Indiana Jones and the Bad Photoshop Work
Friday, October 24, 2003Like most self-respecting geeks I purchased the Indiana Jones trilogy on DVD this week. At first look, the packaging is great. The box and the DVD cases appropriately reflect an old weathered globe-trotting Indiana Jones look to them (complete with Drew Struzan artwork). The colours are deep, rich, warm colours.
But upon opening the cases, the magic disappears. The actual discs themselves have photos of Harrison Ford that have clearly been put through a quick Photoshop filter to give them an artificial sketchy-painterly look as if to mirror the look of the Struzan paintings. And they’re bright, soft, pastel colours that lose all the warmth and richness of the outer packaging.
The animated menus of the DVDs are even worse—film clips given the same cheap-looking filter are patched together along with some poor-looking 3D animation (For Raiders, an airplane, for Doom, a minecart, and for Crusade… the circus train?). Apart from looking pretty cheap and fluffy and ruining the whole Indy feel that the outer packaging provided with its artwork and rich colours, these menus give away great scenes that someone new to the series wouldn’t otherwise be savvy to (Granted, if you’ve never seen an Indiana Jones movie before then you must’ve been living under a rock).
The official website tries to pan this filtered look off as a special feature, claiming that the ”digitally filtered classic Indy moments” harken back to nostalgic Pan-Am posters. Well, I never once made that connection—they just end up looking like a cheap digital hodge podge of scenes from a movie franchise that should’ve been given a less frivolous-looking menu design. (Why does Lucas’s other franchise have great DVD menus for his lesser films?)
Luckily though, the movies themselves are undeniably great and transcend all my pettiness and scrutiny.
“You call him Dr. Jones, doll!”
Oh, and speaking of Drew Struzan, why don’t the bonus features of the DVDs include any promotional/concept artwork at all, such as these great pieces?
Joe says:
That’s the first thing I noticed with the discs, too! They look all washed out and as if they were done at the last second. I really don’t care that much though. The fact that those movies are now on DVD more than makes up for that.
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Fink says:
Hey, I was just talking to someone at lunch today (who had bought the trilogy on DVD) specifically what the menus were like because I was expecting something cool like on the star wars DVDs.
Thats a crying shame that they are as bad as they are.
Zombie Claire says:
A haiku by Claire
Nerd disappointment.
Must we suffer constantly?
Come on, Matrix 3!
Jenny says:
I’ve only watched the Special Features DVD and the menu on that was pretty cheesey.
I like B-movies as much as the next person, but the design could’ve been a bit better.
T.K. says:
Oh come on, does someone have to complain about everything! They are just menues, people, just a spot where you pick out what you wanna do. They don’t need to look like they have a bigger budget on them the the movies themselves. Get a life.
I personally thought the menus were decent anyway.