Raiders of the Lost Skull

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.

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.

One of the best Indy 4 edits, a convincing improvement on the original. NJVC's cuts are more aggressive than others and many of them work. I was surprised and impressed how many details I ended up not missing!
While the cuts in the beginning are too severe for me (too much banter is cut in favor of action), NJVC get the perfect balance half-way into the movie. This is my favorite jungle chase sequence, and the best waterfall sequence. The technical and storytelling editing skills are impressive.
My one disagreement is on the audio: the best known bits of music used from Raiders of the Lost Ark are applied too often and distract me from enjoying this story. My brain keeps focusing on the music cues in Ark, pulling me out of the Skull narrative. More judicious use of less-rousing and less-famous cues from Indy 1 and Indy 3 might have achieved the musical boost without being recognizable as copy-paste.
In all, this is an enjoyable achievement!

(DISCLOSURE: Believe it or not, I actually enjoyed and still enjoy the official cut KINGDOM OF THE CRYSTAL SKULL. Yes, it has problems, but it still an enjoyable ride in my opinion. All that being said, I do think RAIDERS OF THE LOST SKULL is an even better movie, from a classic Indiana Jones standpoint.)

This is a great edit of Kingdom of the Crystal Skull! I was absolutely thrilled to hear the soundtrack from Raiders in this! The removal of the more goofy and silly moments was done very nicely, and made the overall narrative flow better. The action scenes are re-edited well, and felt like classic Indiana Jones. The escape attempt action scene in the Hangar flowed so much better with that pointless dialogue ("D--n, I thought that was closer"; "YoU dOn'T kNoW hIm!") cut out. The camp scene where the skull's looking into Indy's mind (or something) with the different Soviet Union, nuclear blast, etc clips cut in with Spalko's monologue was genius and blended in perfectly. Mutt, Oxley, Marion, and Mac are edited into better characters, which I appreciate heavily, especially for Marion since she is the best Indy love interest.

However, I do have some complaints, but most of them are minor. For starters, I could still hear little portions of Elvis' Hound Dog at the beginning. This probably couldn't be helped to much, so I overlooked it mostly. I would rate the audio editing an 8.5/10, but it doesn't allow that, so I had to settle with 8/10. Another thing is those stupid faces Indy and the Commie Colonel make on that speeding train thing. I do wish that was completely cut out. I wish more of Mutt's dialogue in Indy's house was cut, with him asking Indy if he's 80 and all that. Finally, I wish the wedding sequence was still in this cut (without Mutt about to put on Indy's hat of course), because it worked well from a storytelling standpoint that Indy would want to settle down from adventuring and be with Marion.

Even with those things I had to say at the end, I still love Raiders of the Lost Skull, and I would recommend it to anyone who is disappointed with Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.

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