Raiders of the Lost Skull

Hi there!

I am not an expert as far as fanedits go, but I have watched some fanedits.

About IJKS, I did not dare to watch one until I read the description of your project.

Changing the music was a superb idea, and it works. From start to finish.

The cutlist was great and despite some messy stuff during the car chase, I could enjoy (enjoy!) this edit of the movie during all of it.

The ending was superb and the hard work must pay off.

Thank you! All thumbs up.

Some small criticism would be that the use of Raiders "Mystery" theme was excessive, but that is a small shadow in an overall pristine work.

Thanks again, never thought I would enjoy any of this material.

The looks of audio and video are also excellent.

Shame on Kaminski, shame on Koep, glory to you, man!! NJVC!!

I was actually able to fully enjoy this movie for the first time. Still the worst of the series, but now deserves it's place alongside the others in my collection. I no longer even mind Mutt as a character, with his obnoxiousness toned down. Quite a feat.

The Raiders score works very well. It feels more like a true Indy film. The cringeworthy moments are gone. Well done!

People say you can't polish a turd. But editor here proves that you can.

Thank you for making it so I never have to suffer that fridge scene again.

December 19, 2011

This is My Review for the AVI version of this fanedit
Video-Audio:
The Video Quality was perfect. The whole thing looked superb, with no video problems whatsoever, Running smoothly all the way. the only small problem i had is that the video was rendered as 16:9 with black bars on the top and on the bottom. This about the AVI version, i dont know if this is present in the blu ray version as well but i didn’t mind it in the AVI version. The movie would have had black bars anyway when played on a normal 16:9 monitor. And the image wasn’t distorted or anything like that. Just something worth mentioning anyway. The Audio was also superb with no complaints here 9/10
Editing:
Almost all of the cuts were done very well, and most of the time i couldn’t tell where they were made. Some clever editing was done here with some scenes. The only one that comes to my mind and felt a little distracting was the quick sand scene. It felt a little too fast, a little too sudden. But it wasn’t a deal breaker, it was a minor gripe in an otherwise nicely edited and put together fanedit. there were some other scenes that felt a little off, but they were even more minor, not distracting and not really worth mentioning IMO. The audio editing was flawless. No noticeable abrupt audio cuts, the new score that was added fitted perfectly and was well edited to the film. Maybe at some points the music felt a little too loud but you could hear the characters what they were saying perfectly. 8/10
Entertainment:
A Huge improvement over the original and most of the major problems with the original were fixed. Gone are all those stupid over the top scenes (goodbye nuke the fridge, jungle boy with monkeys, flesh eating ants, CGI alien and more). None of the deleted scenes were missed. The film feels now like a proper Indy adventure. I also loved those small cuts in the edit that made Indy look even more badass. Really liked the part at the Camp when Indy looks through the eyes of the alien. Putting the nuke explosion, the alien and other scenes there was really cool! Also liked the edits on many characters that made them more tolerable and likeable. The Edited ending felt so much better than the original. No more spaceship crap. Furthermore i really liked the new soundtrack. Brings back even more nostalgia! In general, it felt more fast paced, more tight, more engaging and overal, much better film than the original 9/10
Presentation:
N/A It was the AVI version
Overall: 8/10

Impressive work. A big improvement on the theatrical, but I can't help but feel too much was cut. Been a while since I've seen the original, but the film lacked humour and generally came across as pretty bland, which is the opposite problem that the original cut has (being too silly).

The ROTLA soundtrack sporadically works, but as another reviewer has mentioned, it's more distracting than anything. The editor has clearly put a lot of work into integrating the soundtrack, but sadly it still feels out of place. Not due to bad editing, but just because it doesn't suit the tone of the film IMO.
Some of the added sound effects were also noticeable (either that or the original film has REALLY bad punch sound effects). Not great, but not horrendous. There's also a dip in volume with the ant scene - but another reviewer has gone into that.

Narrative is generally fine, except for Indi suddenly appearing in the government office without explanation - and of course, things that can't be fixed, like the interdimensional aliens with magnetic crystal skulls that for some reason decide to rule over a small portion of a single country. And they're psychic. And melt people's brains. And drag people into interdimensional space, despite being crystal corpses. Motives unclear.

Visually, there were some fade transitions which felt a bit rushed and awkward, but for the most part, and particularly after looking at the cut list, the editing is pretty damn seamless.

Enjoyment is low because enjoyment was low. It's higher than it would be for the theatrical, but although it's an improvement it's still an average movie. Kind of feels like a remake of Raiders (particularly now, with the alt. soundtrack), only instead the Nazis are Russians and the Ark is a crystal skull.

Overall? It's a good edit of a terrible movie, now made watchable. Worth a look.