Raiders of the Lost Skull

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

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.

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!