Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull: Q2 Edition

February 21, 2010

FanEdit Review by Molasar

Title/FanEditor: Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull - The Essential Edition by Thunderclap.

Prologue: When I heard that a new Indiana Jones flick was coming, I was stoked. I had read a few of the treatments and scripts that Lucas had commissioned by various writers in the years since The Last Crusade came out and they were more of the same: Indy in an exotic locale, finding antiquities, barely escaping death, intrigue, sex, etc. I heard that Frank Darabont was commissioned to write the latest installment and I was very excited. He worked on it for a year. After turning it in, these were the reactions: Steven Spielberg loved it. Harrison Ford loved it. George Lucas hated it. Lucas then asked Spielberg to bring the various scripts (by Darabont, Jeffrey Boam, Jeb Stuart & a lot more) to his go-to screenwriter David Koepp to have him try his hand at cobbling together the different scripts that all had what Lucas wanted – aliens, the Soviets, and our favorite archaeologist. (Google Frank Darabont's take - it's awesome.) Anyway, long story short, it's no wonder that the film was released to mixed reviews. I like parts of it but overall I found it to be a lazy, weak installment. When approached by Thunderclap for a firstling review, I was intrigued and though "why not?" Let's see if there is any hope for this flawed film.

The Edit: The one good thing going for this fanedit is it is apparent that Thunderclap is quite adept at editing a film. The cuts are seamless. It is very well done. Bravo. My problem is with what he chose to remove. The Nuclear Bomb Test, while not necessary for the narrative, was one of my favorite parts of the film. I also enjoyed the full chase through the college, including the library sequence. Having said that, the removal of the cutesy stuff like the prairie dogs and Tarzan sequence, gleaming CGI-heavy sequences, along with a lot of dumb, pointless dialogue, are fine by me and the film moves right along. I didn't miss any of it. I particularly enjoyed the wedding sequence. It is very clever in this form. The movie has a lot of problems and this cut helps a good part of them. It's clean and Thunderclap's heart is in the right place. ****/*****

Image Quality: The film has been "desaturated and grained" (to coin a phrase) so it looks more film like. It helps in the "video game sequence" near the climax especially the CGI does not stick out like a sore thumb. (Fans of the film know what I'm talking about.) The picture is vivid, clean and clear. It looks great. *****/*****

Audio Quality: The film makes good use of the surrounds — the sound field is enveloping with musical score, dialog and panning, directional sound effects. I did not notice any LFE. To be honest, I can't remember if it had a lot to begin with. I love films that rumble my basement, though. It could have used a punch on the low end. Overall, it sounded pretty good on my set-up. ****/*****

The DVD: The disc features two static menus with poster art: Main Menu (Play, Play with deleted scene subtitles and Deleted Scenes (Nuclear Bomb Test, Library Chase, and Tarzan). Let's talk about the deleted scene subtitles. This is the first fanedit I have reviewed that included such a clever feature. I loved it. It really showcased thunderclap's ability when it comes to cutting a film. I have to admit that it took me out of the film so I would suggest that fans turn the subtitles off to enjoy this incarnation of the film. As a reviewer, I found it very helpful. *****/*****

Overall Rating: ****/***** (not an average). I would have graded it higher if the two sequences mentioned above were left intact.

Epilogue: This is a hard film to edit into something that's good. I was not a fan of this installment before and this cut didn't change my mind. That being said, it's a great attempt at making KOTCS a better film. If you're a fan, or just interested in seeing a bad film made a bit better, give this a go. I only wish that we could have seen Darabont's vision. It blows this piecemeal effort to smithereens.

Molasar has spoken.

Reviewed using Sony 51" 16×9 RPTV, Panasonic DMP-BD80 Blu-Ray disc player and Onkyo 650 Watt 5.1 surround sound.

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Really need to get to bed so this will be a very quick review after literally just watching this edit and hopefully I can come back and edit it another evening with some clearer and more concise detail and account of my opinion on this edit.

This is the first fan fix of KOTCS I've watched but straight away from other reviews and my own enjoyment of this edit (a surprise to me after remembering my utter disappointment of the theatrical version), I already know it will be one of my favourite edits if not my go to edit for this movie. Basically it turned a face palm inducing session into an enjoyable 1.5ish hours of returning to the world of IJ as I knew it and I really enjoyed myself most of the way through, even the flying saucer ending which on my original viewing was lame in the extreme but somehow works now in this edit.

There were a couple of bits I would have seen cut out still or edited differently (subjective personal preference), a few cuts earlier in the film were pretty obvious and there was one section where the music dipped quite low for a few seconds before rising back up to normal level and was probably the most distracting thing about the edit along with the scene were Jones is getting interrogated and the image basically turned all white but there was still shape to it so you could make out what was happening.

All up it turned a IJ theme park ride with complimentary but lame as hell humour from the operating staff back into an actual IJ movie that for a while I actually lost myself in and again found myself enjoying a new if rather derivative story in that world I suddenly recognised once all the distracting and over the top fluff was stripped away. It really appears in this case that there was a good movie hiding somewhere inside there and Q2 has done an excellent job in bringing it to the fore.

I plan to watch TM2CY's and NJVC's edits next and it will be quite interesting to compare back to this one.