Raiders of the Lost Skull

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.

I can only reiterate what others have said about the score replacement: Great, great work! The opening has an entirely different feel and sets the tone well. Together with the heavy cuts it aids in making the film slightly better and more enjoyable. More or less a flawless edit, both audio and video. Minute things as others have mentioned, but will go unnoticed if one is not looking for them.

Recommended, and definitely one of the Crystal Skull-edits that replaces the original.

I've been watching fanedits for about 5 years now and reading reviews in earnest on this site but I have never submitted one. Well that's changing right now as after seeing this excellent fanedit from my (I believe?) fellow Aussie compadre njvc I could no longer contain my love for the art form under cover of silence. But I digress, on to the edit...

AUDIO EDITING:

Pros -

What drew me to the edit was the score change. As someone who regularly works with audio editing software and someone who has tried (will hopefully be finished one day) to remove and alter music for fan editing purposes, I understand how incredibly difficult this can be. FX can be replaced, but dialogue generally cannot so if the music and fx are particularly dense and you're trying to isolate dialogue amongst all that you're in for some very tough work even with the top audio editing plugins at your disposal. This would have taken a very large amount of time no doubt and to my ears all the cuts were quite smooth. More to the point, the changes enhanced the film greatly on an emotional level and that's really all that matters in the end, isn't it? So very well done, mate.

Cons -

I do have two very small gripes, however. First is the ant attack scene. When the bad dude is devoured in the ant hill, his screams become noticeably lower in volume until they are themselves all but 'devoured' by the music. I realise that there is probably a very good reason for this.. that you had to turn up the music to cover the original score, so it was most likely unavoidable. I suppose the only other solution would be to replace the scream. At any rate, a very minor quibble. The 2nd gripe is merely an echo of another reviewer on here and that's the somewhat excessive use of the "mystery" theme. I felt by the time we were getting near to the end of the film it had started to lose some of its effectiveness due to overuse. To my mind, the edit would actually benefit from putting a small measure of the original score back in to amend this, or simply choosing some other parts of the Raiders (or the other two films) score to work in its stead. Well, perhaps should you ever do a version 3…

VIDEO EDITING

Pros -

I do not have the experience with video that I have with audio but after watching fan edits for some time and teaching myself some editing software I believe I have gained at least an elementary understanding. There were no noticeable hard cuts that I could detect. The new colour correction is a vast improvement (though like some others have mentioned, I would love if it could be taken further). The skull montage is a work of absolute genius!

Cons -

The awful jeep on a tree scene - I really wish that was cut (I quite liked how TMBTM dealt with this in his edit). There were some other cuts that I felt were somewhat abrupt but I put that down to narrative more than editing technique. So, onto narrative…

NARRATIVE

Pros -

Well, where to begin? Everybody's most offensive moments are gone, the pacing is greatly improved, and the ending is far more inline with the franchise. I even managed to get through the whole movie without my attention wandering, and for film as severely hampered as this, that's really saying something.

Cons -

As is often the case with many fan edits, the film now feels a bit short (though considering how much was cut, not as much as short as you might think). Marion's character feels somewhat empty in this edit. I'm not exactly sure what you could do about this as I can't remember the original film clearly enough, but I felt she needed just a bit more screen time, a bit more of a chance for us as an audience to identify with her, and if that means putting back in some cringe-inducing dialogue that might be the lesser of two evils? The ending - though much improved - also felt a bit abrupt. Again, not sure what you could do about this exactly. Perhaps cut away to a slow shot of the mountain from earlier in the film (if there is indeed a suitable one) just to buy you a few more seconds to let the music carry the film off better? I don't know it's a tough one.

VIDEO QUALITY

I downloaded the AVCHD. Excellent quality.

ENJOYMENT

I thoroughly enjoyed this edit. It's quite amazing how much of an improvement it is from the original film. Most certainly is now my go-to version and there can be surely no higher praise for a fan edit.

After watching Pulp Empire, I had a good feeling that this edit would be of the same caliber, at least in the sense of Audio. NJVC masterfully splices in the Raiders soundtrack into this mess of a movie, and the audio seems pretty professionally cut. Nice Work!

My issues come with the edit itself. There were a few cuts too many, and some scenes ended too abruptly. As I have edited films before, I understand that NJVC was working with an obviously limited amount of footage, so some odd cuts are bound to occur. What stood out to me were some dissolves from scene to scene: The shot of Indy over the Nuke-town fading into the FBI scene was jarring, and the quicksand to driving scene fade was noticeable. Like I said, with such a small amount of footage, not everything can be perfect, but I think a hard cut or a wipe of some kind might have fit more.

Like I said, the soundtrack is great. The original movie itself is bogged down with issues, which is the reason I only marked my enjoyment of this cut at 7. That being said, this version of the film is a perfect replacement for the original cut. I haven't seen any of the other major edits yet (TMBTM's, TM2YC's, or Q2's), so I'll check those out too.

NJVC's edit of KOTCS is a handy replacement for the loathsome original. There is no reason anyone should be watching the original with this in their collection. NJVC has succeded in the stated goal to make this feel more like Raiders but it still feels like a very drab and boring relation to that masterpiece.

Audio/Video Quality: The audio and image quality is absolutely stunning (Near faultless). The new score is wonderful although I thought the original wasn't so bad. I thought it just needed more of the stronger themes, not replacing entirely. However while the colour correction is an improvement it doesn't go nearly far enough. The image is still wildly over-saturated and of course the artificial glow that is filtered over everything is still present. But the glowing halos over every part of the image that even approaches white is almost impossible to remove.

One of the best scenes is the skull montage in the jungle camp which contained the only error I could see. The montage contains sequence from Raiders and since those shots are in a slightly different aspect ratio they are bleeding out round the edges. A shame that the only error is in the best edited bit. Knocked off 1 point but would've been a frction if that was possible.

Visual Editing: This is a huge improvement on the original. Trimming out alot of stuff that needed to go. e.g. flying saucer, gofers, doom town, motorcycle skiing. But IMO it also removes stuff that didn't need to go and leaves in other bits that did. e.g. removing Spalko's (Wonderfully tongue-in-cheek) awesome scene stealing monologue but then immediately after, leaving in her using telekinesis? I thought characters like Spalko, Mutt and Mac got a bit lost somewhere. Also I was hoping that Mac's constant flipping of sides was going to be streamlined more.

Audio Editing: Clearly a ten out of ten. I'm sure the work and effort that went into the score replacement was huge but it seemed effortless. The score always matched the action and the replaced sound effects were undetectable to my ear. The way the score comes in over the credits is sheer magic.

Narrative: Sadly this is where the edit fell down for me. The original's plot is so convoluted and boring that it's barely watchable. From the the post rocket sled de-brief to the quicksand scene it's still 40 minutes of our heroes jumping all over the globe in an attempt to disguise that every scene is a drawn out exposition of the plot...

EXCITING CHASE! / Sit in AirForce base explaining the plot / Sit in Indys home explaining the plot / Sit in Cafe explaining the plot / BRIEF CHASE! / Walk through market explaining the plot / Stand in cell explaining the plot / Explore tomb while explaning the plot / Tie Indy to chair while explaining the plot to him / MILDLY FUN QUICKSAND SCENE!

But even after all that I'm still unclear about what happened to who and when and how? So I'm unclear what could be done to fix this but something needs done to up the pace in this segment.
I've checked the original and the original exposition sequence lasted 47 minutes but I feel it needs cut almost in half to stop the audience falling asleep.

Enjoyment: The first 15 minutes and and the last third are top draw Indy entertainment but the exposition 40 minutes I've mentioned is so boring that I struggled to get to the last third. I think this is the reason this film may be unfixable at anything like feature length but for a 90 minute cut this is probably as good as it's gonna get.

This probably sounds like quite a negative review but make no mistake that NJVC has improved this film dramatically. I've given it an enjoyment score of 6 but the orginal cut would be something like a 2 (If I was being generous). And lastly the way NJVC ended this thing is a masterstroke, removing the cheesy wedding and replacing it with something, warmer, more subtle and more in keeping with how a Indy film should end... hurrah!