A couple of weeks ago while on vacation, Mason and I snuck away to catch the latest Indiana Jones film, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. I haven’t brought myself to write a full review of the film for Review-o-Matic.com yet and I’m not sure I will. I’m not sure what to say about it — if you liked the previous three movies and don’t mind a greater than normal suspension of belief (even for an Indy film), then this one’s a no-brainer. There were a few parts that seemed more of a parody of early serial adventures rather than a tribute, but the movie was fun and not boring or insultingly stupid and to tell you the truth that’s all I ask for in an action/adventure movie these days. It will be interesting to see how this one stands up to the previous three Indiana Jones movies a few years down the road.
So while Mason and I were watching the movie, I remember an interview I read last summer. I have a pretty good memory when it comes to recalling things I’ve read. The article said something along about the new Indiana Jones movie would contain very little or no CGI. In fact, I remember specifically that the article referred to the use of CGI as “cheating”. Using Google, I was able to quickly track down the article. From the summer of 2007:
US, July 9, 2007 – While George Lucas continually pushed Star Wars in the direction of using digital cameras and new computer-based filmmaking techniques, he’s letting Steven Spielberg shoot Indiana Jones IV using more traditional methods — keeping it grounded in its roots as a historical pulp adventure.
Producer Frank Marshall explained this approach to the New Haven Register: “Steven is very aware of the process and we’re not cheating with CG (computer graphics) at all. It keeps the B movie feel.”
Photography at the New Haven location has now wrapped, and the crew is heading to Hawaii where filming will continue. Hawaii is likely to stand in for various tropical locations in Central or South America. (Source)
What a difference a year makes. Here’s a clip from a more recent article:
“It’s horrifying to work on a movie that has this many fans, but at the same time, it’s an opportunity and a challenge,” Helman told The Associated Press at the ILM offices less than a week before its release. “I think we were all very, very respectful of the other three movies but also to the fans. All the effects work that we’re doing are completely reality-based.”
That is if your reality includes a blooming atomic mushroom cloud, seemingly endless Area 51 warehouse, vicious monkey army, the City of Gold, thousands of man-eating ants and sundry otherworldly things. All those locales and critters were created by Helman and his ILM team for Crystal Skull, making up the film’s 450 effects shots — not quite as many as the 600-plus in Transformers, but more than you might expect from a flesh-and-blood character from the 1950s.
About 300 artists and editors worked for eight months in post-production on a high-tech computer network at ILM’s offices inside the Presidio of San Francisco, a long way from the Raiders of the Lost Ark and Temple of Doom days, when Indiana Jones special effects mostly consisted of miniature sets and a few blue-screen mash-ups. (Source).
In a year, the Indiana Jones crew went from “CGI is cheating and we won’t use it” to a movie that contains 450 computer-generated effects shots, only 150 less than Transformers — a movie that stars giant CGI robots. For the record I don’t think that the use of CGI particularly hurt the latest Indiana Jones installment, but it does reaffirm the fact that the days of CGI-free action movies, along with Dr. Jones himself, may be relics of the past.
On a only-remotely-related note, Mason and I started playing Lego Indiana Jones last night. “Throw me the idol, I throw you the whip!”
