Raiders of the Lost Skull

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.

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.

Ah the power of music!

Aside from positive reviews I sought out NJVC's Indy 4 edit mostly out of curiosity to see how well the score was replaced. Audio is always the most challenging aspect of fan editing with music sometimes difficult to isolate. However I was blown away to see how well NJVC integrated the Raiders score, simply marvellous!

With the original score, right from the opening scene you feel like your in an Indy film. Thankfully this continues as cues are carefully selected.

Cuts are seamless and with 32 minutes cut I was surprised that the film didn't feel rushed.

Highlights for me include the opening, Indy's Crystal Skull nightmare sequence (which brilliantly utilises some of the footage cut earlier in the film including the iconic shot of Indy and mushroom cloud), editing of the jungle scene which is reduced to the bare minimum and the ending which now feels more epic with the replaced score.

Nit-picks would be not seeing the new title (Return of the Crystal Skull) in the opening credits and the one shot of the flying saucer in the nightmare sequence.

This edit is more than watchable, NJVC has created an enjoyable Indy adventure!

This is the third edit of Indy 4 I've watched, and while they all have their pluses and minuses, I think this might be my favorite due to the new score alone. I'm not an expert on movie soundtracks, but this just *felt* more like an Indy film with the music choices that the editor made, and the integration was really well done. Reading some of the reviews, I was very concerned about the audio, but the new music and sound fx were very well balanced with the existing dialogue. I'm assuming the reviewer comments about poor audio levels were made based on v1, as opposed to the v2 I watched.

The other new and exciting thing the editor did was the use of additional footage during the crystal skull spell sequence, including some very clever usage of Doom Town. By far my favorite editing of this scene!

Beyond that, there was the usual mix of editing choices that I both agreed and disagreed with. There were a few things that I have seen done better, but by and large the editing choices were well done.

A/V quality and editing were generally excellent. I only watched the DVD9 for now, but I look forward to adding the AVCHD to my collection if I'm able to obtain it.

8.5/10

December 30, 2011

Very entertaining Indy 4 edit. A lot of the terrible moments are gone and what’s left is a pretty damn good movie. Still the weakest of the 4, but at least now it’s almost worthy of being an Indiana Jones movie. Picture quality is dazzling and the editing is perfect.
Two minor nitpicks though. The title “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull” remains at the start of the movie. And, the added line “Water! Water!” is an obvious overdub due to Indy not moving his lips. But no big deal at all.
9/10