Dr. Jones and the Skull Kingdom Mystery

It's been a minute since I requested this edit, and I finally got around to watching it. Thanks to Wraith for sending me a copy!

Overall, this edit is a decent effort to streamline the black sheep of the Indiana Jones franchise, Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, and Wraith's talents are on a good display here. Aside from from some frame and audio hiccups, where scenes and transitions were cut, this is edited very well. Idiotic scenes, like the big darn ants and Monkey Mutt were cut out quite nicely and seamlessly. There's only one big thing I can think of that felt off is the waterfall sequence. The camera moving from there to here to over here was quite jarring.

The alternate intro, where Mt. Paramount faded into a nuclear test site memorial was clever, and I liked the idea of showing an old nuclear warfare television message, but it certainly didn't feel Indy like, and nuclear warfare is touched on in the film, but it's not brought up a whole lot, so maybe another thing would've been better. I like what Man Behind the Mask did in Riddles of the Lost Gods, in which he has a scene from The Fountain, where he presents Jackman's character as De Orellana. It sets up the main point of the film surprisingly well in terms of subject matter. The narrative overall is better in this edit, but there were still things that should've been cut. "yOu DoN't KnOw HiM!," "for an old man, you ain't bad in a fight," most of Mac's lines and stuff about him being a fake triple agent, and some of the argument in the Russian army truck, and some other things detracted from the film.

Like I said, this is a decent Crystal Skull edit, and I believe it to be one worth watching at least once.

July 30, 2012

I felt a bit let down by this edit. The technical aspects were fine (well I wasn’t too crazy about the new opening scene). But as a film this edit is still terrible. I didn’t feel this was a classic Indiana Jones adventure, as was part of the intention for this edit. And sorry if I’m a total downer here and being unfair, but I’m surprised this beat out The Ugly West for FEOTM.

October 12, 2011

This was one of the first fan edits I watched, as, like most people, this film was a disappointment to me when it came out. There were parts here that I thought worked really well and others where I missed the original. I thought the opening was great and set the tone perfectly. I only remember one hard cut, when the government guys are interrogating Indy – otherwise the editing was unnoticeable to me. The mushroom cloud never bothered me, so I missed that, and I quite liked the ants in the original. Everything else, though, was great. Marion is so much better in this edit now. She was embarrassing in the original. All the really stupid parts were mercifully axed, and I was so glad to see that we don’t get any flying alien ship. Well worth the download.

October 3, 2011

Decent edit – other KOTCS edits have done better, but this one is a definite improvement over the original.

A/V Quality – 7/10 – Nothing remarkable.

Editing – 9/10 – Cuts were fairly seamless for the most part.

Narrative – 7/10 – More could have been cut – i.e., the fridge nuking – but at least the monkeys are gone…

Entertainment – 7/10 – Like I said, it’s an improvement, but it could have gone further. Not my go-to version of Indy 4, but a respectable edit.

May 18, 2011
*This rating was given before reviews were required*