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They don't make them like they used to.
By The Critic
unrivaled.info
Capturing the essence of old school Saturday matinees and the polished look and
feel of modern movies made in the 1980s, the Indiana Jones series has been
hailed as the best trilogy of that decade and possibly of all time. With action,
humor, a great story with awesome characters, great direction and great
performances, it’s no wonder this trilogy is as popular as it is. These movies
have become cultural icons for many generations and are known worldwide. In a
time where movies are more about style and flash, there really are no films of
this time that can be compared to this trilogy. Sure, there was “the pretty
good” The Mummy, which was produced in 1999. But it doesn’t come close to
emulating the fun and classic feel of the Indiana Jones trilogy; not by a long shot. So
here we are in 2003, patiently waiting for Lucas to finish Star Wars: Episode 3
so he can once again get together with Spielberg and Ford to do the final, long
awaited sequel, which will be a sort of last goodbye to the series.
While we wait for that sequel to come, we do have relief on the way. Lucasfilm,
along with Paramount has finally decided to put together and release the trilogy
for a DVD set. Fans have been waiting literally years for these movies to be
released on this format. And with the high capacity of the DVD format, we can
now watch Indiana Jones in the best and most widely available format today (the
best, that is until High Definition DVD players are more widely available) with
a higher resolution and 5.1 surround sound. Most fans would be happy to have
Indy on DVD anyway they can get it. The question that's on most of everyone's minds
would be how good is this DVD release? With studios and DVD producers perfecting
the authoring process of transferring movies to DVD, it’s almost a no-brainer
Paramount would handle its prized franchise with great care and from the looks
of it Paramount came through big time.
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Paramount entrusted Lowery Digital to restore
the Indy trilogy from the original film source. They considerably cleaned up
every frame of the three movies, so the new High Definition sources for
the films are in great shape. There are hardly any nicks, scratches and dirt on
the prints. There is some film grain present in small parts of each movie, but
most of it’s very modest and I believe are part of the original prints. Unlike
Universal’s “Back to the Future” trilogy set in which each movie and the extras
are crammed on each disk, Paramount reserved only the movie for each disk and a
separate fourth disk for all the extras (which we will get to soon). It makes
allot a sense to do this because the entire space on each disk can be reserved
for optimal video and sound on each movie.
The 16X9 enhanced anamorphic widescreen (2.35:1 aspect ratio) is stellar for all
3 films. These films have never looked so good; I can now get a film-like
picture at home. In the past if I wanted to watch an Indy movie, I’ve had to use
the original Laser Disk set released back in the 1990s. The picture quality on
each Laser Disk pales in comparison, without a doubt. The amount of detail that
can be seen on the DVDs is amazing; even in the opening scene at the dark cave
in Raiders, you can see an incredible amount of details in the background. And
that’s not all, contrast detail and color saturation are amazing. There’s no
edge enhancement , no halos (as far as I can see) and no artifacts present on
the transfers. For movies as old as these, it’s amazing how great the video
turned out. Is there better material out there for movies of this time? Perhaps.
I still sometimes think Warner’s Superman (1979) DVD has a slightly better video
transfer to DVD, but this trilogy set is no slouch. It’s reference material for
movies of this age as far as I can see.
The 5.1 remix of all the soundtracks are very good too, with Crusade being the
best. Most of the audio was cleaned up and processed into a 5.1 surround mix. I
know purist will complain about not having the original 2.0 mixes (especially
for Raiders and Temple which were created in mono surround) and some may even go
further to say that the Laser Disk mixes sound better. I will say that the
surround mixes on the DVD sound a bit processed when compared to the Laser
Disks. But this is only a minor issue as these DVDs sound great, especially when compared to
movies released in the 1980s.
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Now lets get into the exclusive forth disk
which includes all the extras for each film. Lucasfilm admitted there was little
documentary materials made for each of the movies, so they had to scrape up what
they could from the archives and recreate some new material for this DVD set.
First up is the making of the films. Lasting about 30 to 50 minutes for each
film, they all contain both old and new footage describing the creation process
of each film. There are many new interviews by the production crew and cast
including George Lucas, Steven Spielberg and Harrison Ford. Much of this
material is actually pretty good and all of the documentation is informative
(check out the 20 second test screen shot Tom Selleck performing as Indiana
Jones - he takes Indy on a whole different planet). Next are the featurettes
which are updated documentaries on the special effects, the sound, the stunts
and the music of all 3 Indiana Jones movies. Much is this stuff is interesting
to watch as most of the special effects and stunts were done the old school way:
without CGI. And we also get more insight as to how John Williams interacted
with Spielberg and Lucas on the creation of the music in the Indy films. Finally
we have teasers and trailers for each of the movies. I was disappointed to find
there were no spoofs or deleted scenes for any of the films, and much of the old
TV featurettes aired at the time the films were released are not here either. Not a big deal, since most of the
features contain some old footage, but it would have been nice to see
some vintage documentary.
Since this is a DVD review and not really a review of all the
movies, I'll just go over some details of each movie and my views on
them.
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Indiana Jones: Raiders of the Lost Arc (1980): The first epic of this
trilogy is the most subtle of all of them having being the first one made and
because of this it’s probably the best. Spielberg and Lucas almost cast Tom
Selleck for the role of the man with the whip (and how thankful I am for Magnum
PI), and he
probably would have done a decent job. But lucky for us, we got Harrison Ford
instead whose performance was perfect from beginning to end. At that time he was
a staple of cool ass action heroes with his role in another cult classic Star
Wars. It’s hard to imaging Selleck or anybody else playing the role of Indy;
Ford is Indiana Jones and for the most part cannot be replaced on any level.
Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984): This is the second movie of
the series even though it’s actually a prequel to the first movie. Although they
are not connected in anyway (other then having the main character be Indy), the
time this movie took place was before the first one. So the actual chronological
order would be Temple, Raiders, and then Crusade (Raiders took place in 1936
while Temple took place in 1935). I was surprised to see how dark this film
really is as when I was younger I never noticed it. I’ve found this one to
personally be my favorite of all the Indy movies, even though the first one is
technically better. I’ll admit the slight stereotyping of East Indian culture is
a bit corny and yes this movie has a bit of a messy feeling that goes with it.
But the sub-characters and humor make up for that and much of this is the most
memorable out of all the films. The evil to the bone Mola Ram (Amrish Puri) is
the best and surly the most colorful villain of them all and Short Round
(Jonathan Ke Quan) is a good addition to the cast as the only youngster to star
in the series.
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989): The last of this trilogy set,
the Last Crusade is as every bit good as Raiders and Temple. Even for a movie
that was made so far apart from Temple and it being so close to the 1990s (a
decade devoid of cult classics until the Matrix hit the scene in 1999), Crusade
holds up very well, in fact some consider it to be the best of the trilogy. For
me however this is the least best of all three, although I still like it just
the same as the rest the films. In this volume, we are introduced to Indy’s
father who was played by Sean Connery. Lucas was at first against casting
Connery for the role, but it turns out Spielberg’s insistence sticking with
Connery worked out for the best as he brings new elements to the series. Connery
is perfect for the role as he did an excellent job playing Indy's father.
Unrivaled rating: 5.0
Overall: It finally happened and now the Indiana Jones Trilogy is on DVD.
Purist may complain of the lack of the original 2.0 surround tracks for each
film, but you can be certain they will be in line to pick up their copy of the
DVD set. Damn near perfect picture and great sound with new and old documents
makes this a must have for Indy fans. They don't make movies like this anymore,
so if you haven't seen them check them out! Highly recommended.
