Is there a problem with that?
It's just corny. The person looking up and saying "Somewhere up there..." gag has been done to death.
Did Koepp even watch TLC? If he had he'd have known that it wasn't really in Connery's character to laugh about children born out of wedlock and abandoned by their fathers for years. It's as if he just thought, "hey, people thought Sean Connery's character was funny, let's put in a line about him laughing!" It recently occurred to me that this line actually referred to Abner, but it's unlikely given that it follows Indy calling his son "Junior."
I definitely agree that this scene deserved more depth and not just the jokey, "Hey, we're all cool now!" feel. I think the laughing remark was more referring to the irony of Indy having his own problems with his son, one of those "I hope you have a kid just like you one day!" kind of things, as opposed to the specifics of his problems. Even so, yeah, it's definitely shaky.
More depth indeed. This isn't just a moment I can gloss over, given that family is pretty much the theme of the film. And I've got to be honest; it's a real disappointment that Connery didn't return for the film. He would have functioned so much better than Dean Stanforth (a character who, like Mac, we're supposed to care for within seconds). Given that Connery refused to participate, I feel the references to him should have been toned down or removed entirely. At the very least, there shouldn't have been a big close up shot of his portrait. Jeez!
I thought they were quite in character--they definitely fit the kind of attitude Indy would cop with his foes. And just because Indy's had problems with his government doesn't mean he doesn't love his country. His WWII experiences may have had something to do with the change, but I also can't really think of where they really had opportunity to go into the explicit statements like KOTCS has in any of the previous films. For one thing, WWII hadn't actually begun in the previous films, whereas the Cold War really was on at the time of KOTCS.
Indy would have fought alongside the Soviets in World War II, not against them. Wasn't he in Berlin? I'm certainly not questioning that Indy loves his country, but there's a difference between patriotism and nationalism.
And I seem to recall someone saying, "Nazis. I hate these guys." I wonder who that was...
Not even comparable! Indy spent all of
Raiders trying not to get killed by Nazis; of course he hates them. Besides, the Nazis were... evil. They were indisputably war criminals. The Soviets obviously had their share of brutality as well, but history does not paint them in such black and white terms. In fact, the movie beats us on the head with Cold War paranoia, yet it basically depicts Russians as evil (yes,
Russians, not Soviets - it's no wonder this film stirred up some controversy over there). It's kind of a discrepancy. You could argue that Indy was just pissed that he'd been captured and taken to New Mexico, but then he spent all those years spying on the Reds. Indy is as jingoistic as they come. Of course, it's hard to make any conclusions about this subplot because it's just completely forgotten once Indy leaves America.
Surely you're not scrutinizing a movie you don't like way lot more than the people who like it. It would not be logical.
It is
most logical. Everybody's a fanboy but me.
Sarcastic subtext or not, nobody would actually say such a line. It's there to be over the top and to make the scene more interesting.
That's debatable that nobody would ever say that (remember this movie takes place 70 years ago), but again,
I'm not arguing that Indy dialogue should be realistic. It should, however, stick to its own rules, keep characters consistent and be witty. I find a lot of the dialogue in
KOTCS fails in this respect.
Indy is generally on the side of justice, and it just happens that the US government is often fighting for that same thing. He's had some bad run-ins with them in the past, but he can still recognize when they're on the good side. As for all the fighting Reds, he fought Nazis at least twice in his lifetime. Not quite sure how that insult is bad in anyway, it works fine for me.
It's an insult in the vein of "I'm rubber and you're glue." It's not even that Indy says "comrade," it's that he says "I'm sorry, I meant..." It's so clumsy! I remember talking like that when I was ten years old. It's the most infantile sort of sarcasm. I was actually fine with "Drop dead" and Dovchenko's punch. The following line should have just been cut.
Really? "After all those years we spent spying on the Reds...I thought we were friends, Mac."
Makes good sense to me.
It makes sense, but it's lame that a character's back story is developed with just a couple lines spoken to the tune of mourning music. It's hard to care about Mac's betrayal when he's only been on screen for a couple minutes. Like
Raiders, this film opens in the middle of an adventure. But were we asked to care about Satipo when he died? Of course not.
'Drop dead, comrade' was indeed terrible, but I am a big fan of 'well, the way you're sinking your teeth into those wubble-yous...'
Yeah. It's incredible how hit or miss Koepp is. There's a very nice line here and there - I like Marion's "damn good, really good life," I like "Abner's little girl," I like Spalko's dialogue at the campsite (e.g. the reference to Oppenheimer) - but most of the dialogue ranges from functional to terrible. The script is such a patchwork; Lucas, Darabont, Nathanson and Koepp all had input into it.
