Indiana Jones 5

[Remi]

1 hour ago, Jake said:

I will take the bait laid out in this thread and say that “actually when you think about it many classic lucasarts games don’t have good stories,” is a deranged take. I won’t reply to any replies to this post. 

I will second this down to I won’t reply to any replies to this post.

[Gins]

I will make a completely unrelated post to certain posts in this thread, and say that I think that most stories are nothing special when taken in isolation.

 

Video game stories often compare unfavorably to movie stories, because they're compared on the grounds of the latter. Will a shark or a lion win in a fight? Depends if it's on sea or land.

 

Just like movies adapted from games often suck, games adapted from movies often do too.

 

I would love to discuss this more, in particular related to Lucas* games, but maybe not at the expense of this Indiana Jones 5 thread.

[ThunderPeel2001]

I think it’s fair to say that Maniac Mansion was pretty light on story. And characterisation. Zak added more of both. I haven’t played Loom in a long time, but it definitely put story at the forefront. Last Crusade’s adaptation changes the story structure to suit its puzzles, and misses lots of key narrative beats from the source material (Indy’s relationship with his dad, for example). As a story it’s pretty weak.
 

The Monkey Island games have great stories to support their puzzle structures, but aren’t necessarily great stories by themselves. Although they have fantastic characters and strong story beats in between the puzzles. They work fantastically as games, but I wouldn’t want to read the novelisation or watch the film without some creative reworking. 

 

I think Fate treats its story even more secondarily than Monkey Island 1 and 2… it’s lots of stand alone locations and characters. Although maybe that’s how Indy movies are… but there’s nothing amazingly memorable about the secondary characters or story moments in the game. And aside from the beginning and ending there’s no really strong story beats. 
 

I think DOTT has great characters, a story that never loses sight of the main arc, and some great set pieces that would translate well into other mediums (eg. The beauty contest). For me, in terms of storytelling, I think it surpasses MI 1 and 2 — LucasArts’s pinnacle until this point. (Although I can’t remember Loom, to be fair.)

 

Sam & Max is about as crazy and irreverent as any issue of it’s comic book. Full Throttle has a superbly strong story structure if you ask me. That and Grim Fandango could most easily be translated into other mediums. Hell, Duncan Jones already wrote a screenplay for Full Throttle. I don’t even know if he changed all that much. 
 

As I said before I think Tales had quite a strong story, too (the stuff with LeChuck still feels memorable after all these years)… although that would be picking up the key moments from all 5 episodes. 
 

That’s my take anyway. Just because an adventure game doesn’t have a strong standalone doesn’t mean it’s not a great adventure game. But it’s really fun when you have a really strong story AND it supports the puzzles, too. (You could argue that Full Throttle suffers with its puzzles because it puts them so clearly secondary to the story — indeed that’s why some LucasArts fans rag on it: it’s too short, etc., rather than appreciating that the story is  generally really tight for a game with lots of great beats).

 

 

Edited May 25 by ThunderPeel2001

[Scummbuddy]

There is the Indiana Jones Fate of Atlantis 4 comic mini series that had to adapt the story away from just STEAL ITEM USE ITEM puzzles. But I don't have them out of storage yet for me to give a better synopsis other than "it exists".

[LuigiHann]

One of the interesting things about video game stories generally and Adventure Game stories in particular, is that your human experience playing the game is a substantial part of the story. All of the exploration, the dead ends, the exhaustion of every single branch of any possible dialog tree, all part of the experience and the pacing and the richness of the narrative in your mind. If you go back and replay one and you remember how most of the puzzles go, you may breeze through it and suddenly the plot feels less impactful than you remember.

Edited May 26 by LuigiHann
wording

[Gins]

2 hours ago, LuigiHann said:

your human experience playing the game is a substantial part of the story

 

This is a big part of what I meant with my post.

 

Some experiences can best be conveyed by telling a story to somebody. If you have this kind of experience, write a book or make a movie.

 

But others have so much more impact if you get a player invested by their own actions, and then feel something that you couldn't feel in that intensity by just watching, listening or reading "someone else" do it.

 

Return to Monkey Island has impact not because we were told a good story but because we lived one, and helped shape it.

 

These experiences were made with that interactive element in mind. To just remove it without replacement and call out the "story" for being bad is like just removing the meat from a dish and conclude that vegan food sucks, or eating the meat by itself and say it's nothing special.

 

Therefore, when adapting a game like Fate of Atlantis as a movie, one would of course have to make changes, while keeping the best (of the straight forwardly adaptable) parts.

 

The beginning is already quite memorable, in particular the scene with Kerner.

 

The idea that Sophia is involved and Indy at first seeks her out to warn her and drags her into the adventure that way would work too.

 

For a movie, the Sophia path would probably work best as a baseline, and maybe it could have been done in a way that Indy, Sophia and maybe Marcus each track down some pieces of the puzzle, to avoid too much travelling.

 

I'd mostly stick to the premise (Atlantis, the lost dialog, Orichalcum powered machinery), build on the Indy/Sophia dynamic and use the locations from the game.

 

The rest would be up to change in any way that works for a movie, including adding beats where they may fit.

[Udvarnoky]

On 6/8/2021 at 7:55 AM, Laserschwert said:

Still, I can't bring myself to buy the UHD set just yet. There's GOT to be a proper boxset after Indy 5.

 

On 6/8/2021 at 8:03 AM, Udvarnoky said:

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.

 

On 6/8/2021 at 8:38 AM, Laserschwert said:

Oh man, you're right - I forgot about the distribution rights. Which also means, no Paramount logo transition at the start of the movie. Just as much a loss as no Fox fanfare in front of the SW sequels (if those films had any importance).

 

Now that Disney and Paramount are playing footsie with the Disney+ arrangement, I'm doubting you were wrong to hold off. ¬

[ThunderPeel2001]

14 hours ago, LuigiHann said:

One of the interesting things about video game stories generally and Adventure Game stories in particular, is that your human experience playing the game is a substantial part of the story. All of the exploration, the dead ends, the exhaustion of every single branch of any possible dialog tree, all part of the experience and the pacing and the richness of the narrative in your mind. If you go back and replay one and you remember how most of the puzzles go, you may breeze through it and suddenly the plot feels less impactful than you remember.

 

Absolutely. As Gins said, this is what I tried to allude to in my post...

 

On 5/25/2023 at 10:43 AM, ThunderPeel2001 said:

Just because an adventure game doesn’t have a strong standalone story doesn’t mean it’s not a great adventure game. But it’s really fun when you have a really strong story AND it supports the puzzles, too.

 

 

Laserschwert said...

 

26 minutes ago, Udvarnoky said:

Still, I can't bring myself to buy the UHD set just yet. There's GOT to be a proper boxset after Indy 5.

 

What's wrong with the current one? I don't have UHD/4K/HDR yet... but Indiana Jones would definitely be one of my first purchases when I do

Edited May 26 by ThunderPeel2001

[Udvarnoky]

I can confirm that the current box set is excellent, at least where the transfers are concerned (and those are, of course, the cardinal point). Though the latest masters are now I think the source used for most streaming offerings, you shouldn't settle for internet-optimized bitrate and compression if you've got the hardware to play the 4K discs. All four movies are in pretty much reference quality on that format.

 

On the extras front, they just ported the same features from previous releases, and not even every last one of them. Admittedly that's still a ton of stuff, but it's a bummer if you were hoping the deleted scenes were finally coming out the catacombs.

[Niemandswasser]

On 5/22/2023 at 11:20 AM, ThunderPeel2001 said:

50% on Rotten Tomatoes... Yeah, it's going to be disappointing

It's important to remember that a Rotten Tomatoes score isn't an objective measure of quality but a metric of prevailing critical sentiment in a given moment. No more than that.

Edited May 27 by Niemandswasser

[Vainamoinen]

I don't have another "deranged take" on this.

[Laserschwert]

Regarding extras, the pre-UHD boxset for all 4 movies definitely didn't have the KotCS extras from its second disc (don't know about the UHD box), so I kept my 2-disc Blu-ray of that.

Edited May 27 by Laserschwert

[Udvarnoky]

Yeah, SKULL was released on DVD at a time when studios spending real money on supplemental features was still a thing. All those original Laurent Bouzereau featurettes amount to a near three-hour documentary if you were to roll them all together. And look, somebody has:

 

 

[Laserschwert]

I think the Hobbit extended releases were the last big bonus feature release to a major film. I mean, I'm happy they did those hour-long making ofs for Willow, Mando, Boba Fett and Obi-Wan (did Andor get one?), but with a season's running time surpassing that of a movie, they could have done so much more.

[ThunderPeel2001]

On 5/27/2023 at 3:21 AM, Niemandswasser said:

It's important to remember that a Rotten Tomatoes score isn't an objective measure of quality but a metric of prevailing critical sentiment in a given moment. No more than that.

 

Yes... but there's no such thing as an "objective measure of quality". Prevailing critical/viewer sentiment is literally the best metric we have (and honestly my tastes are usually pretty much aligned with RT -- a few exceptions, but on the whole it's a reliable metric).

 

On 5/27/2023 at 12:14 PM, Laserschwert said:

Regarding extras, the pre-UHD boxset for all 4 movies definitely didn't have the KotCS extras from its second disc (don't know about the UHD box), so I kept my 2-disc Blu-ray of that.

 

Oh wow. That's silly! The Indy boxset came with a ton of extras, but they left out the ones from CS? 

 

I was concerned there was something on the UHD transfers that was bad, though. At least it's not that

Edited Monday at 01:11 AM by ThunderPeel2001

[Laserschwert]

If I'm not mistaken, for the UHD they even corrected (or toned down) the excessive color tint KotCS had.

[Udvarnoky]

It's been nicely de-chlorinated, but there's no dialing out the Classic Softs and lighting scheme which bake in its aesthetic of a feature-length dream sequence.

[LuigiHann]

On 5/28/2023 at 9:09 PM, ThunderPeel2001 said:

 

Yes... but there's no such thing as an "objective measure of quality". Prevailing critical/viewer sentiment is literally the best metric we have (and honestly my tastes are usually pretty much aligned with RT -- a few exceptions, but on the whole it's a reliable metric).

 

I do think it's worth specifying that Rotten Tomatoes doesn't work like Metacritic, so a 50% RT score doesn't mean the average score was 5/10, it means that half the critics liked it. It is a good metric but some people aren't that familiar with it and might misread it.

 

That said, peeking at the actual page it looks like a lot of even the positive reviews are in the 3/5 range, so it may not be much of a distinction here.

[ThunderPeel2001]

12 hours ago, LuigiHann said:

I do think it's worth specifying that Rotten Tomatoes doesn't work like Metacritic, so a 50% RT score doesn't mean the average score was 5/10, it means that half the critics liked it. It is a good metric but some people aren't that familiar with it and might misread it.

 

I didn't realise that about MetaCritic. Thanks for making me aware of it. However it's worth noting that movie reviews aren't usually done in % so even on MC they can be interpretations... 

 

MC also weights their reviews: So some reviewers get more influence than others. Sounds controversial, but I like that... (I kind of wish Rotten Tomatoes would make their "Top Critics" score more prominent and easier to reach for this reason: I do actually think that the NYT should get more weight compared to a 13 year old with a movie blog -- call me a snob if you wish!).

 

Might need to start looking more at MC, because RT has started to become less reliable than it used to be IMO.

Edited Tuesday at 02:57 PM by ThunderPeel2001