.
"It's not realistic"
"Superman can't pick up a building because the pressure exerted upon the structure where his hands are would......"
"Indie would never survive in the refrigerator....."
Bla bla bla....


Indiana Jones is a comic book movie!

That said, the 3rd is my favorite.
Watched it this weekend actually.

The worst would be the last one.
Not because of the aliens or the story line, that was all fun, but because Shia laBeouf was WAY more annoying than Short Round (was that really his name? lol )

I watched the ToD with my 9 year old son and he thought it was great, which made it great to me.


By the way I thought the refrigerator scene was one of the best things in all the movies.
It was hysterically badass!

The reference made in the Last Crusade to how Indie knows for sure the wall drawing is about the about the Ark in the Last Crusade is also pretty damn amusing too.

High Lord Tolkien wrote:You guys are what made me stop reading comic books.
"It's not realistic"
"Superman can't pick up a building because the pressure exerted upon the structure where his hands are would......"
"Indie would never survive in the refrigerator....."
Bla bla bla....


Indiana Jones is a comic book movie!

I think that's the point. The idea is that you do not watch Indiana Jones because you wanted a plausible movie about archaeology... you watch it to see Nazis melt.

As a result, it is silly to say something like escaping an atomic blast through a fridge is distracting while falling (twice) from extremely high heights and surviving without injuries because you happen to be on a life raft isn't.

It is interesting to note that somehow, this is the case with a lot of viewers. Maybe it's because there wasn't a corny line before the atomic blast like there was before Indy & co. jumped off the plane ("We're not sinking, we're craaaaashinnnnng.")

High Lord Tolkien wrote:You guys are what made me stop reading comic books.
"It's not realistic"
"Superman can't pick up a building because the pressure exerted upon the structure where his hands are would......"
"Indie would never survive in the refrigerator....."
Bla bla bla....

Discussions like those do indeed devolve into contests of who can out-geek the other as you try to apply actual physics to questions such as "if Superman throws a baseball into orbit, how much acceleration is being applied and how fast is the ball going when it leaves his hand?" versus "can Superman even throw a baseball into orbit? air friction would slow it down to the point where it would fall back to Earth" or "your character can pick up 25 kg with her telekinesis so how far would a bullet travel before she slowed it down and 'caught' it in mid-air like Neo in the Matrix?". --> note: I actually have the formula to answer that last question; it requires three input variables--mass of the bullet, muzzle velocity of the gun, and telekinetic strength in N (found easily by multiplying mass in kg times 9.8 )--and it will tell you the "safe" distance for catching bullets; this requires the character to push against everything in front of her, allowing her to catch the bullet without being able to see it.

Anyway...it is always possible to over-analyze anything, at which point it gets ruined.

I stopped reading comic books when I discovered girls. Go figure.

And it's not about suspending disbelief, as I love Die Hard.

None of the four Indy movies are what I'd call "good". RotLA is an incredibly silly movie based on the old Republic serials. ToD's biggest sin is Spielberg showcasing his wife. Strip away the screaming broad and the annoying kid, and there's a decent movie under there (though still silly).

LC had its moments, but also, incredibly silly (Ford is 12 years younger than Connery for starters). The only bright spot in CS was Karen Allen.

Cail wrote:The only bright spot in CS was Karen Allen.

And she was surpremely underutilized. That was what annoyed me most of CS - bring back Karen Allen and don't really do much with her.

My vote is Crystal Skull for reasons I will go into in a minute.

ToD is a fun movie. I do have to admit that Spielberg's wife is annoying in it, but she wasn't his wife when the movie started. Short Round never bothered me. And while it does slow down considerably when Indy is taken over by the naughty blood juice, the pacing of the rest of the movie is pretty non-stop, which isn't so much the case with the rest of the series. I remember coming out of that movie pumped with how much fun it was. It felt like the high hill at the start of a rollercoaster, then once Indy comes back together, down you go.

The Last Crusade was good, but I don't place it over Raiders. There are a heap of clunker lines, and the sequence with the tank always starts to make me bored. I liked the ending, but I always felt sad for the knight after they essentially keep him there but have smashed everything up.

Raiders I'd place first, maybe because it was so new and fresh to me as a kid when I saw it in the theater, and was one of those movies that I'll always remember how I felt when I came out. It was so fascinating to me at the time, and upon repeated viewings, it still holds up to a degree. I hate car chases, but the scene in Indy when he goes along plucking and punching his way through the line is still one of the most interesting scenes to me.

Crystal Skull - I think too much went into "give 'em what they want." The plot was uninteresting, the action was uninteresting, even in the throwback to the car chase from Raiders with the red ants. It had so much potential, and was such a letdown. And I admit my dislike of Shia in the movie. Probably the most unintersting character in the entire series. But there were some good moments, but few and far between. I love John Hurt, but still find his character fairly useless, as well as the friend/traitor guy.

Temple of Doom.





Because it sucked.

The first one is a classic adventure movie (as Cail describes) that manages to capture the spectacle and mystery of the very best of that genre (as well as slipping utterly preposterous events under our noses -- one wonders if by design, as an homage -- such as a man riding a submarine for hundreds of miles in the open ocean). Jones as a character is also considerably less sympathetic and painted in grays, it has long been observed that the film has noir undertones. He's a grave robbing scoundrel out for glory, adventure, and cash that is forced to have a conscience because the stakes are so high (and the Nazis are so evil -- the scene where we are asked to imagine the Nazis carrying the Ark into battle is quite effective as motivation for Jones). You also get the sense that he has enduring cynicism about the Ark that is only gradually replaced by awe and fear by the end of the movie. So he has a bona fide character arc as well. And the Nazis are so relentlessly evil, and so utterly repaid for that evil, that the ending of this one is clearly the best of the series to me. So I don't think it's close, even. Raiders is the best.

Last Crusade is a fun movie and perhaps nearly as entertaining as the first, but it's devolved into Lethal Weapon 3 buddyisms amid a script full of caricatures and stereotypes. How many times can the Nazis be relied upon to serve as the bad guys before it loses its punch?

Temple of Doom wasn't that bad, in fact it was an entertaining movie a lot of the time, but relied on melodrama instead of attempting any sort of realistic character development. The bad guys were pretty bad though.

Kingdom was utter garbage. I just couldn't force myself to pay attention to it. I hated that movie. So it gets my vote.

Don Exnihilote wrote: Temple of Doom wasn't that bad

No, it wasn't. It was far, far worse.

dANdeLION wrote:Temple of Doom.





Because it sucked.

Yes indeed. CS sucked harder. I couldn't get through it. Why does anyone in Hollywood think Shia LeBeouf is a good actor?

I pretend that there are only 2 IJ movies, Raiders and Last Crusade.

dlbpharmd wrote:I pretend that there are only 2 IJ movies, Raiders and Last Crusade.

Absolutely! That's the only way to stay sane.

Just as there's only the First and Second Chrons.

Fist and Faith wrote:

dlbpharmd wrote:I pretend that there are only 2 IJ movies, Raiders and Last Crusade.

Absolutely! That's the only way to stay sane.

Just as there's only the First and Second Chrons.

I take offense that you would compare the Last Chronicles with Shia LeBeouf! However indirectly!