The First Reviews For Disney's Indiana Jones 5 Are In And They Are BAD

There are 19 reviews out there right now but I'll highlight the one from THR. 

What the new film — scripted by Jez Butterworth, John-Henry Butterworth, David Koepp and Mangold, with the feel of something written by committee — does have is a sweet blast of pure nostalgia in the closing scene, a welcome reappearance foreshadowed with a couple visual clues early on.

...the first time the movie pauses for breath, and it happens an hour and 20 minutes into the bloated 2½ hour run time.

Part of what dims the enjoyment of this concluding chapter is just how glaringly fake so much of it looks.

But any adrenaline rush that extended set-piece might have generated is killed by the ugly distraction of some truly terrible CG backgrounds. The foundations of this series are in Spielberg’s overgrown-kid playfulness with practical effects. The more the films have come to rely on a digital paintbrush, the less hair-raising their adventures have become.

Renaldo, Indy’s old fisherman buddy, whose diving expertise provides a crucial assist while getting Indy into a tangle with a bunch of outsize CG eels so sloppily rendered that Disney can relax about any Little Mermaid sniping 

If you've seen any of my blogs during the production of Indy 5, you'll know that theres is one thing that gave me hope about this movie and it is it's director, James Mangold. 

Mangold is awesome, and has directed 4 of my favorite movies of the last 2 decades. That includes 'Ford v Ferrari', which had some of the coolest practical effects of any racing movie i'd seen and 'Logan', which was the perfect sign off for an iconic character. These two movies should be what made him the perfect fit to correct some of the mistakes in Indy 4. Here is the basic list of what they had to do:

1. LIMIT CGI. I cannot stress enough how BAD the over-reliance on CGI made Crystal Skull. It is just an abomination of shit green screen sets with Indy slogging his way through crappy bad guys. Practical effects are part of what make the magic of the first 3 movies work! On-location shots are just so important. The Last Crusade alone shot in Spain, West Germany, England Jordan and Italy. Crystal skull looks like it was shot entirely in a airplane hanger out in Hollywood…

2. Simple storytelling. Don't get to convoluted and keep shit simple with a fun adventure vibe. 

3. LIMIT THE PHYSICAL WORK OF HARRISON FORD: This dude is 80 years old. There is no reason to keep him as the main medium of all your action scenes. Find a way to keep him the driver of the story without having to do all that. 

So Mangold seemed like the perfect guy to fix all of that. Unfortunately, it looks like the Mouse had way more of a say than he did based off the reviews. It seems like it was ran though Disney's overtaxed, shitty CGI machine and was made overcomplicated. BOOOOO. 

Whatever. There is still a chance the early critics are wrong and this ends up, at least, a fun time.