I've watched a lot of films this past month. Went through two franchises:
- Jaws.
- Began with Jaws in 1975, based on the novel by Peter Benchley, directed by Steven Spielberg and featuring that theme song of John Williams, just an alternating pattern of E and F notes, which won an Oscar, and now is the standard sound of sharks.
- There were three sequels, earning $800 million for the entire franchise.
- Only the original Jaws movie did well by Rotten Tomatoes, given a 97/90 scores by reviewers.
However, the best shark film of all time was a Canadian documentary, Sharkwater Extinction, which got a 100 score. All about the illegal trade in shark fins.- The other Jaws films got 62% (#12 of all shark productions), 11% and 0% (Jaws the Revenge in 1987 got this rating, and ranks #39, the lowest of all shark flicks). In other words, don't bother to watch these sequels. On the other hand, I did stay for the Revenge, starring Lorraine Gracy, Mario van Peebles and Michael Caine. It was almost okay.
- And by the way, Shark Week began today on the Discovery Channel. Click on this for the ratings of those films. Also a warning that most shark movies are junk.
- Indiana Jones.
- I touched on watching this series in a posting earlier this month.
- Keep in mind that Steven Spielberg and George Lucas connived to get these films started.
- Here is the sequence of this franchise.
Nazis keep returning as the villains because the first film (Lost Ark--and while an ark can be a ship, in this context it is a sacred chest) was set in 1936 when they were beginning to loom large in Europe. The newest film essentially pulls this same group into 1969, with a time machine plot that shoots them back to the days of Archimedes (around the year 223) and back to today again. Reviewers did not like this, but the audience said it was okay.
All this background for me to tell you what I saw this weekend.
- I was set to go to Barbenheimer yesterday, but learned that the best seats are a lot cheaper on Tuesdays, so that's what I'll do.
- The combo of Barbie and Oppenheimer will do spectacularly this weekend. It's complicated when you count world revenues, but Barbie made $337 million and Oppenheimer $255 million, or $592 million total for Barbenheimer. Want details? Read this.
As I was keyed up to return to the theater--for I haven't done this for 3.5 years--I went anyway, had lunch at Rinka, and went to see both, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, plus Tom Cruise's latest, Mission Impossible, Dead Reckoning, Part 1.
So let me begin with Indiana Jones, given a 69 score by reviewers and 88 by audiences from Rotten Tomatoes.
- Harrison Ford was 81 years old when this film was made. How did they make him look like 39? AI? Nope, Industrial Light and Magic has a process called ILM FaceSwap. Well, that is, actually, a form of Artificial Intelligence. Essentially, the franchise has a lot of footage of Harrison Ford as Indiana Jones, and the swap was easy, with doubles where physical exertion was beyond Ford's current capability.
About that Dial of Destiny or the Antikythera mechanism, created by Archimedes...it's real, recovered by a sponge diver off the Greek island of Antikythera in 1901, dating back to around 70 BC. But linked to Archimedes? Probably not, and he was killed in that Roman invasion earlier mentioned. And a time changing device? Nah.
They essentially went back and borrowed the same adventure formula, with more snakes, reptiles, rats and insects (really large centipedes, for example) in all kinds of escapes involving underground caves and car chases.
The "surprise" ending has Marion Ravenwood (Karen Allen, who is now 71) returning in a cameo. She had married Indiana in 2008's Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.
And about his Goddaughter Helena from this film starring in the next Indiana Jones film? Well, read this link.- Dial of Destiny did have a good weekend box office at the end of June, earning $130 million.
The second film, Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part 1, was the best-rated (Rotten Tomatoes: 99-94) of all MI productions, and there have now been seven of them, with, of course and 8th coming, as Part 2. Tom Cruise himself is now 61-years old. I guess he has two decades of MI life ahead of him. When released:
Mission: Impossible (1996)
Mission: Impossible 2 (2000)
Mission: Impossible III (2006)
Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol (2011)
Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation (2015)
Mission: Impossible – Fallout (2018)
Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One (2023)
Of course you must know that these films were preceded by the TV series from 1966 to 78, led by Jim Phelps, played by Jon Voigt in the first Cruise film, whose Ethan Hunt went on to become the lead character.
- The antagonist in Dead Reckoning is Artificial Intelligence, I think. The most sinister in the past is evil Philip Seymour Hoffman from MI3.
- While DR had the best swarm of Cruise stunts, his scaling of the tallest building in the world, Burj Khalifa in Dubai, is said to be his most dangerous, from Ghost Protocol.
- MIDR has the highest Rotten Tomatoes rating, scores of 96/94, versus #2 MI Fallout with 97/88. The worst was MI2 with 56/42. View the others here.
So to close, my lunch yesterday at Rinka, Ward Complex, next to Consolidated Theaters.
I might add that I also recently had another excellent Japanese lunch at Ayame Curry and Ramen located at the Windward City Shopping Center.
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