And I read on the other Indy TB that someone thought raiders was a snooze fest and Crusade was the winner of the 3 .... blows my mind. I watched Raiders again Friday when the pic of Ford went up (I was was too pumped - almost left work early just to go home and watch it) and man ... blows the other 2 away - and I watched them too. I had a film fest.

Keep the set reports coming - theraider.net - had it up first. I can't friggin' wait.

1) Indy uses "First Alert" to call Shia when he has FALLEN AND CAN'T GET UP and

2) He'll pass that damn fedora to Abner Ravenwood junior at the end. Because that will piss off fans and Spielberg's been pretty good at that lately.

There is absolutely NO comment, interview, blurb, legit leaked script, legit leaked synopsis, etc. that states that the story revolves around Aliens. 100% complete internet fabrication.

So what's the use of bitching about it? IT'S NOT TRUE. At least not until we hear it from a legit source.

They really don't make films like that any more, really proved to me that Speilberg is still as fresh and inventive as he was when he made Jaws.

No-one thought it was going to be anything less than a big Micheal Bay film, even if the reviews are brilliant the haters where still right in that they woill still not like it. Because they don't like Bay films.

If you didn't like Armageddon or The Island then you won't like TF.

I like Bay in a sense that i can enjoy his MTV style shit but no matter how perfect a Bay film TF is the Bay haters will still not like it.

I'm sure lost.rules you expected it to get good reviews but that doesn't make you wrong in saying it is a shallow piece of mass produced popcorn crap.

It is just a very good piece of crap.

Just think of the last buch of films he made... Catch me if you Can, Minority Report, The Terminal, War of the Worlds, Munich.

How many other directors do you know in their 60's producing so many quality films within such a short space of time?

The films he has made in the last 6 years or so would be enough for most young directors to call a successful carrer.

But instead it is a director in his 60's who is winding down after 3 decades at the top.

People praise Scorssese or Coppola for making a couple of standout films early in their carreer and then just making geric shit for the rest of their lives.

Spielberg gets shit even though h has had the equivilent of 3 amazing careers.

Most directors would have peaked at ET or the first Indy instead he went on to seemingly peak again with Savong Private Ryan or Schindlers List. And now it looks like it might be another 10 years before we see the old man start to slow down.

He has made 6 films sinse 2000, all of them fresh, different and of great scale, i cannot think of any young director (maybe Soderberg) who could have the energy and skill to work so fast.

Even if they had faults they still each did something new with film making....

Hooks effects and production values.

The epic recreation of a period in Amistad and building an entire airport for the Terminal.

Francis Ford Coppola directed Jack and still gets called a genius.

Films these days seem to insistent on keeping the audiences attention or satisying with dramatic or explosive endings.

Munich reminded me of the French Connection or All the Presidents Men.

'What? Holy Grail? Immortality? An immortal knight? Indy's dad?'

It all sounds rubish, i'm sure Speilberg knows what he is doing.

And leave Shia alone, maybe he gets roles because a lot of people like him.

The camera attached to the jig, doesn't appear to have those Micky Mouse ear looking film canisters, and I'm going out on a limb and "assuming" that the camera is a high definition digital camera....

The OT was a space western about a farmboy and a pirate on an adventure.

The PT where decade spanning sci-fi operas.

You could replace the space setting of the OT and still have the same film becasue it is not about sci-fi stuff it is about relateable people on an adventure.

You couldn't replace the setting of the PT becasue they are not adventure movies that happen to be set in a sci-fi fantasy world, they are movies about that sci-fi fantasy world.

The PT are films about a place and it's history wheras the OT are an adventure set incidently within that world.

It is obvious that Lucas did not want them to be simlar to the OT otherwize he would have set the time-line to within a year or so rather than spreading a number of characters stories out over 2 decades.

Having some kind of alien artifact is no sillier than the Lost Ark of Holy Grail and at least it would give the film a different feel.

As long as there where no actual aliens in it.

If they get the adventure elements and the character right the plot could be about him finding a magic dildo and the film will still be good.

Although maybe a case of too many cooks and too much hype might have clouded their visions.

They probably didn't need to put too much thought into the mcguffin for the other 3 films.

Also russians are nearly as good at being bad-guy as nazis.

You could have another religious artifact and set it back in the 20's or 30's and it could still not 'feel' like Indy.

For this to be like the starwars PT it would have to be set over 30 years and be about a bunch of random characters and more about Nazi history than adventure.

As long as it is about Indy looking for something and people getting in his way then it will 'feel' like Indy.

I can't wait for that classic Indy adventure except with a newish setting.

Also regularfacetoht surely the Temple of Dooms mcguffin wasn't religious, it was just a random stone that seemed to have been come up with by Lucas and co in the space of 5 mins.

None of the Indy films have been about the Mcguffins in any way. They are about the people trying to get the mcguffins.

This could have been done with the other films easily. If the mcguffin is too detailed, complex and too tied into the plot of the film then it is in danger of being a movie about the mcguffin istead of Indys adventure to find it.

For a director to take it easy and make AI, Minortiy Report, Catch me if you Can, The Terminal, War of the Worlds and Munich in 7 years is pretty amazing.

All of these films could be put alongside Empire of the Sun, Color Purple etc as Speilberg making smaller projects.

To have these films, films that most directors would call their big films, as his 'filler' films says alot about him.

Most directors talk for years about making a film then spend a couple of years making it. Speilberg announced, prepared and shot War of the Worlds in less than a year. And anyone who complains about the films ending should remember that that is the original ending of WOTW, he did the best that could be done with it.

True they didn't grab the publics imagination but you can't expect everthing he does to be groundbreaking to that extent.

Think of any great artist in any art form.

The greats normally innovate at one point, usually eary on in their career. They make one piece of art that changes the medium forever.

Very few repeat this feat. Coppola made the Godfather, Scorsesse made Taxi Driver and then they made films that whilst where good didn't change cinema again.

Speilberg changed cinema as we know it with Jaws, then ET, then Indy, then Jurrasic Park, then Saving Private Ryan, then Schindlers List.

It is like he got a time machiene and went back and made all the landmark films.

To expect him to change cinema yet again is unrealistic. I'm haooy with him just taking it easy and making one brilliant film a year for the next decade or so.

If any new director made AI, Minortiy Report, Catch me if you Can, The Terminal, War of the Worlds and Munich in 7 years we would all be like 'wow, that's amazing they are all really good films and all so different, how did he make them all so fast?'

But when it is Speilberg, a 61 year old man does it at the tail end of a 30+ year career we go 'oh, he's slipping a bit'.

They let everyone eats it up, while keeping the actual plot/mcguffin under secrecy.

Like I said they shouldn't put too much thought into the mcguffin because that is not what will make the film.

I want some of what these guys are taking.

People seem to think that the robots should come to earth and disguise themselves as cars from the 80's. If you go by that rational then in the G1 series they would have come down to earth and disguised themselves as cars from the 50's.

When they announced the re-make of Escape from New York people complained that the would make everything contemporary and that would go against what made the original so cool.

They seemed to forget that in the 80's dressing up Kurt Russel in a leather waste coat and mullett was the most 'hip' and 'contemporary' choice at the time.

People need to let films embrace the state of society in the time in which they are made. Just because some of us think that music/style/cars etc where better in the movies of the past should remember that you would have had exactly the same opinion of trends 20 years ago.

If TF was never made in the 80's and they made it today then Optimus would probably be pimped, Bumblebee would be a camero etc.

Not having these elements in a contempory film would be like taking denim or big hair out of an 80's film or taking flares out of a 70's film.

I agree they are deep and epic if you look into them but I was a fan of the adventure films that where the original trilogy and not the type of films the prequals where.

I was never really a sci-fi person which is why i loved the Original trilogy. The prequals are completely sci-fi orientated so that kind of put me off.

They do add depth to the originals but do you really need all that background? I enjoyed the originals for 20 years without knowing the entire life story of Anakin.

If the original Optimus had flames and Bay took them away you would all be shouting 'No flames on optimus = nipples on batman'.

So it is not about what looks good it is about being nosalgic about superficial details.

He is maybe one of the elements which kind of matches the original trilogys sense of fun.

I think if he had of remained a consistant character throughout the whole thing he could have grown on me.

Actually that is another reason why the prequals don't work, because they are so spread out. We have Qui Gon, Obi One, Anakin and Jar Jar as the main characters in 1, Anakin (but with a different actor) and Padmne with Obi on the side lines in 2 and no real central hero at all in 3.

If George had set the whole prequal story within the space of a year or two just before Anakin becomes Vader we could have had one group of characters to follow and grow to love.

Getting rid of Jar Jar because fans didn't like him is as big a mistake as anything else.

But anyway what I meant is that Jar Jar at least represented a bit of a risk and carefree attitude that was abundant in the OT. The rest of the PT was just too souless and depressing.

But I get your point. Prequels should've been told from Obi-Wan's POV and made Anakin seem more likeable instead of the petulant Darth Turd from planet Tigerbeat.

Do agree about Bumblebee though, just because a bettle would have been interesting to see in robot mode.

I'm not really in defense of the changes made, and i do sympathize with the TF fans, i however can't wait to see some Bay fun as I never read the comics, i only really watched the cartoons and after re-watching the movie recently have decided that any real characterization or depth must be solely in the comics.

Anyway, I was kind of just trying to say that people jump on design changes even when they make sense. People jumped on Spideys organic web shooters even though it was an obvious choice that took away nothing from the character. Any sign of Indy doing something that is more consistant with the 50's than the 20's will be jumped on also.

I really felt there was no hero character in any of the films.

No-one a kid would look at and go 'wow i want to be him!'

As a kid i had Solo and Luke to admire, kids now have Anakin talking about 'love is blind' (cough, cough, fag) or Obi just looking bored most of the time.

The whole point of the SW universe was that it felt real and this included people living in it not dissussing the universe like they had never been there.

This is usually a big mis-step sci-fi makes (Homer: 'Oh what a bleak future we live in!' Bart: 'Present dad, present'). Lucas always said he didn't want character having to explain stuff, he didn't want boring sci-fi talk. His universe didn't need explaining or disscussing it was like the real world.

Actually stoping the film and having a character go 'Qui Gin, what are midichlorians?' and then have Qui Gon go 'blah blah blah blah blah' just goes 100% against Lucas' mantra for the whole concept of SW.

Jedi? Brainwashed monkeys that don't free slaves.

Darth Vader? Ani, the whiney teenage girl.

The Force? Scientific!

Yoda? Ninja jedi.

"You betrayed me over a woman. A woman!" Isn't there a movie with a line like that in it? Anyway, I wanted to see an exchange like that in the PT.

But after scorsesse had started re-hashing his own style (Casino, Gangs, The Departed) the Berg was still innovating. In the 90s he changed the world of special effects in JP, showed us all for the first time what WW2 was actually like in Ryan and showed the realities of the holocaust for the first time in List.

If you look at other members of the 70's directors brat pack then they all seem to be obbsessed with making 'epic' style swords and sandle films, gangster eoics or biopics.

Why can't Scorssese make a small film about a character like Taxi Driver, why does each of his films now have to have 'oscar fodder' stamped all over it?

Even the Departed he changed from the character based drama which was Infernal Affairs into a sprawling gangster film which skipped forwards 3 months ever 5 minutes leaving us feeling slightly cold towards the characters

But you guys are right, having one actor play anakin through all 3 films and having them be mainly about him and obi ones relationship would have worked much better. I just never felt any connection between them as i never felt any connection between anakin and padmne.

But i don't think love triangle, i think that it should be that anakin falls in love with Padmne and Obi dissaproves and tells the council and that is what causes the rift.

I think it would work better if Obi is the type who wouldn't betray his Jedi ways and that is what separates them.

Maybe having the Jedi's inadvertently lead to padmnes death, Anakin blames them all especially Obi.

Anyway nite all.