Let's make it a summer to remember... can I get a HELL YEAAAAA!

Regardless, I'm looking forward to this more than any other film this year, even Dark Knight, I just hope it beats the odds and recaptures the magic, but so far I'm cautiously optomistic. We'll see though. After all, Indy's only a little over three months away...

The pic of the alien crystal skull made me go ??? but there was a supernatural kind of vibe going on in all the movies really what with face melting Arks, Indian voodoo and Imortal Knights so why not!

The backlash for TPM occured because it is FUCKING DREADFUL. There's really no getting around it.

But that's not going to happen because the haters have spent so long trashing the film and refusing to let go of their own private "visions" of the movies, it's impossible for them to now take an objective view and see the film for what it is.

The same applies to fanboys who love the prequels and refuse to see their flaws.

Phantom Menace is a great Star Wars movie...having said that, Lucas sucks at dialogue :P

Indy 4 is looking good...We've had McClane, Balboa and Rambo make successful returns and now Indy...I wonder if in 20 years, Nicholas Cage will make a Con Air 2, if Tom Cruise will return to fight the war of the Worlds once again, if Jeff Goldblum will bring dinosaurs back, if Will Smith will defeat the alien menace once more in Bastille Day...somehow, I doubt it.

We don't have action stars anymore, the Arnies and the Slys of this world are disappearing. Sure, we have action film...but look around...

We have no more action stars or icons...no Indys or Rambos. These films coming out with the old heroes of the screen are like a last goodbye to the action-icon era of cinema.

Will Tobey McGuire be remembered in 20 years as an icon? No...Shia LeBouf? Don't make me laugh...Indy is now all that's left of the icon generation...at least it seems he's going out in style.

Indiana Jones and the Place With Lots of Dust!

If you get over the shite acting, dismal dialogue, hopelessly underwritten characters, dire pacing and so forth, you are still left with the fact that it is downright boring. Which is the cardinal sin of Star Wars. For fuck's sake the "climax" (and I use that term loosely) of the film was a fucking vote of no confidence.

It's still the biggest disappointment of my cinema going life- I sat down feeling a sense of excitement. The lights fall the scrolling words come up and.... it's a tax dispute in the outer rim. It was like buying a porn mag, getting home and finding that some bastard had slipped a copy of the Economist inside the cover.

You know, it could be successfully argued that Empire is about the exact same thing, but that's held up as a masterpiece.

As for pacing...have you not forgotten the long, slow sequence between the droids in the desert and chasing Artoo into the Jundland Wastes?

As for dialogue..hmm..."But I was going into Tosche Station to pick up some power converters", the originals have some great dialogue, but also a lot of crap.

As for cgi...well it's not as if Lucas could have shot coruscant on location in New york...oh and for the record, the prequels had hundreds of sets and they did go to various locations. Yes there's a lot of cgi but there was no other way that Lucas could have shot those films...he can't shoot a saber duel at an actual volcano you know.

As for likeable characters...well there's Qui-Gon, Obi-Wan, jar j...no, wait...yeah ok, Jar jar was over the top, but Threepio was over the top at times in the originals.

As for the action scenes...how can you not love the podrace, or the saber duel against Maul? In Clones you have the beginning of the Clone Wars, and Sith had a ton of great action...though I will say that the biggest flaw of the prequels is actually what was left out, especially in Clones and Sith, which had a ton of great stuff left o the cutting roo floor, never to see the light of day.

The acting in the originals wasn't that great either...with the obvious exceptions of Guinness, Oz and Hamill (in Empire).

As for the aliens...what were you expecting, ET? Yes, the Gungans were over the top, but what about Watto, Yoda, the Wookiees (with their brief cameos)? Darth Maul was simply cool. He was to the prequels what Boba was to the originals.

Look, I would have made changes...I would have made Anakin older for example...but some of the complaints that people have are just ridiculous.

The prequels were always going to be different...when Obi-wan spoke of the Old Republic, before the Dark Times, in the novelisations you got glimpses of what that old tie was like, and Lucas had been saying for years that the prequels would be different...ut everyone was still shocked when he didn't deliver carbon copies of the originals.

I'll give you an example...the used future look of the originals...people complained because the prequels were shiny and clean...well that was the point...it was the Republic, when things were supposed to be better. Before the galaxy was run down and went into decline over 20 years of Imperial rule.

I remember when menace came out and a lot of people hated all the politics...well, it was obvious (at least to me) that the prequels were going to delve more deeply into the politics of the galaxy than the originals did...in fact the politics paid off with Palpatines eventual rise to the throne as Emperor in Revenge of the Sith. In fact I think the overall plot of the prequels is actually better than the overall plot of the originals...or at least more coherent and less cut and pasted. Is it perfect? No. But it was never going to be.

I have a theory...not sure if it would apply to you, but I think it does for a lot of fans, especially older fans. Back in '77 people went to see Star Wars for the effects and the action...they went because it was something they had never seen before or imagined was possible...but what they got was a great story, and what I consider to be the greatest movie ever made.

Time went on, a lot of the effects became dated, but it didn't matter because the film had a great story with memorable characters and that was the lasting impression...it wasn't the tie fighters and the explosions, it was the story that stuck with people.

So when the prequels came along, the opposite happened...people went to see the films for the story, but what happened was that the effects overshadowed the story...they were overwhelming...instead of listening to what Yoda was saying, people were looking out the window at Coruscant. And yes, Jar Jar is part of that...yes, he was over the top...but try taking your eyes off him. When Anakin and Padme are talking and jar jar is messing around in the background, people automatically looked at jar jar. The effects overwhelmed the story.

Now, the cgi was needed to tell the story Lucas wanted to tell...and you know, I actually think the prequels would have been better received if some of the windows had been closed. Lucas couldn't show you the galaxy back in the days of the originals...in fact those films are actually kind of claustrophobic. The prequels opened the windows and showed you the world outside...but that world was distracting.

Anyways, it's just a theory...I love the prequels as much as the originals, and it doesn't bother me that others don't...everyone has their own tastes and opinions, I'm fine with that.

One thing though...there's an early draft of Phantom Menace, where Obi-Wan finds Anakin himself and the Gungans aren't goofy...that draft is actually better than the final film.

He'd still be my pick to do a WWII Captain America movie.

Schindler's List is arguably his masterpiece, but since then? nope, pretty average to shite stuff.

And before anyone flays me over SPR, I have genuine reasons that I can wheel out, and I'm not for a minute denying that the normandy landing was a staggering piece of film making.

But I'm biased.

As for how much of these wars were shown, sure I'd like to have seen more, though look back at Empire...it has fuck all to do with the rebellion. Yes, you have the battle on Hoth, but after that, it's all about Vaders obsession with Luke.

Even Return of the Jedi, which bring the rebellion to the forefront again, is still a much more personal story with the rebellion being in the background.

If Luke had been killed or turned to the Dark Side on the Death Star, it wouldn't have mattered because lando would still have blown it up and the villains would end up dead anyway...but even so, the rebellion is still just a subplot and the primary focus of the film is all about Luke, Vader and the Emperor.

And one thing the prequels (especially Clones) suffers from is bad editing.

In Revenge of the Sith, there's an iconic shot of Anakin leading the clones up the steps of the Jedi Temple, hood up, lightsaber at the ready...it's one of THE iconic shots of the entire saga.

A great moment, and if you're a Star Wars fan, watching that for the first time...even if you hated everything about the prequels, that shot brought back memories of "A young Jedi named Darth Vader...helped the Empire hunt down and destroy the jedi Knights" and you were going to see it, Anakins betrayal. He was going to walk into the temple and lay waste to the Jedi...Darth Vader, baptised in the blood of the Jedi...

And then it cut away...and that right there is the problem with the prequel trilogy...it's full of great moments, but without the followthrough, without moving forward and taking that next step.

There's another scene at the beginning, during the space battle. We'd waited 20 years for a dogfight to match Return of the Jedi...and the space battle looked cool, but it was all background...Anakin at one point says "I'm going to go help him out" referring to one of the clones who is in trouble...great, a chance for some dogfight action...then Obi-Wan says no? What the fuck?

Great moments in all three films that could have been so much more.

Still love them though :P

The corpse does not look like the Gold Idol

The corpse does look like its from Earth 2

The set looks like Space Mountain

Indy's hat looks like a shovel and his face is clean. whaa?

If the rumors of a Close Encounters link are true, I will insist on a dum DA dum da DUUUUUM music cue somewhere in the film

About that fan-scripted trailer further up the thread, Indy doesn't say 'trust me' - Han Solo says that.

Frankly, looking back...I would have preferred if Lucas had cast Christensen at 14, gone with an older Anakin and let Christensen develop the role over three films rather than two...Hamills first performance as Luke and Christensens first as Anakin are eerily similar (father and son I suppose :P). By the time Empire had come around, Hamill's take on the character had developed significantly and was complete by Jedi, which showed the evolution of the character over the three films.

Christensen was doing pretty much the same, with his character more developed in his second performance. If he had a third movie, I think the evolution of Vader would have been complete across the trilogy.

Honestly, look at the amount of duds to hits and since hook it is way skewed.

Anyway, I've always felt that what made star wars popular was the fact that it was popular--sort of a non-linear network effect of it being in everybody's cultural lexicon. What the prequels did was remind everybody (or me, at least) that there really wasn't a there there.

But we've had 6 movies now...for better or worse, the saga is complete. While I'm sure I'll enjoy the tv series, I'd kind of prefer it if Star Wars ended right now, at least for another 10 years.

I wouldn't ever want another movie, unless it was about the ancient Sith war as mentioned in the prequels (throwing out EU, which sucks), but even then I'd have it be something separate...don't call it Star Wars. And don't do it for another decade, if at all.

Anyways I think we've derailed the thread for long enough, let's get back to Indy.

You have to remember, Spielberg and Ford both loved Darabonts script, but Lucas rejected it so it went through a rewrite...so the fact that they are shooting means that the current form of the script is something that all three of them liked..that would suggest that it is better than Darabonts draft, which is reason enough to get excited.

The fight between mace and Palpatine actually reminds me of the Ben/Vader duel. It's much more tactical than the other prequel duels, but it does hve the occasional flip.

However, American filmmakers have no obligation whatsoever to cater to this attitude. Do I wish that more American films were made about other facets of the war and history in general? You bet. Do I think a borader canvas should have been employed for SPR and Schindler's List? Hell no. SPR was about Omaha Beach and an American platoon and SL was about Oskar Schindler and the people he was able to save during the war. It doesn't make them lesser films and it sure as hell doesn't make them unfair in any way.

But Episodes 7, 8 and 9 have already been released...the storyline of those three films would have involved Luke finding a long lost sister and confronting the Emperor. But it was all condensed into Return of the Jedi, with leia becoming Luke's sister.

When Yoda says "No, there is another" in Empire, it was supposed to be a set up for 7-9, but he was burned out and didnt want to do more movies so he put it all into Return of the Jedi.

The saga is complete.