Udvarnoky

Jeepers. https://mixnmojo.com/news/Zombies-Ate-My-Retirement-Fund

Lucasfilm owns the IP itself, so that's what Disney inherited when it acquired the studio. Paramount's distribution rights go back to the original deal George Lucas made with Michael Eisner (then at Paramount) back in 1979. Pretty much every studio turned down Raiders when Lucas shopped it around, and a stumbling block was that they simply didn't believe that Lucas could produce the film for $20 million he claimed he could. The script read like an expensive epic, and Spielberg had a reputation for going overbudget before Raiders. Lucas and Spielberg were committed to deliver under the promised budget as part of the deliberately "down and dirty," television-like schedule they intended to shoot Raiders on, but it was probably hard to imagine on a financier's part. In the end Paramount agreed to finance the movie on the condition of major penalties if it went overbudget as well as perpetual distribution rights to the movie and any sequels. That means that when Disney acquired Lucasfilm over thirty years later, they weren't even left with the rights to distribute a fifth Indy. About a year later Disney cut a deal with Paramount to secure the distribution rights to future films, with Paramount retaining the rights to the original four and still getting some sort of financial participation on what comes after. You gotta hand it to Eisner -- that deal he made has been a license to print money for Paramount for 40 years.

Paramount is still getting some kind of financial participation in Indy 5, so even though their involvement in this movie is merely clerical, I could see the mountain logo getting appended after the Disney and Lucasfilm logos for the sake of tradition.

There is no guarantee of a five film set, as Paramount owns the distribution rights to the first four movies in perpetuity while Disney owns them for the fifth film and whatever unholy works they make with the brand thereafter. It's theoretically possible that Disney will eventually drop a big sack of money on Paramount to get those rights (they actually had to do that in the first place just to control Indy 5), but I don't see Paramount being in any hurry to sell them.

It's nice to see it dechlorinated, but the nets and Classic Softs and whatever other physical filters used when shooting the movie is what gives it that gauzy look with all the halation, so that's baked in forever. I am still looking forward to giving it a watch with a less hideous color grade, though. And it's clear that starting over from a 4K scan has yielded up more detail from the 35mm source. The trilogy upgrades are more significant, but it's clear Skull got some real benefits here. Also, is this the first time in history that revisionist color grading is seen as a good thing?

It's disappointing, but perhaps will be limited to a prologue setting up Mikkelsen's villain or something? Unless they're going full The Godfather Part II and will repeatedly swap back to WWII. The rumor is that the movie is being shot digitally, which is a first for the franchise. It will be a shame when Mangold and Papamichael inevitably deliver something more "filmic" than Spielberg and Kaminski did with the 35mm-shot Crystal Skull.

You probably are already familiar with this video, but why pass up an excuse to tout the invaluable Old Telltale Games Stuff channel?

Ahh, the new Games DB. It's gonna be so awesome...in my imagination.

It's also worth noting that "short-term" can mean an awful lot of things when you're talking about a game with such an exceptionally lengthy development cycle. The original game took five years to make. Now the sequel has reached six. That's a long time for anyone to work on a single project, especially depending on their role. Zak McClendon spent over three years on Psychonauts 2 before he departed, for example, and for all we know he left simply because his work was complete.

I think that was the case with the first game, though. Was Wolpaw ever a Double Fine employee? I figured his work was always contractual in nature.

Yes, he was brought on for a while to participate.

I like how pulpy Blanchett went with the character, but her potential as a villain is really undermined every step of the way. While she seems ruthless enough, her most villainous acts (the slaughter of the soldiers at Area 51 and of the tribesmen at Akator) are carried out off-screen by henchmen. It doesn't help that her threatening of Marion's life to make Indy cooperate is just used to kick off a comic tiff between the couple. If the characters treat it as a joke when the bad guys have guns trained on them, how seriously are we supposed to take them? Spalko doesn't really have the menace nor the hissable qualities you'd want in an Indy baddie. Donovan, a much less colorful villain, nevertheless has the moment where he shoots Henry Sr. and gives Indy's final task a clock and some weight. Spalko doesn't really have that moment. At no point does she prove to be a credible threat to any of the main characters. I also remain puzzled by the decision to make Spalko maybe have psychic powers but then again maybe not? It's an ambiguity that doesn't feel intentional (there was apparently a deleted scene that showed her powers to be legit) and it's certainly not welcome, because it's another example of the movie undermining her as an intimidating foe. When Indy scoffs at her psychic stuff, we're never really given any reason to think he is wrong to. We can kind of ascertain that Spalko's inability to "read" Indy and the skull's refusal to "speak" to her (by contrast to the "pure-hearted" professors, I guess) are related, but it's yet another idea in the movie that isn't developed to the point where it means anything. Why does it matter that she can't read Indy's mind if we never see her read anyone's? Finally, Spalko is denied the kind of memorably grotesque death that any archnemesis in an Indy movie should be able to depend on. Bloodlessly disintegrating into CGI powder is really weak soup given the tradition it's following. Blanchett showed up to play, and it was squandered by shoddy material.

Assuming there is anything to this, I think people are extrapolating to "Indiana Jones in Space" way too quickly. The space race could be nothing more than a backdrop or the context explaining how Mads the Nazi (another assumption) is in the financial position to undertake his hunt for the mystical breadbox or whatever the McGuffin proves to be.

With a name like "The Illuminerdi", how can you not trust them? https://www.theilluminerdi.com/2021/05/20/indiana-jones-5-space-details/

Pretty substantial press push going on for the game right now, which the Mojo front page has written up in typically operational fashion.

Quest over! I think another weakness of so many sidekicks is that it prevents any one supporting character from really getting their due. You could have a movie whether the central dynamic is: - Indy and his shifty, British WWII pal - Indy and Marion reunited (the Darabont draft) - Indy and his old mentor turned Ben Gunn - Indy and the greaser kid whose mom's been kidnapped But instead of doing one or two of those and giving them enough attention, it does all of them poorly. Ray Winstone is given nothing substantial to after his treacherous turn in the prologue; Marion is given nothing substantial to do after a fun reveal (one dependent on shrouding her identity in a contrived, pointless way); Mutt stops being interesting once the court-mandated reveal that he's Indy's son occurs; John Hurt is just used as a device that turn problems Indy should be solving himself into foregone conclusions. In my opinion, it was a huge waste not to make Indy himself a gradual victim of the skull's power -- Nur-Ab-Sal style -- as it might have created some sense of jeopardy, or, say, a third act motor of any kind, both of which the movie lack. It's utterly baffling.

The Darabont draft is materially better. Lots of outrageous stuff on it, but it's actually got a pulse. The big issue with Crystal Skull in my view is the weird inertness. I tend to think that the actual story elements of the fourth movie are pretty strong. Lucas basically took some hoax legends about "Akakor" and the Mitchell-Hedges crystal skull and combined them with El Dorado. While I'm sure some would regard the employment of New Age myths as off-brand compared to biblical or Arthurian legend, I think the ingredients were there for a solid 50s-era Indy movie. The problem is that story is to a large degree storytelling, and Crystal Skull fails to execute on its ideas with any sense of mystery, grandeur, intrigue, or stakes -- all pretty fundamental qualities of a good Indy movie, I would say. It doesn't feel particularly cohesive, either. For example, working in the Nazca lines is a great idea on paper, but they are just tossed in as an image and no attempt is made to relate them to the story in any meaningful way. A lot of the movie is like that, like they shot an outline as though it were a script. I also think the movie suffers from a lack of decent transitions, which adds to that nettlesome episodic feeling. The way Indy and Mutt go from the sanitarium to the graveyard via a dissolve to a CGI helicopter shot is a missed opportunity -- why not a small amount of Peruvian location footage showing them traveling there, to give us a sense of location? Why go straight from the skirmish with the cemetery warriors (who aren't given even token characterization and are instead just chirping ninjas who serve no greater purpose) to the characters already inside a crypt? Why go from the characters spotting the waterfall to already being in the cave behind it? None of these things are problems on an individual basis, but in aggregate they cause the movie to feel as though it is just jumping from sound stage to sound stage...because that is exactly what it's doing. Even the subterranean Temple of Doom makes effective use of the location footage it does have, like the Sri Lanka vistas during the elephant trek, or the famous rope bridge climax. I realize these movies aren't characterized by gritty verisimilitude, but Crystal Skull looks like it was shot in a damn hard drive. There is nothing grubby or tactile about it. I am not suggesting they should have shared tonalities, but you look at something like Apocalypto where the director actually made use of his passport to shoot in Mesoamerica because that's where the damn story takes place, and the contrast in the believability of its visuals says it all. And that's despite a movie that has a rather "video" look due to the cameras used. Spielberg shot Indy on film but seemingly did everything in his power to ensure it wouldn't look that way.

Yeah, George licensed Indy for various Disney theme park attractions. I think the Epic Stunt Spectacular was the first result of that deal, way back in 1989. It will be interesting to see if Disney doubles down on Indy's presence in their parks now that they have ownership, but who knows. Of the two big Lucasfilm properties, Star Wars historically gets all the oxygen. Even LucasArts ultimately published shockingly few Indy games on balance. We'll see what Bethesda comes up with.

I can't speak to the Star Wars stuff since I didn't really follow any of those movies. By comparison to Star Wars, Indy has always been way less exploited. It seems every installment was made simply whenever Lucas and Spielberg opted to materialize one, rather than by any kind of directive. Better neglected than worn out, I suppose, but it's still a bummer to think of all the WWII era sequels we might have gotten in the 90s with a fifty-something Harrison Ford had the Beards been interested. Has George said one word about the franchise since the Disney acquisition? He seemed over it before they ever got involved. Indy movies seem to have been pretty walled off from studio meddling - for better or for worse - and I had hoped that would continue to be the case even with the Disney-controlled Indy 5 by the sheer virtue of Spielberg's influence. Disney has the entire future to monetize Indy however they see fit -- you'd hope they'd be smart enough to let its usual custodian handle the last hurrah with Ford, which has been a winning formula at the box office four times out of four, then do whatever unholy business they please with the property thereafter. There's no guarantee of that, of course. And even when Spielberg was at the helm, the potential for this last outing to be The Indy Awakens was probably high. But if they can send Ford off on a better note than they left him in 2008, that's at least worth hoping for. And it's not that extraordinary a hope. There's not a whole lot to lose, sadly. You may want to get with @s-island about your front page troubles.

A bit surprising that we didn't already have a thread for this, as alongside the Sam & Max stuff this is the Mojo release of 2021. But better late than never! A release date is surely imminent, and in my case potential disappointment when the PC requirements come in. But hey! A new Psychonauts game is not something any one lifetime sees many of. I am jazzed.

Not hot off the press by any means but the physical release(s) by Limited Run Games merits a thread bump:

Did somebody say...physical release?

While it's a disappointment to me that Spielberg isn't rounding the series off, I think it's worth trying to close out the Ford era with something better than Skull if the actor is motivated to do one more outing, which he plainly is. On what basis do you claim Lucas and Spielberg were bullied out? Lucas has shown very little interest in this project from the beginning, while Spielberg seems to have voluntarily assumed the Lucas role, for whatever reason. I guess you are suggesting the reason has to do with interference from above, but we can only speculate about that. What we do know is that Spielberg and Lucas had creative carte blanche last time out, and it resulted in Crystal Skull. I am not interested in an Indy that has been micromanaged by Disney/Lucasfilm executives and made under the same assembly-line methods all branded studio tentpoles seem to be these days, but we have pretty convincing evidence in support of the idea that Spielberg/Lucas aren't the most qualified duo to be spearheading one of these movies in the 21st century. I would have preferred Spielberg had felt he had something to prove and approached Indy 5 as an act of redemption, but his choice to step down suggests he didn't have that kind of fire for the project. We are probably better off with Mangold - a "safe" choice but certainly no hack - if the alternative is a disengaged Spielberg.