And that Lucas quote in the Indiana Jones article proves without a doubt that we were right to be leery of the bundled 2004/originals set, because Lucas in no way is doing it out of the goodness of his heart. He just wants to see which is more "popular" - but has bizarrely hedged his bets by putting them in the same package anyway, so you can literally take the eventual sales figures any way you want:
1) They love the 2004 versions so much they'll even buy them with the old ones attached;
2) They love the OT versions so much they'll even buy them with the 2004 versions attached; or
3) They will buy any damn thing I sell as long as it has 'SW' stuck on it somewhere and I call it a "limited edition."
I'm pulling for #2, but who knows which the yes-men will agree to.
All in all, though, the scariest phrase of them all was:
George Lucas Says Indiana's Next Crack Of The Whip Will Be Tamer
Writer/producer says he's finished writing script to sequel.
I honestly had a twinge of nausea when I read this. Tamer?! I can't believe people are just letting Lucas do to Indiana Jones what he did to Star Wars. Can we report this as a crime against Humanity? If he had it to do over again, here are just the first 20 of hundreds of examples of what his "vision" probably would have done to the first movie alone:
1) In opening jungle sequence, the traitorous guides fire a half dozen revolver shots at Indy before Indy manages to use his whip to knock the guy's gun into the water. This proves Indy is a "nice guy" because he lets obviously murderous people take the first shot. How he has managed to survive this long with that condition, however, remains an open question.
2) Instead of tarantulas, Indy steps in centuries-old poop.
3) Instead of bats flying out of scary temple idol, assistant is scared off when donkey farts in his face.
4) Giant rolling rock is CGI.
5) When hanging precariously from a vine over the bottomless pit, Indy surprises his remaining assistant by leaping up in the air and cutting him in half with his whip somehow.
6) The pontoon plane engages in numerous CGI landings on jungle landing platforms for some reason.
7) Hovitos natives respond to Belloq by saying "Roger, roger."
8) There is a flashback of the time Indy and Marion first met and flirted. Indy was 7 years old, but Marion was the same age as she is now for some reason.
9) In the desert, Indy wooes Marion by complaining about how sand gets "everywhere".
10) During the fight with the huge mechanic on the tarmac, there are two german pilots sitting in the plane, who keep up a running commentary about the fight, including lines like "I don't care what Reich you're from, that's gotta hurt!"
11) When Indy is forced under the moving cargo truck and has to work his way down under it while being dragged along the road, he screams like a terrified little girl the entire time.
12) Indy tries to warn the German agent about how hot the headpiece is, and that if he touches it his hand will go "numb fo hours". This comedic lead-in brutally established, the German agent proceeds to sit directly on the headpiece. His face gets bright red, steam shoots out of his ears, and he comically runs out into the snow. Later, he has to moon people to show it off.
13) The stupid audience cannot be trusted to understand from the opening sequence that Indy is very good at what he does. When talking back at the university, Brody repeatedly references how Indy was born to a virgin mother, and that his Archaeology powers are more than "20,000"! This number is of course meaningless without a frame of reference, so we also learn that the greatest Archaeologists top out at, oh, say, 15,000.
14) Belloq later implies he fathered Indy by remote control via tiny invisible cellular cooties.
15) The assassin who wants to poison Indy's dates in Egypt sub-contracts to another assassin who will do the exact same thing. After he fails when the monkey eats a date and dies, the first assassin kills him with a dart. Indy discovers the dart has a tag on it reading "Tanis Memorabilia Shoppe - Well of Souls Discount Dart" along with longitude and latitude coordinates for the desert.
16) When Indy first tries to buy the Headpiece off Marion, she says American money is "no good out here." Indy later gets it off her by cheating at dice.
17) All the writing on the headpiece has been changed into English through the miracle of CGI.
18) Belloq confronts Indy in the hookah joint after he thinks Marion blew up, and tells him "We have both fallen from the purer faith." Instead of threatening to blow his face off, Indy nods his head meekly and submits to Belloq. Belloq then makes some noise about how together they can learn to bring Marion back. When Sallah's children come running into the bar, Indy kills them all.
19) In order to get to the hidden German base, the German submarine goes right through the planet core.
20) In the final sequence when the Ark of the Covenant makes Belloq explode, the explosion has a big ring of expanding energy.
