Boring, slow and without life.

That pretty much sums up Indiana Jones and the Temple of the Crystal Skull.

My Flaws that I caught:

The area 51 skull’s magnetic field makes no sense. It produced a strong enough magnetic field to pull gunpowder to if from several hundred yards, but later in the movie the Conquistador skull’s magnetic properties can be nullified by simply covering it up with a cloth.

Why would the government have “buried” the alien corpse in the warehouse so soon after the apparent ufo crash in Roswell? You would think that they would have had the corpse in some even more super secret lab trying to extract it’s secrets. I can understand the Ark of the Covenant being put in Area 51, that’s fine. It is, after all, just a fancy box (unless you open it, or according to the bible, touch it). But, the government mothballing the most significant find of all known history is just absurd.

Also, why was the alien remains from area 51 simply and utterly forgotten about? Why couldn’t they just use that skull from the corpse?

Area 51 would not have been guarded by just four guards. Why would a Nuke test shut down Area 51?

A lead lined fridge would not have been sufficient enough to protect Indy from the radiation from the nuke blast. Furthermore he would have been turned to goo inside of the fridge when the shockwave hit and at the very least been liquidated upon impact inside the fridge.

To be quite honest I can’t figure out how the Skull went missing in the first place. So, let me get this straight:

Aliens arrive in past, teach the “Mayans” advanced tech. become Gods among men. Then die inside their spaceship. “Mayans” build fancy temple around ship. Conquistadors show up, steal one of the skulls. Conquistador dies somewhere else in Peru and is buried with the skull. Ox finds the skull and tries to return it to spaceship site, but then decides to put it back at the burial site??? and then goes insane. sigh.

What does not make sense, is apparently the ancient skeletons had been sitting on their thrones for ages right? So long that the “Mayans” built a whole elaborate temple around the spaceship. The aliens in skeletal form were all there before the conquistadors showed up, so why did the aliens just leave way back then?

OR the story could have been setup where the conquistadors attacked the aliens and the “mayans” and killed them all and then took one of the skulls.

Anyhoo.

The CGI in the jungle scenes really sucked. The computer game “Crysis” does comparable graphics, and it’s a video game.

The snake scene went from o.k. CGI to rubber snake.

When Indy opens the giant obelisk entrance to the temple/spaceship, why were there dead bodies at the bottom of the apparent trap? It’s not exactly a big boulder; i.e. it was pretty freakin’ elaborate for an entrance booby trap that apparently was reset since the conquistadors were there.

Why did Indy blow up the jungle cutting machine? It was not really even in their way. It was crossing their path, but not actively attacking them.

The ant scene failed because you knew that the big russian was going to end up getting punched into the ant pile and eaten. With Raiders there was the constant threat of the propeller blades in the infamous fight scene with the big bald german, but you really did not expect the german to be utter shredded by the blades.

The monkeys were just gay. I think everyone in the theater was sighing during that obvious George Lucas contribution to the movie.

There is a lot more that I could nit pick, but to be honest, not really much happened in the movie.

Last week a script sold for “six figures” (and I doubt it sold for $100,001, most likely $500,000) to MGM. It’s Title: “Hot Tub Time Machine.”

This week has not been the greatest. This upcoming week one of my best friends of all time is getting married. However, I have nailed the beginning of the movie pretty much down pat. So hopefully it will be written by the end of the week.

I decided to change the theme once again. The other themes I tried just were not working out. I liked all of them, but each had something that just did not work, or just plain annoyed me. This design is well laid out and practical. Content coming soon.

I wanted to work on el scripto this weekend, but I needed a break, which I took.

I am rallying again to write and I promise, the spice will flow very soon.

One of the things that derailed me was the series “Breaking Bad.” I just could not stop watching it.

I am still apprehensive about Indiana Jones. I think perhaps that it may be a little too close to the overall premise of my movie. Of course my movie and Indiana Jones are lightyears away from one another, but I don’t want anyone to think that I ripped off I.J. when I have been tossing the same ideas around for years now and had no idea about I.J. plot till recently.

Whatever the plot of I.J. turns out to be I will adapt.

I have always been a big fan of Speed Racer. For all intents and purposes, it was the first cartoon I ever saw when I was a child. Speed Racer was also the first time I was exposed to death and life and death drama. I remember Speed Racer being violent, but in a sublime way. Usually every other driver in the race (besides Speed) died in some horrible, yet offscreen fashion; like flying off a cliff, or being buried alive in a mountain, or consumed by lava. Although the deaths were rarely shown, my imagination filled in the gaps.

From what I have seen of the Speed Racer movie, via the showing of the first seven minutes free (on Yahoo), is that the Wachowski bros. (*now brother and sister) captured the spirit of Speed Racer. Ironically, the quirk I have with what I saw is with the CGI. Everything looks FAKE. It does not look “Hyper-real” as others have stated. It looks like if Speed Racer was made via a movie of the week special. More Specifically, look at the CGI for the “Spy Kids” movies and then look at Speed Racer again. You will notice that they look very similar, however ALL of the Spy Kids movies were made for less than 1/2 of the cost of Speed Racer (reported at $200 million).

Speed Racer’s biggest problem is that it’s too long (over two hours) and that the Speed Racer Cartoon originally aired in the SIXTIES. Yes, I know of the failed “re-imagining” Speed Racer t.v. series in the 90’s, but that also might as well have been in the sixties. It is obvious that this Speed Racer movie exists solely as a tribute/love film made by the Wachowski bros, and that’s fine, but why in the hell did it have to cost $200 million freakin’ dollars.

Iron Man Clobbered Speed Racer on Friday; Iron Man made $15 million just on Friday, to Speed Racer’s $6 million. Speed Racer has only one week before it’s forgotten when the new Indiana Jones movie comes out. After that, they might as well just release it on dvd immediately.

Pages will be written, and posted this week.

Iron Man has always been one of my top five comic book superheroes, and I am surprised that it took till 2008 for a movie to be made. After all, Robocop essentially did “Iron Man” over twenty years ago, and did it very well. This leads me to my problem with Iron Man; the only problem I have with it. The CGI sucks. What’s that? You say I am crazy and that the special effects were awesome? Let me elaborate.

The actual renderings were great, but the animation was lacking.

If you look at Robocop 2, it had a great fight scene with Robocop vs. Robo-Cain at the end of the film. The fight was done with all stop-motion animation, and to me is the best stop motion animation I have ever seen. The stop motion animation brought something to the fight that most CGI effects don’t have today; WEIGHT.

In “Iron Man” both Iron man and Jebidiah Stone (In his ‘iron’ suit) had no weight to their animation or renderings. They were both jumping around like insects with superhuman agility. Yes, I realize that they both have Uber-suits, but both of the suits were prototypes and both villain and hero had little time to train to get to the point to do the incredible things that they both were doing in the movie.

Look at the LOTR movies. Arguably the best CGI ever (so far). Everything in all of the those movies felt like they were real and had weight. ILM is apparently still suffering from “Jedi” fever from the prequels; making everything in all of their movies move like the Jedi did: super fast and super agile.

Anyhoo, boiled down, the fight scenes in Iron Man really did not get my juices flowing. The only part I really liked, was when Stark first breaks out of the cave with the Mark I suit; now that was badass. Why was Iron man simply knocking around goons badass? Because he felt real. He was slower and more lumbering, not bouncing off the freakin’ walls like Spiderman.

I just hope ILM is not as spastic with the New Incredible Hulk movie, as they were with Iron Man. I want to see “Hulk Smash,” not “Hulk move faster and more agile than Spiderman.”