Indiana Jones

By Christopher Campbell The “Jack Ryan” franchise is potentially lucrative but difficult franchise since it lacks an over-arching story and really wants to be more of the American James Bond except less cool and more patriotic which in the books of Tom Clancy usually means jingoistic.  Compound this with the fa...

By Christopher Campbell Although I have no interest in seeing either of these movies, I can’t wait to see which of the dueling Spielberg-produced robot blockbusters wins the season’s box office. Maybe Spielberg can even ready Indiana Jones 5 by then, too, and include robots in it. After the ridiculousness of King...

By Christopher Campbell Early this year we featured a list of franchises in need of a genre change. The Rambo series was not one of the five selected, but apparently Sylvester Stallone thinks it’s a good idea to take a turn into sci-fi for the fifth installment of the action franchise. This, after the Indiana Jones se...

By Christopher Campbell The only thing more ridiculous would be for Rambo to fight teenage vampires, though I think werewolves may actually be the hip new thing as dictated by Twilight, so that might not be any more silly or popular. Hey, going sci-fi worked for Indiana Jones, right? And Rambo is even getting a youn...

By Christopher Campbell We’ve written enough complaints about this movie over the past year, so we’ll try to keep this short: we haven’t had the desire to watch any of the original three Indiana Jones movies since seeing this thing, because we fear that we’ll think less of the character now, as if he were to be no bet...

By Christopher Campbell I’m mad that folks in middle America are giving a free pass to all this outrageousness when they didn’t give a free pass to Indiana Jones 4 or these other movies. There were people bitching and complaining about that fridge-nuking, and about  Watchmen and Terminator Salvation and other mo...

By Christopher Campbell …maybe [Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is] the Temple of Doom of the new Indiana Jones generation - that is to say, it could be the worst of what’s yet to come. I’m optimistic because I love Indiana Jones, I love Steven Spielberg, I love Harrison Ford, and yes, I like Shia LaBeouf, too. And as long a...

By Christopher Campbell Either @MeganPanda coincidentally came up with this title on her own, or she pilfered it from a seven-year-old list on BBspot.com. But it doesn’t matter where the title comes from; it’s still a great idea. With Steven Spielberg now making movies about scary aliens (War of the Worlds; Indian...

By Christopher Campbell A few days ago, Cinematical’s Scott Weinberg reminded us, via his Twitter, that Ghostbusters II actually sucked. So, will it be any surprise to anyone when Ghostbusters 3 is the biggest disappointment since Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull? Considering the movie is now...

By Christopher Campbell Since we were kids, we knew the taxman was a bad guy. If we didn’t get the message from the lyrics of The Beatles, or the wolfish version of the Sheriff of Nottingham in Disney’s Robin Hood, then we learned through the very real anguish our parents suffered every year, mid-April. As we grew up, [......

By Christopher Campbell Karen Allen’s absence from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade after playing the female lead in Raiders of the Lost Ark was not because she believed herself above those sequels. Her character, Marion Ravenwood, simply wasn’t written into them. And he...

By Christopher Campbell It’s amazing, and really quite sad, that nearly a decade after the release of The Phantom Menace, people are still complaining about George Lucas. Sure, he also messed up his Indiana Jones franchise last summer, but whatever, there’s nothing we can do about it except skip out on further Lu...

By Christopher Campbell Hollywood has never tired of boxing movies and it always loves a good civil rights struggle, so it’s amazing that no studio has tackled an official biopic about Jack Johnson, the first African-American Heavyweight Champion of the World. Sure, there’s The Great White Hope, which is somew...

By Kevin Kelly My favorite sound in WALL•E? Well I don’t know. I don’t know. I kind of fell in love with this character. [sound] Moe. I don’t know why. Someone I identify with Moe. Not that I am a good cleaner or anything, but I think that sort of feisty sort of sidekick character that he was appealing to me, and the fa...

By Kevin Kelly Last week we talked about the video gaming shame of Steven Spielberg, but what’s on the flipside of the Spielberg/Lucas gaming coin? George Lucas founded LucasArts some 26 years ago, and it’s still going strong. Lucas clearly had some sort of video gaming mojo that continues to vex Spielb...

By Kevin Kelly So what do people do for fun in Star Wars? I know we’ve seen that pod race, but do they watch movies, play video games, and have Internet? Can you tell us about the prospect for another Indiana Jones film, given the success of the current film?

By Christopher Campbell Even though some of last year’s Comic-Con secrets were leaked to the web ahead of time, the 2007 SDCC was a huge deal as far as revelations go. Whether it was the unveiling of Karen Allen’s involvement in Indiana Jones and the Then-Still-Not-Subtitled Fourth Installment or cast updates fo...

By Christopher Campbell It took me awhile, but last week I finally saw Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. And to agree with many others, I think it features a few too many ludicrous moments. Yet the most outlandish, in my opinion, is the scene in which Indy and Marion seem to reenact His Girl Friday in ab...

By Paul Moore Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull will be huge regardless of what any critic says about it, and for good reason. It’s freaking Indiana Jones! Why is Indy so compelling? And why have attempts to repeat him (Romancing the Stone?) failed every time?

By Christopher Campbell The first three Indy films were gritty, sweaty and tactile affairs, largely because everything onscreen physically existed somewhere. Not so with “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull” — though that was almost the case.

By Christopher Campbell If you’re still hungry for more on the Indy backlash, check out the continued updates on Defamer, which include links to Shia LaBeouf’s denial of the film’s negative reviews and claims that SpoutBlog friend Eric Kohn has lowered the bar of film criticism by liveblogging from the Cannes p...

By Christopher Campbell Sure, sure, the few negative reviews (and even the many positive reviews, most of which feature some form of negativity) won’t matter to the moviegoers and so therefore won’t affect the box office gross, which will still be enormous. But still, it’s like the media wants to burn the film jus...