Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade... Lives UP!

 

We think that Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade lives up even more than Raiders of the Lost Ark - it has more explosions, less random killings of bystanders, a lighter overall tone, and slightly better archology (though we agreed, Indy would still be on a PIP... he's gotta stop breaking things!).

Last Crusade has several callbacks to Raiders, but one of the best is - SPOILER ALERT - having the bad guy's face melt off at the end. We love practical effects, so let's take a look at how they filmed these sequences.

Wax on. Wax off.

In Raiders of the Lost Ark, the wrath of God melts the face off of Major Toht. To achieve this epic face melt, the SPFX team make a stone model of the actor's skull, then coated it with blood-colored and skin-colored wax and gelatin.

They added the character's glasses and hat to complete the look, and then! Let's literally melt the guy!

As the wax melts, the stone skull holds its shape

There's a fantastic behind the scenes video of the Face Melt if you want to see more!

Meanwhile, in The Last Crusade, the character Donovan drinks from the wrong chalice and has his own facial demise. This time, cinema was moving closer to the computer animated face morphing technology that blew our child minds on November 14, 1991 when Michael Jackson's Black or White music video premiered that night after The Simpsons. 

The SPFX crew used a series of three motion-controlled puppets layered over each other to create a rapid aging effect. They blended the shots of the puppets together to create Donovan's sudden demise.

I would still consider this a practical effect, but they do lean on the visual effects in the face morphing technology that they had refined while making the movie Willow.

If, for some reason, you're really REALLY into this whole sequence, Donovan's corpse hairpiece is available for auction... A little something for your memorabilia collection, you weirdo. 

So which face melt is better? The Last Crusade one looks more realistic because of technological advances. Still, Jess and I agreed that we actually the Raiders face melt better because it's more disgusting and bloody. Ick. 

Listen to all of our thoughts on Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade here, on YouTube, or on your favorite podcasting platform. 

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