Flack's Daily Smack

supercat · June 11, 2008

Perhaps some filmmakers have come to believe that the only obstacle to people thinking movies were real was that the special effects weren't good enough. They think that if they were to do a good enough job of animating an elephant riding a unicycle on a tightrope while juggling five bowling pins with its trunk, people would believe that an elephant could actually do such a thing. Absolute rubbish notion, of course, but that's what some film makers seem to believe.

As a poster on IMDB noted, one of the things that made the earlier Indiana Jones movies work is that Indy started out not believing in the powers of the items he sought. His belief in such powers grew through the film; consequently, the audience's belief grew with his. This mess of acetate (or do they use polyester these days?) starts out with Indy concluding early on that the crystal skull has mystical powers, so there's nothing more for the audience to buy into.

Further, this film had even more of a "default-win" plot than the Raiders. Using a default-win plot (i.e. a plot which would end happily if the hero did nothing, thus meaning that the final happy ending happens in spite of the hero's efforts, rather than because of them) can be okay once in a series. Having two almost-default-win plots may be acceptable if the first is closer to a default-win than the second. Going the other way, however, is very bad.

Raiders was almost a "default-win" plot, but not quite. Without Indiana Jones' interference, the Nazis might have found the ark and might have (after a few disastrous attempts) figured out a way to harness its power. In KotCS, however, the same ending occurred but without the ambiguity. Since the aliens vanished, Indy's efforts counted for even less than in Raiders.

Nathan Strum · June 13, 2008

They think that if they were to do a good enough job of animating an elephant riding a unicycle on a tightrope while juggling five bowling pins with its trunk, people would believe that an elephant could actually do such a thing.

Or perhaps more to the point, that an audience would want to see such a thing.