Raiders of the Lost Skull

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

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!

Just watched this last night and thought it was a huge improvement over the original film. I'm rather notorious for absolutely despising the original Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, and none of the other fanedits have really done it for me. This one was the closest I've come to actually enjoying this movie.

I have a slight love/hate relationship with your replacing the music with the music from Raiders. One one hand, it feels nice and nostalgic to see Indy at it again with familiar tunes. On the other hand, it makes me recall the scenes the music is originally from, which can be even more of a reminder of how this movie does not live up to the originals.

I thought your edit of the Warehouse sequence was note perfect, and by far the best version of that scene I've encountered. I very much enjoyed the pace, the tone, and the way it played out. Much, much better.

There are a few times where I feel you may have edited the movie beyond what the material will allow, and they stuck out for me. For instance, removing the snake from the quicksand scene. It's great that it's gone, but it isn't really gone, it's just awkwardly cut around. Same thing goes for the truck chase later in the film. Mutt seems to appear and disappear from the particular cars, teleporting around, and the geography of the sequence becomes jumbled. Not really a deal breaker, and I don't think there was much else you could've done to accomplish your goals, but it did stick out.

My only other constructive criticism would be that sometimes the new music does not seem properly mixed with the sound effects. I'm sure that has something to do with your removal of the original music, but it's still there.

Overall though, this is the best version of Indy IV that currently exists. It runs at a brisk 90 minutes, much of the silliness of the original has been removed, and most importantly, it actually feels like an Indiana Jones movie.

Really good job on the editing and the inclusion of the original Indiana music from Raiders, though sometimes with the added music the Sound FX would die away, and all you could hear was the music.
Most of what you removed was not missed, but and to no fault of your own, the movie is more or less just Indy and his son finding clues with little action, so the middle of the film is a little slow.
Overall this is probably the best the movie can get.
The opening edit and getting rid of the whole race scene with Elvis music and ground hogs, as well as the ending are the best part's. Doing away with the UFO and the wedding was great, good spot to end the film.
Overall enjoyable and well worth a watch.

January 4, 2012

Let me preface this review by stating I have watched multiple fanedits of this movie previously. I have never liked a single one and didn’t care to ever see any version of it ever again. The only reason I watched this was because I saw you were the first who attempted to remove the ant scene. There are few things I hate more in the entire universe than that ant scene. Truly. I have taken care of many sick and dying people who are less of an affront to my senses than that scene is. Sadly I must report that this edit has not yet proved to me there is a way to salvage this movie, though there are many good things NJVC did worth mentioning:

1) It is edited in HD. Video quality is fabulous. (NOTE: I watched the BD version. I understand other available versions were not rendered to the same quality standards as applied to the BD version, such as border & black issues.) The BD render looks great. No problems of any kind that I was able to pick up on.

2) Any scene with even the slightest bit of putridity got snipped out. The cuts are deep and the movie short.

3) Some of the added Raiders score was pleasant and gave an added illusion of drama.

4) The handling of the visual overlay while Indy stares into the skull’s eyes was well-done.
If I were to over-think it I might question what I saw, but it was a nice use of some of the cut visual effects and I thought you edited the scene well.

As a first-time faneditor here, there is much for NJVC to be proud of.

Now the bad news:

1) The biggest bad news is the audio. NJVC seems to have a good handle on editing video, a good nose for shit, and a decent grasp of narrative. The thing that still needs some work is audio editing. It was a disappointment that the audio was only stereo for a BD release. Additionally (as some have mentioned previously) the added Raiders music is not balanced properly. I also felt that the Raiders music was used a bit too much. It got repetitive and distracting, though I was impressed how well the movie’s actual score was able to be cut out. There must have been no music in the center track?? Lastly on this subject, some of the music didn’t cue up well with what was happening on screen.

2) The other unfortunate (but maybe inevitable) thing on this edit were the inevitable gaps some scenes had as a result of the deep cuts made. Maybe somebody some day will find a way to creatively get over this hurdle, but this edit makes a strong testimony that it may not ever be possible to have a seamless story without all the crap. NJVC clearly demonstrates some creativity and skill, but he still could not find a way to bridge some scenes or shots that were cut. There are numerous cut points that have some distracting component or make it so that the scene no longer makes sense.

All-in-all, is it better than the original? Yes, but so is Smokey and the Bandit 2. Is it better than other fanedits of this movie I have seen? It depends on what you emphasize. There is less stupid writing, but now some of the scenes don’t work the way they have been edited. If somebody put a gun to my head and made me choose, I would choose this edit over the others I have seen because I prefer bad directing to bad writing. NJVC has done the best so far in trying to salvage this dung-heap-of-a-story.

Video: 10
Audio: 5
Editing: 7
Story: 7