Is TLC Anyone Else's Least Favorite?

[Khev]

I didn't care for that, either. The movie tried to make Indy something of a kinder, gentler character when I liked him just fine as the tougher than nails adventurer he was in the first two who still had a heart as evidenced by him going out of his way to free the slave children in TOD.

Another thing I always disliked is the revelation he stole his fedora and jacket look from the guy at the beginning. To me that just cheapened him, to think his signature look wasn't even originally his own and he stole it from someone else. It made him feel inauthentic, for lack of a better term.

Agreed. Him acquiring every single signature aspect of his adult self in one 20 minute span of a single afternoon was just idiotic.

 

[Shadow Master]

And for all the complaining people have about the raft stunt in TOD or the fridge in KOTCS, TLC always gets a free pass for it's many equally OTT and implausible stunts and other things. Sure TOD has the raft and KOTCS has nuke the fridge, but TLC also has:


- Young Indy getting his fear of snakes, chin scar, whip, fedora and his interest in relic-hunting all in one go.

- Young Indy escapes off of a moving train using a magic box he had no knowledge at all of how to use.

- "Scottish Lord."

- Indy tumbling down the steps yelling "Daaaad!"

- The revolving fireplace.

- The plane in the tunnel.

- The pen ink squirting in the eye.

- The centuries-old Grail Knight.


In what world is the raft stunt or the fridge too out there but this is all perfectly realistic?

 

[Khev]

I don't mind the supernatural stuff but I'd like it to at least be internally consistent (which it pretty much is in Raiders and TOD.) In TLC when he steps on the "J" and falls through the floor then the other two pieces that he grabbed with his hands should have also crumbled since they weren't the "correct" letters either.

 

[Shadow Master]

I didn't even think of that buy you're right, that is a pretty big inconsistancy.

I will say for the faults I have with TLC, I do love the grail trials near the end. It feels like vintage Indy during that sequence and like it could've easily been a leftover sequence from either of the first two. Has that old-school Indy feel to it which was missing from so much else of the film.

 

[Raiders March]

I loved the three trials also, but they always felt a little rushed to me. Like the scenes were heavily edited?

 

[Dash]

I loved the three trials also, but they always felt a little rushed to me. Like the scenes were heavily edited?

Agreed that they seemed rushed- crammed together at the very end. I'd love to see an earlier draft of the script to know whether or not there was more meat to those scenes. A shame too- the tomb and cave sequences always seemed the most Indiana Jones-ish to me, more so than the investigation of Henry Senior's disappearance in Venice, and the tooling around Europe- far less an exotic locale than the previous environs of Raiders and TOD.

 

[Shadow Master]

For a film Spielberg made to amend for TOD, it felt like he was going through the motions with it. Compare the directing on TOD and TLC, it's so night and day. TOD he's got an energy and bringing his A-game whereas with TLC it feels very by the numbers.

 

[Khev]

I wonder if that's part of the reason that he was going through the motions. If his primary concern was to simply show Indy in a lighter more comedic setting then that doesn't require a lot of blood, sweat and tears to make. Just punctuate every sequence with a laugh and then forego going the extra mile to create something visually and dramatically inspired.

 

[Shadow Master]

Regardless of his feelings towards Temple Of Doom, Spielberg's directing showed he was clearly invested in that film and infused it with much energy. You wouldn't think Spielberg dislikes TOD going by his directing on it, compared with TLC where he's going through the motions and feels like he isn't fully invested. There's a certain blandness to TLC that ROTLA and TOD don't have, and dare I say, not even KOTCS has. KOTCS for all it's faults has more energy, more flare and isn't trying to be a comedic version of Raiders.

 

[Dash]

Regardless of his feelings towards Temple Of Doom, Spielberg's directing showed he was clearly invested in that film and infused it with much energy. You wouldn't think Spielberg dislikes TOD going by his directing on it, compared with TLC where he's going through the motions and feels like he isn't fully invested. There's a certain blandness to TLC that ROTLA and TOD don't have, and dare I say, not even KOTCS has. KOTCS for all it's faults has more energy, more flare and isn't trying to be a comedic version of Raiders.

Agree completely. Looking at TOD, it is so clearly a Steven Spielberg film. By comparison, TLC has a paint by numbers, wannabe quality to it that makes it seem like it could have been directed by any of Spielberg's (lesser) contemporaries at the time (William Dear, Joe Johnston, etc.).

 

[Shadow Master]

It seems with TLC Spielberg was more concerned with what other people thought rather than just trying to make a movie that genuinely interested him. It's too bad he let the TOD backlash get him down that badly. ROTLA and TOD feel like vintage Spielberg movies and are, whereas TLC feels more like a product.

 

[Shadow Master]

I think I mentioned before but I also think TLC suffered from having the dullest villains of the series. After awesome adversaries like Belloq, Toht and Mola Ram, the likes of Donovan, Elsa and Vogel were just so lame by comparison. Sometimes I even forget these three are the villains of the film until I see it again, which goes to show how forgettable they were. They just don't resonate with memory at all after I see the film unlike the other villains of the series.

 

[xipotec]

TLC
ROTLA
TOD
KOTCS



Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[Dash]

I think I mentioned before but I also think TLC suffered from having the dullest villains of the series. After awesome adversaries like Belloq, Toht and Mola Ram, the likes of Donovan, Elsa and Vogel were just so lame by comparison. Sometimes I even forget these three are the villains of the film until I see it again, which goes to show how forgettable they were. They just don't resonate with memory at all after I see the film unlike the other villains of the series.

All seemed far less threatening and even cartoonish compared to the baddies in TOD and Raiders.

 

[Khev]

I think I mentioned before but I also think TLC suffered from having the dullest villains of the series. After awesome adversaries like Belloq, Toht and Mola Ram, the likes of Donovan, Elsa and Vogel were just so lame by comparison. Sometimes I even forget these three are the villains of the film until I see it again, which goes to show how forgettable they were. They just don't resonate with memory at all after I see the film unlike the other villains of the series.

Yeah imagine Indy throwing Mola Ram out a window because of "no ticket."

Just watched the second half of TOD on Paramount's cable network. The cinematography in that film is positively Lean-esque, just like Raiders. I had my kids both watch Raiders and TOD for the first time last year, even saw TOD on the big screen. I'm deliberately holding off on showing them the other two just so that Indy from Raiders/TOD can properly imprint on them like he did for us before the whole series turned silly years later.

 

[Shadow Master]

I'm deliberately holding off on showing them the other two just so that Indy from Raiders/TOD can properly imprint on them like he did for us before the whole series turned silly years later.

Good idea

I didn't see TLC until years later on the USA Network (back when they were still good) and even at that age I could see how much of a stepdown TLC was.

 

[Dash]

Yeah imagine Indy throwing Mola Ram out a window because of "no ticket."

Just watched the second half of TOD on Paramount's cable network. The cinematography in that film is positively Lean-esque, just like Raiders. I had my kids both watch Raiders and TOD for the first time last year, even saw TOD on the big screen. I'm deliberately holding off on showing them the other two just so that Indy from Raiders/TOD can properly imprint on them like he did for us before the whole series turned silly years later.

 

[Shadow Master]

I will say that Donovan's demise in TLC is another great moment from the film and one that feels like it would've fit in with the first two. TLC needed more intense moments like that. I always got to wonder how the original version of TLC might've been with the haunted castle, before Spielberg decided to retread Raiders so much and amp up the comedy aspects.

 

[Khev]

Good idea

Thanks guys. I feel like it's my parental duty to expose my kids to all the greatest works of cinema before they become teenagers so that they have as much of an opportunity as possible to experience the joy of having all these movies becoming a part of them. If I just leave them to their video games and SnapChat now so that they stumble upon classic films in adulthood they'll just never truly have the same effect.

So my kids (ages 8 and 11) are already well versed in the original theatrical Star Wars trilogy, Indiana Jones, classic Disney, Universal Horror icons, 1954 Gojira, original Kong, the works of Hayao Miyazaki, Jaws, E.T, other classic monster movies like the original Blob, "Them," The Last Unicorn, Watership Down, and so on. They can sit through films that I know other kids would laugh at or fall asleep to.

 

[Shadow Master]

I know I'll be using a similar approach in the event I ever have kids