Should Chris Pratt play Indiana Jones?

 

I suppose the first question really is “Should there be another Indiana Jones film?”  To answer that, just look back a few years to Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.  While financially the film did “alright”, it has been raked across the fire-hot coals of the internet in terms of nonsensical plot points, poor CGI in a film series that has always relied on practical effects, and Shia LaBeouf. 

Starting from the top, let’s look at the “nonsensical plot points”.  When people talk about it, they almost always say the exact same thing: Indiana Jones could not have survived the refrigerator incident.  For those of you scratching your head, let me explain.  Early in the film, Indiana Jones is fleeing evil Russians led by Cate Blanchet doing her very best Natasha Fatale impersonation.  Seriously I spent all of her scenes expecting her to hatch a plan to “catch moose and squirrel”.  And I know I’m not alone.  Anyway, Indie runs into what he at first thinks is a quiet little town in the middle of the desert.  Turns out it’s a nuclear test site (it was within walking distance to Area 51, Indie.  I know you’re scared but use your brain.)  Once he discovers he’s about to become something between an overcooked chicken to a fine black cloud of dust, he does the only sensible thing.  He jumps into a lead lined refrigerator and is blown into the air, slams onto the ground and rolls violently several times before coming to a halt, only to be decontaminated later by government agents.  Now if you’ve ever spent any amount of time on the internet looking up this movie, you know how wrong it is.  For those of you who don’t, take a hot dog, wrap it in tinfoil, and put in your oven at 450 degrees.  That hotdog will not be in the same condition when you pull it out as when you put it in there.  Because heat makes metal hot, Indiana Jones might have been spared the radiation, but he would have been roasted alive, not to mention having every bone in his body shattered by the impact.

I will come back to this, trust me.

Outside of oven baked Harrison Ford, the next problem people have with the film is that it went the alien route rather than the supernatural route the series had in its previous three installments.  That’s really it.  That is the sum total of plot complaints I hear about the movie.

Rolling forward the next problem is the CGI in place of the practical effects the previous films had.

Prior to KotCS, the last film, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, came out in 1989.  Think about how good CGI was in 1989.  Think about how good the CGI in Jurassic Park was.  It’s easy to see how the producers could spare a few bucks on stunts by doing them in CGI, especially when your principle action hero is pushing 70 at the time of filming.  So I don’t decry them from using CGI.  I do complain that they used poor CGI on a completely stupid scene.  The second I saw Shia swinging from vines along side monkeys, I wanted to slap a producer in the face.  It was a waste of CGI, a waste of script writing, and a waste of an action scene.  By my calculation, that scene took about fifty cents of my money and I want that half dollar back.  I won’t get it, but I want it.

What was that other problem?  Oh, Shia LaBeouf.

You know what?  No he’s not the problem, or even “a problem”.  He’s an actor who gets paid to act in movies.  That’s it.  He signed up to be in an Indiana Jones movie, and for the most part he did a fine job.  What’s that, his character is more of a combination of plot conveniences than anything else?  Have you seen an Indiana Jones movie?  The sum total of the man’s life is a plot convenience.  Shia got offered a shot as a side kick in a Harrison Ford action flick and he jumped at it.  Its…not…his…fault.

He…did…his…job.  He got offered a role as an action hero.  FOUR TIMES!  This could have been the biggest career move in his life.  It’s not his fault they had him swinging with monkeys.  He had faith they knew what they were doing.

In short, stop being hateful because you never got your shot at being a side kick to Indiana Jones and leave the man alone.

Where was I?  Right, Chris Pratt.  Should he play Indiana Jones?  Sure, why not.

Oh, you need more than that.  Okay, go watch Guardians of the Galaxy.  Again, I say “sure, why not.”  He’s already played Han Solo.  But should they bother making another Indiana Jones movie?

Sure, why not.

Again, too little?

Well there are three directions they can take the franchise from this point on.  Keep going forward, either by changing Jones the same way you change James Bond, or by having him rejuvenated by the effects of the aliens/Holy Grail.  Remember, he drank from the Holy Grail once.  He was within spitting distance of ancient aliens after doing them a HUGE favor.  Who knows the results?

Option 2: Pratt/Jones’ adventures take place in between the gaps in the movies.  Remember that, according to the tie in fiction, Jones had a ton of adventures, not just the Ark, Stones, Cup, Skull adventures we were along for.  Pratt’s films could take place between these movies, which actually leaves a lot of room for story and character development.  Heck, we’ve played with aliens, why not do a little time traveling and have young Jones meet Shia’s character.  Skys the limit folks.

Option 3: Straight reboot.  Honestly if the only thing you can think to do with Indiana Jones is reboot the franchise all together; you might as well not bother at all.

The Crow vs Hollywood

 

If you are a fan of superhero movies, action movies, or revenge movies, you probably remember the 1994 (twenty-one years!) film starring Brandon Lee entitled “The Crow”.  For those of you who don’t remember, this featured Lee as musician Eric Draven.  Late one evening Mr. Draven and his fiancé are terrorized and ultimately murdered by a gang.  One year later, Draven returns from the grave, summoned by the titular bird, and exact bloody revenge for the crimes that went unpunished.  There is also a fight scene on top of a roof and a pseudo psychic lady.  And Tony Todd is there to, basically being Tony Todd.  It was the 1990’s.

So why do I bring it up now?  Well, the movie spawned a handful of sequels, most of which went straight to video, and one mediocre TV series.  Now, the problem with all of the sequels was that it tried to copy the original, as sequels often do.  You see, there is a common phenomenon when it comes to Hollywood where in when a movies does particularly well at the box office, the studios will immediately try to capitalize on it’s popularity by producing a film nearly identical in story structure with half the budget and none of the returning actors.  This is called cashing in or riding coattails.

What made the original film original was the same thing that made the following sequels terrible.  A good movie, I mean a really good movie, is like a lightning strike.  Its bright, its powerful, and it leaves an impression on everyone who witnessed it.  Sequels are kind of like getting a spot light and shining it in people’s faces and claiming it’s just as good as the original strike, even though everyone present knows full and well it’s not even close.

Back in 1990’s, and still today but especially back then, movie studios didn’t really care about how good the sequel was.  They relied strictly on name brand to carry their product and sat back waiting to count money.  Now what is inexplicable to me is how a studio can crank out a subpar follow up film (in the case of The Crow it was “The Crow: City of Angels”) which makes less money than the original and fans decry as being an inferior film, only to follow it up with progressively worse movies (The Crow: Salvation and The Crow: Wicked Prayer).  These films follow the exact same formula but consistently fail to capture the magic of the original.

The Crow got a decent follow up in the form of the Canadian TV series entitled “The Crow: Stairway to Heaven” which followed the original Crow, Eric Draven now played by Marc Dacascos.  This time, however instead of returning to the grave after his quest is completed, Draven continues to roam the earth fighting evil.  Why did this work when others didn’t?  Well, while fans of the original admitted that it was not the same caliber of the original, they had to admit that it respected the source material and actually tried to spin original stories.  In short, it didn’t do a straight up copy of the original.  It tried to be its own story.

That is where the studios failed.  When CoA failed to perform in the box office, they should have backed up and focused on telling a new, better story.  Not the same story, only with less budget. 

Modern sequels of popular movies have seemed to learn this lesson.  When follow ups to 1989’s “Batman” failed in the forms of “Batman Forever” and “Batman and Robin” Warner Brothers understood where they went wrong.  When “Batman Begins” rebooted the franchise, the follow up “The Dark Knight” was widely credited as being a much better film than the its predecessor.  The same thing happened with Iron-Man 2 and Captain America: the Winter Soldier.  They succeeded because they were going to tell new stories, explore new avenues of the narrative.  Spider-Man 2 was better than Spider-Man (Sam Rami series).  Iron-Man 3 was better than Iron-Man 2.  We’re moving, generally in the right direction with sequels, we’re continuing the story rather than rehashing the old one or telling a sub-par narrative with flashy lights to distract the audience. 

Now as I am typing this, they are working on a reboot of the franchise.  What is actually encouraging is that right now they are on the fourth or fifth attempt at rebooting it, which means they have time to get it right.  Does it mean they will use that time wisely, that’s debatable.

Fairy Tales by the Numbers: The Big Bad Wolf

So I have here in front of me a list of stuff I want to talk about, as you do.  This thing covers faith, personal opinions about family, popular media, social issues…basically the only thing I don’t have is stuff on science, yet.

So where do I begin?  What’s the first thing I want to talk with you about?  What should our inaugural conversation be?

Well, I took a bunch of topics and put them into a hat.  It was a nice hat.  Okay, it was a coffee cup, but…never mind.  So our first topic of discussion:  Fairy Tales by the Numbers: The Big Bad Wolf

Fairy Tales by the Numbers will be an ongoing thing where in I look at a particular fairy tale character, this time being the Big Bad Wolf, and break down how this character or creature would work in the real world.  In case you don’t know, this is a wolf:

So what do we know about our character?  Let’s look at the Big Bad Wolf from Little Red Riding Hood.  On average, the gray wolf, which was dominant in Europe during the time the fairy tale became prevalent would weigh in at about 95 to 99 pounds.  The average wolf eats between 15 to 19% of its body weight in a single feeding.  This is because the wolf can’t guarantee when its next meal is going to be, so it needs that energy stored up just in case.  But that’s on average, and our wolf is declared “Big”, so let’s say he’s an even 100 pounds and can eat 20% of his body weight.  That’s 20 pounds of meat.

Yet in the course of the fairy tale proper, the wolf eats Red’s grandma, with eyes on eating Red once she comes sauntering in to the house.  So what do we know about this wolf’s prospective meals?

Grandma, a woman probably in her mid to late 50’s, because it’s the Middle Ages, who is also sickly.  Let’s put her at the average of 5’2” at about 90 pounds, which places her body mass index right at “severe thinness”, which would be accounted for because it’s the Middle Ages and she’s sick.  Now in most cases, all is fair game for a wolf’s lunch menu.  Flesh, organs, hair and bones can all be eaten and digested by our furry friend.  Originally I thought to exclude the bones, but that’s not terribly realistic (in a fairy tale?).  So yes, our fuzzy maniac busts into Grandma’s and gobbles up her full 90 sickly pounds.

So if 90 pounds is twenty percent of the wolf’s body weight…that places our wolf at 450 pounds!  Assuming that our wolf isn’t shaped like a beach ball, in order to have a frame accurately support a creature that regularly bounds around the forest hunting little girls, the wolf would have to be roughly 12 to 13 feet long!  That’s slightly shorter than a Volkswagon Beetle.

So what about Red Riding Hood?  Well how old do you think she’d be?  My estimate is probably somewhere in the range of 8 to 10 years old.  I’d shoot for 10 years old because that’s about how old you’d have to be before being trustworthy enough to wander a forest path to your grandma’s house.  We know it’s some distance, at the very least into a forest where her mother and father don’t have a clear line of sight of her because all the action of the story takes place without anyone else present or aware of the little girl’s danger.  This path she’s supposed to stay on takes her into some deep woods because a wolf can safely hide in them.  A wolf the size of a small passenger car, apparently.  So Red’s about ten years old, and healthy because she can make this little trek on her own without getting tired.  That places her at roughly 4 feet 6 inches at about 70 pounds.

This wolf, who just scarfed down a 90 pound grandma, is now gearing up to chow down on an additional 70 pounds.  That’s 160 pounds of food!  Now the wolf is described as gluttonous and in later versions of the story a woodsman finds the wolf swollen and unable to move, much like anyone who just tore up a buffet to “make it worth the price”.  So with this new information, we can assume that 20 % is to get the wolf full enough to function, 35% is just plain slovenly.  That boosts our wolf to a whopping 457 pounds, so we can still hold our initial length of 13ish feet.

Now I ask is this the same wolf that menaced our porcine heroes, the Three Little Pigs?  Well, let’s do the math.  A domestic pig weaned from its mother at 6 weeks old, and at fully grown, on the low end, can be 35 inches (almost three feet) at 110 pounds.  That is a little pig.  No, we will not be discussing “miniature pigs” because the very concept of such a creature did not enter into culture until the 1960’s and, as stated earlier, we are in the Middle Ages.

Cue our wolf, in this corner standing at 13 feet long and weighing in at roughly 450ish pounds, able to conservatively eat 90 pounds of food in a single sitting.  In our opposite corner, the three little pigs weighing in at a combined 330 pounds.  So we can break this down.

There are two accepted versions of this story.  In the first one, the wolf successfully eats the first two pigs before moving on to our third pig in the brick house, where he is ultimately defeated.

The second is the pigs flee the scenes of their destroyed homes and meet up with their brother in the brick house.  I think it’s reasonable that the first story is probably closer to reality with the wolf fully capable of chasing down and eating said pig.  We don’t even have to really worry about the wolf’s capacity for eating food since we’ve previously determined that it takes 160 pounds of food to make him too fat to move.  We can reasonably assume that he attacked the house of straw on day one, ate the pig, waited until he was hungry and then attacked the house of sticks.

But did he blow the house down?  Remember “I’ll huff and I’ll puff and I’ll blow your house down.”  Where did that come from?  Well the wolf does have a rather large lung capacity, as it is able to run farther than most other animals, and howl at a volume, length, and decibel capable of being heard throughout an entire forest. Yet even with this under our giant wolf’s belt, he’s still not going to be capable of gale force winds.

But he doesn’t need to be.

Let’s look at the forensics of the story.  Our first pig made his house out of straw.  Given how flimsy of a building material this is, we can assume this lazy swine didn’t bother with anything to make the straw any sturdier, like mud.  At best this porker can build a passable lean too out of hay.  Big enough to house a 2.9 foot pig, the lean too of straw was probably about six feet long and three feet high.  How much force do you really need to clear that much straw?  When the wolf says he “huffs and puffs and blows” he probably means taking deep breaths as he bum rushes the house.  This first pig is easy pickings.

Our second pig, equally lazy but a little more discerning with his building material chose sticks.  Again, depending on how lazy, he probably didn’t use any other building material, but for once, let’s give him the benefit of a doubt and say he used mud to fasten together a very crude structure.  Again, for a 450+ pound wolf, this structure would not pose an obstacle.  Figure again that is six feet wide, four feet deep and three feet high.  Wolf builds up a little speed, rushes the door and it sure looks like he blew the house in, as the whole thing should collapse.

The third house made of brick, well that wasn’t going to happen.  Since our third pig is apparently very critical of his building supplies, he was prepared with this sturdy home capable of warding off even the absurdly large wolf.

In conclusion, what do we know of our subject?  He’s big, larger than most bears of that area, but lean enough to maintain his wolf agility.  He’s bad, openly deceiving a little girl with the intent of savagely murdering both her and the girl’s sick grandma, not to mention breaking and entering with intent to committee a felony (porcine-cide?).  All his characteristics mesh pretty well with what we know about wolves.

And that’s the Big Bad Wolf by the Numbers.

Thoughts, questions, comments, let me know below.

The photograph is used in accordance with public domain.

Welcome

Hello and welcome to my blog.  I may be a little late to the whole “blog game”, but actually I’ve made a few strides at this before.  Not long, maybe a couple of years ago, I started a blog called “Sidewinder Reviews”(http://sidewinderreviews.blogspot.com/), where in I gave my commentary on various films and books.  Around that same time I had a blog called “Fishers of Family Mobile Ministry” (http://mobileministry.blogspot.com/) which contained various opinion pieces based on Christian theology.

So with that in mind, why did I abandon those two blogs to start yet a third one?  Because this one is, frankly, strictly mine.  I won’t be held down by any specific structure.  I may post a movie review, but it’s not a movie review blog.  I may post off the cuff thoughts and experiences relating to my faith, but it’s not a faith based blog.  It’s more of a, whatever I want to talk about blog.  So why on earth should you read my blog?  Well, that’s for you to decide.  Maybe you agree with my opinion, maybe you want to share one of your own, maybe you totally disagree and you want to present a well-founded counterpoint to something I said.  Maybe you just want to gripe.  That’s up to you, I won’t judge.

However, regardless of what I talk about, I will hold to one basic rule.  No swearing.  I know that might limit a few people’s comments, given the size of their vocabulary, but this is a blog that maybe my kids might read one day, and frankly, when you descend into swearing, it hurts a lot of things.  It makes you look insecure in your stance.  So feel free to disagree with me, but please no swearing.  I will delete comments that contain profanity.

Thank you.

Michael Bauch