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.

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!

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

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.