For a Few Dollars More is my favorite of the three. It has the most interesting plot and cast, IMO. I love Lee Van Cleef's Colonel Mortimer character throughout. Cool as a cucumber. Manages to make Eastwood look a bit twitchy in comparison. I just love the scenery, sound, music, the tension, lingering shots, etc. I've had this channel/these movies on all day, enjoying my favorite pats and just letting the rest be pleasant background sound/visuals. I like to work/read/create while movies or
Law & Order or game shows are playing in the background. They don't distract as much as fuel, for some reason. I can't work/concentrate in complete silence or "morgue" conditions. I like/need a little something happening in my periphery. It's fun to take in a movie or TV show via audio only. The story/plot becomes crystal clear because I'm not looking at any distractions on screen. Doing this is how I finally grasped
The Matrix. Watching it only overwhelmed my senses, but just
hearing it made all the difference to me.
You have to wait for things in these movies. It's not No-Attention-Span Cinema, these things. My niece and nephew wouldn't make it 10 minutes into this stuff. Speaking of which, my sister showed my nephew (17)
Raiders of the Lost Ark for the first time the other evening (Saturday night) and she said he didn't really like it. I just can't wrap my head around that. We can all debate/argue Marvel/DC stuff, or our honest reactions to the Star Wars sequels (or any of the Disney-era SW output (TV shows, sequel trilogy, the standalone "anthology" releases), but
who, other than my chucklehead nephew, can't/doesn't like
Raiders of the Lost Ark? There's nothing wrong with it. Nothing offensive or off-putting to modern, hyper-sensitive and Enlightened™ audiences. The bad guys are
Nazis, hello? Or are we no longer allowed to show that anymore, for some stupid reason?
Those pricks will, and should, be go-to cinematic villains until the end of time. That never gets old, and there's zero ambiguity or "well, you gotta see both sides, there are some shades of grey involved you need to understand, Paul...".
a) No I don't, and b) no there isn't. F*** 'em.
Gotta have a talk with this kid. "What, exactly, did you not like about it?!" This is a generation that plays kickball/dodgeball on their iPhone, vs. going outside and doing it for real with their buddies in the neighborhood, so I already don't "get them". I just wanna hear, specifically, what he didn't find appealing/interesting. Because I think it's just perfect and engaging, all the way through! The action never stops, and when it lets up a little, then it's great, interesting exposition and backstory (what Hitler's up to, Abner Ravenwood, how Toht only had one side of Marion's medallion burned into his hand, and not getting the full info on the location of the Well of Souls, so the Nazis are "digging in the wrong place", etc. He and his buddies have grown up on nothing but fantastical, over-the-top CGI and video game cut scene cinematography, so something so "real" and devoid of big, flashy CGI and over-the-top visuals/set pieces, like 1981's
Raiders, must be akin to me watching those 1930's Buster Crabbe Flash Gordon/Buck Rogers serials, where you see the strings on the spaceship models and the dime-store sparklers acting as their rocket engines.
However, I can still appreciate those things for what they are/represent, and enjoy watching them. I've seen many (most?) of them! I don't let the era or quality/believability of visuals/special effects blatantly impact my enjoyment of a movie. I can recognize the time they were filmed and cut some slack on that front and watch it for the pioneering visual/cinematic time capsule it is. Great effects don't make, or break, a movie. They can only sit on/ride along atop the story/plot.
The Last Jedi and
Rise of Skywalker had amazing visuals and CGI work...and I couldn't tell you one meaningful, memorable thing about either of them as I sit here typing this.
Raiders is all there on the screen, with nothing to really "date" it except, perhaps, the very ending with the stuff flying/shooting out of the Ark itself, and the face-melting sequences/time-lapse work, which might look a little dated to current-day teenagers, who've grown up on Harry Potter, the MCU and high-end, do-everything smartphones/tablets. Way more savvy and tougher to fool, modern audiences are (why am I talking like Yoda?).
