An interview with Spielberg and Lucas, from a few weeks ago.

Author: Anchorhead
Date: 2-Jun-2008, 5:26 PM

Author: Anchorhead
Time: 2-Jun-2008 5:26 PM (Edited)
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This was from an Entertainment Weekly piece from May 17th. It's a discussion centering around Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull.

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How exactly do you mediate a conversation with two of the most fertile minds in moviemaking? You hang on for dear life, that's how! When EW sat down with George Lucas and Steven Spielberg for a chat about Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (which opens May 22), the pace was fast and furious. You'll see part of our chat in the Summer Movie Preview issue of EW. But Spielberg and Lucas were so voluble, so passionately steeped in film history, and so funny that we had to bring you even more of their historic summit meeting, in which the pair discuss how filmmaking has changed in the past quarter-century, the impact of websites like this one on the experience of moviegoing, and the fate of Indiana Jones and the Monkey King.

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Gentlemen! This is like having Superman and Batman in the same room. [Laughter]
SPIELBERG: But wait a minute — which is which? I wanna be Superman! With the big S.
LUCAS: We should get some clinking glasses and stuff, just to screw up your tape.
So what took so long to get to installment No. 4? It's been 19 years since Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, the last of the original trilogy of films.
LUCAS: When we got to [the idea of making a fourth] one, I had already said, ''No. I can't think of another MacGuffin.''

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Meaning, the mystical thingy everyone is chasing.
LUCAS: I said, ''I can't do it. It's too hard.'' We barely got through the last couple of 'em with smoke and mirrors. Sankara stones, for God's sakes?

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: But there's a lot of historical data about the Sankara stones!
LUCAS: There is, but nobody in the United States knows about it, so there's no resonance. The MacGuffin is the key. Before the Sankara stones [which became the focus of the second film in the trilogy, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom], we'd had ideas for all kinds of other MacGuffin things. Some of them were original ones, that were in the [proposed] stories that I did. Like a haunted castle and stuff. But then Steven went off and did Poltergeist and said, ''I don't want to do another haunted-castle movie.''

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: In developing the third movie, there was a Christopher Columbus script early on, Indiana Jones and the Monkey King, set partly in Africa. And that one had a preamble involving a haunted castle.
LUCAS: We wrote complete scripts on other MacGuffins [for the third film]. And finally I said, look, let's just try the Holy Grail. [Adopting another voice] ''Ohhh, it's too cerebral, we'll never make it work....'' So we turned it into a tangible magic cup with healing powers, instead of an intellectual thing. It wasn't until the idea of introducing the father came along that we kind of pulled [the third movie] out of the fire. Because it then shifted from being about the MacGuffin. But ultimately, these are supernatural mysteries. They aren't action adventures. Everybody thinks they're action-adventure films, but that's just the genre we hang them on.
SPIELBERG: There's not one that hasn't been supernatural.
LUCAS: The supernatural part has to be real. [He taps the table] Which is why they're very hard, and you run out [of options] very fast. You have to have a supernatural object that people actually believe in. People believe that there was an Ark of the Covenant, and it has these powers. Same thing with the Sankara stones, same thing with the Holy Grail. We may have exaggerated some of its powers, but basically there are people who believe there is a Holy Grail, brought back by the Knights Templar.
SPIELBERG: Of course, I was worried that people would hear ''Holy Grail,'' and they would immediately think about a white rabbit attacking Monty Python. My first reaction was to say, ''Everybody run away! Run away!''

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Well to bring us into Indy 4, what kind of developmental push and pull went on once you decided to set the new film in the 1950s?
LUCAS: The idea was to take the genre of Saturday-matinee serials, which were popular in the '30s and '40s, and say, ''What kind of B movie was popular in the '50s, like those B movie serials were popular in the '40s?'' And use that as the overall uber-genre. We wouldn't do it as a Saturday-matinee serial. We'd do it as a B movie from the '50s.
SPIELBERG: The Cold War came to mind immediately, because if you're in the '50s, you have to acknowledge the Cold War.

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Would it have been weird to use cartoonish Nazis as villains again, as you did in Raiders of the Lost Ark and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade? Maybe take a Boys from Brazil tack, and follow fugitive Nazis to South America?
SPIELBERG: A lot changed for me after [1993's] Schindler's List, especially when I began working with Holocaust survivors, and being able to collect their testimonies. But I never look back with shame at Raiders or Last Crusade. We gave the Nazis the same spin that, I think, in a way, Charlie Chaplin was able to give them in The Great Dictator. There was always a bit of, We're not going to take them that seriously. It's just something I wouldn't choose to do right now. I would choose not to make them Saturday-matinee villains.
LUCAS: If you're going to make a movie about the 1930s, it's almost impossible to do it without the Nazis. And it's the same thing when we got [to the '50s] here. We have to deal with the Russians because that's where we were. It's not like we set out to make a film about Russians. It was, What was going on in the world? What were the issues? Who was doing what?
SPIELBERG: Totally.
LUCAS: You do a whole lot of research around the subject matter to try to get it as plausible as possible. We don't deal with time machines. We don't deal with phony notebooks that don't exist. We don't deal with pyramids in 10,000 B.C., because there weren't any.

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: So, Nazis out, Russians in. And that led you to a Russian villainess.
SPIELBERG: Well, we had a villainess last time, too [in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade].

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: But blonde Elsa wasn't bad from the get-go.
SPIELBERG: Right. Irina Spalko is a villain when she [first] gets out of the car.
LUCAS: She's an uber-villain.
SPIELBERG: The privilege for me was working with the great and talented Cate Blanchett. Because she is really a master of disguise.
LUCAS: She's just amazing.
SPIELBERG: She is so unrecognizable in this movie. But she's been unrecognizable in many of the choices she's made in her career, to play characters, like Bob Dylan, that are so removed from who she is as a mom and a wife in real life. She's a very threatening villain. Of all the villains I've been able to work with in the Indiana Jones movies, I can say she's my favorite. And I think Cate made her that way. We gave her a template for this, but she invented the character.

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: You've made Indiana much older in Crystal Skull — the character is nearly 60. And Harrison Ford turned 65 while you were making the film.
LUCAS: There was never any question about the fact that we were going to have Harrison play his age.
SPIELBERG: There's a line that was thematic for me, and it's not a line that's actually in the movie. And it illustrates why I was comfortable letting Harrison age 18, 19 years. In the first movie, he says, ''It's not the years, sweetheart, it's the mileage.'' Well, my whole theme in this movie is, It's not the mileage sweetheart, it's the years. When a guy gets to be that age and he still packs the same punch, and he still runs just as fast and climbs just as high, he's gonna be breathing a little heavier at the end of the set piece. And I felt, Let's have some fun with that. Let's not hide that.

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Plus he's got a sidekick to show him up — Shia LaBeouf, who plays a young ''greaser.'' Did he even know what a greaser was?
SPIELBERG: He didn't.
LUCAS: I had to train him. Shia got sent to the American Graffiti school of greaserland. And I became the consultant on his comb.
SPIELBERG: [Looking bemused] That's right.
LUCAS: And Steve would call on me every once in a while. If I wasn't there, he'd call me up and say, ''Look, there's a leather jacket we have in this shot, and we need to know — should it be unsnapped, or snapped?''

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Okay, let's talk another kind of nostalgia: Movie technology nostalgia. There was virtually no computer-graphic imagery available when you started making the original Indy films in the '80s. Digital imagery wasn't really there yet.
GEORGE LUCAS: It wasn't there at all.

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: So was there a temptation with Crystal Skull to use CG to make life easier?
STEVEN SPIELBERG: Here's the difference. The [background] matte paintings that you saw, let's say, in Raiders of the Lost Ark, when the carload of Nazis went off the cliff? Or the Pan Am clipper sitting in that obviously painted dockside waterfront? Our digital paintings now look like we were there on location. We have just as many matte-painting shots in this movie as we had in the other movies. The difference is, you won't even be able to tell that there's a brushstroke. For a while, I wanted to make them look bad, so they looked exactly like they did in the other movies.

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Which is to say, easily detectable — as they were in actual old movies, so it's sort of an homage to old-fashioned artistry.
SPIELBERG: But I didn't do that.

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: You're opening Crystal Skull in late May all over the world in one fell swoop — not territory by territory over months, like studios used to do in the 1980s.
LUCAS: Well...the growing majority of revenue from a movie comes from overseas. It used to be sort of 50-50, then it was 60-40, and now it's way beyond that. Every year it keeps growing. So the United States is becoming a much smaller market.

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: You guys first became filmmakers at a time when European directors were arguably the most inventive and the most artistically acclaimed in the world. Do you miss that atmosphere?
LUCAS: When Star Wars was being made, all the independent art films [still] came from Europe. There were practically no American independent films being made. Now about 30, 40 percent of American films are independent. And the films coming out of Europe, a lot of them look like American films. You can't really tell the difference. There's a globalization of entertainment, and it's good, because you still have personal art films and big audience pleasers.
SPIELBERG: You also have films being made and released on the Internet, little films, five- to six-minute shorts. They come from all over the world, and it's really interesting to see and to sense how this world has shrunk down to size of a single frame of film.... More people can pick up video cameras, and more individuals can express who they are as artists through this collective medium. That's what's so exciting. What makes me really curious to see as many short films, especially, as I possibly can, is that everybody is coming out of a different box, and is free to express themselves because budget is no longer a limiting factor. You can make a movie for no money and basically get it out there on YouTube for everybody to see.
LUCAS: Movies are now becoming like writing, like books. It's opened up to the point where anybody who has the urge or the talent to do it, there's not that many impediments to making a film. And, there are not that many impediments to having it be shown. That's where the Internet comes in. Now you can actually get it in front of people, and have them decide whether they like it or not. Before, that depended on the decisions of a very, very small group of people — executives who in a lot of cases didn't even go to the movies, and didn't even like 'em. And they were deciding what the people were and weren't going to like. It's much more democratic now. The people decide what they want.
SPIELBERG: I remember that stuff too. I remember Ed ''Kooky'' Byrnes [from the TV series 77 Sunset Strip] with his comb....

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Of course, there are downsides to the burgeoning Internet age — and one of those downsides is, when a popular movie is coming up, people sort of peck it to death before it even opens. There's been a huge amount written on the Internet about the development of Crystal Skull, including lots of spoilers on chat boards — though most of it is clearly labeled. Is it getting harder to protect the development process?
SPIELBERG: It really is important to be able to point out that the Internet is still filled with more speculation than facts. The Internet isn't really about facts. It's about people's wishful thinking, based on a scintilla of evidence that allows their imaginations to springboard. And that's fine.
LUCAS: Y'know, Steven will say, ''Oh, everything's out on the Internet [in terms of Crystal Skull details] — what this is and what that is.'' And to that I say, ''Steven, it doesn't make any difference!'' Look — Jaws was a novel before it was a movie, and anybody could see how it ended. Didn't matter.
SPIELBERG: But there's lots and lots of people who don't want to find out what happens. They want that to happen on the 22nd of May. They want to find out in a dark theater. They don't wanna find out by reading a blog.... A movie is experiential. A movie happens in a way that has always been cathartic, the personal, human catharsis of an audience in holy communion with an experience up on the screen. That's why I'm in the middle of this magic, and I always will be.

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Do you think the sanctuary of the dark theater is being eroded?
LUCAS: No! Look, it's like sports —
SPIELBERG: Yes. I think it is being eroded, by too much information and too much misinformation, especially.
LUCAS: But look, it's like sports. This isn't new. When March Madness gets started with the NCAA [basketball tournament], there are thousands of blogs out there. Rampant speculation. If you follow it enough, you go crazy. [With Crystal Skull], you don't know what's actually gonna happen till you walk into that theater. I don't care if you know the whole story, I don't care if you've seen clips. I don't care how much you've seen or heard or read. The experience itself is very different, once you walk in that theater.
SPIELBERG: Well, here's my debate on that. I've always been stingy about the scenes I show in a teaser or a trailer. Because my experience has been — and my kids' experience has been, 'cause they talk out loud in theaters, like everybody else does today — that if a scene they remember from the trailer hasn't come on the screen yet, and they're three quarters of the way through the movie, they start talking. ''Oh — I know what's gonna happen! Because there was that one little scene they haven't shown yet in the movie I'm experiencing, and it's coming up!'' And it ruins everything.

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: What about creating deliberate disinformation, the way, say The Sopranos' producers did?
SPIELBERG: I did that, but I don't do that any more 'cause it takes too much effort.
LUCAS: We have managed to keep the fact that Will Ferrell is the main villain in Crystal Skull out of the blogosphere.
SPIELBERG: Exactly. But it did get out that it's Steve Carell, last week.
LUCAS: Except people don't know that they're a team...
SPIELBERG: [Laughs] And by the way, when you run this? There'll be people that believe it!

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Below is the first part of the interview, referenced in the opening paragraph.
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If they had a talk show, George Lucas and Steven Spielberg could name it The Bickersons, in homage to the hit comedic radio program from their early childhoods. They clearly love each other — but they also love to squabble. Arriving together for the interview, they immediately start a coy debate over who should sit where at the rectangular table in Spielberg's production-office conference room. Lucas quips that having both of them across from the interviewer would be ''confrontational — that looks like it's a union meeting.'' Spielberg jovially declares, ''The table should be round. This is the wrong shape!'' At last they settle with Lucas at the head (how alpha male is that?), and over the next 70 minutes, they jockey and jabber and cut each other off like kid siblings competing for attention at mealtime. Lucas plays things especially feisty, pounding the table for emphasis and cutting in so forcibly at one point that Spielberg says, ''George! Hold your horses!'' The joshing continues in the hallway afterward. Asked by an associate why they overshot the scheduled hour, Lucas gets a big laugh: ''Well, Steven got angry that I was doing all the talking. So then we got into a fistfight.''

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: So why resurrect Indy after all these years?
LUCAS: We're doing it to have fun. We're not doing it to say, Oh, we're gonna get an Academy Award, everybody's gonna love us.... We don't need the money. We're only going to get aggravation. The fans think it's gonna be the Second Coming. And it's not the Second Coming. They've already written the story [in their heads], and lemme tell ya, it's not that story. So they're going to be very disappointed. I went through this with Phantom Menace. Believe me, I've been there, I've done it, I know exactly the way they react. And they're very vocal about these things. We're not gonna have adoring fans sending us e-mails saying how much they loved the movie. We're gonna have a bunch of angry people saying, ''You're a bunch of a--holes, you should never have done this. You've ruined my life forever. I loved Indiana Jones so much and now it's ruined.'' And all that kind of stuff.
SPIELBERG: Uh, he needs to speak for himself here. [Laughter all around] You need to put in parentheses ''George Lucas is totally speaking for himself.'' And I absolve myself of any connection with that last statement about fans not liking it.
LUCAS: All I'm saying is, I have been there, and I have walked through the valley of death on highly anticipated sequels.

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Has the fan interest in Crystal Skull been intrusive? Steven, you shot some scenes outdoors, and bam, there was the action revealed on YouTube, in blurry, shaky camcorder footage.
SPIELBERG: People were seeing shots from my movie on computer screens all over the world before I got a chance to see the shots on a film-lab screen! Global dissemination at light speed — at warp speed.
LUCAS: Of course if you'd shot it digitally [on a protected soundstage], you wouldn't have had that problem.
SPIELBERG: Oh, George, stop it!

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: How much did George nag you to shoot film-free, with digital cameras, the way he did on the Star Wars prequels?
SPIELBERG: All through three years of preparation. It's like he was sending these huge 88 [millimeter artillery] shells to soften the beach, y'know? He never swears at me. He never uses profanity. But he calls me a lot of names. And in his creative name-calling, he topped himself on this one, trying to get me to do this digitally.

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: What did he call you?
SPIELBERG: I guess the worst thing he ever called me was old-fashioned. But I celebrate that. He knows me like a brother. It's true, I am old-fashioned.
LUCAS: I think the word ''Luddite'' came into it. In a very heated discussion.
SPIELBERG: I said I wasn't, I was Jewish! [Laughter]
LUCAS: The end of it is, I said, ''Look, Steve, this is your movie. You get to do it your way.'' And in the end, I didn't force Steven to do it. That doesn't mean I didn't pester him, and tease him, and get on him all the time.
SPIELBERG: It was all 35-millimeter, chemically processed film.... I like cutting the images on film. I'm the only person left cutting on film.
LUCAS: And I'm the guy that invented digital editing. But we coexist. I mean, I also like widescreen and color. Steven and Marty [Scorsese] have gone back and shot in black-and-white [on Schindler's List and Raging Bull, respectively]. I don't get on their case and say, ''Oh my God, this is a terrible thing, why are you going backwards?'' I say, ''That's your choice, and I can appreciate it.''
SPIELBERG: Eventually I'll have to shoot [and edit] movies digitally, when there is no more film — and I'm willing to accept that. But I will be the last person to shoot and cut on film, y'know?

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Is the editing part getting harder to do the old way, when the rest of the industry is using electronic editing on computers?
LUCAS: He still uses a Moviola! One of these days, the belt will break on it. And he'll go down to one of those repair places and they'll say, ''Oh, I'm sorry, sir, we don't sell those anymore.''
SPIELBERG: We cut on a Moviola, and we preview on a KEM.

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Wow — so wait, let's get this right for our readership. A KEM is a so-called flatbed editing machine, which came into fashion around the 1970s as a replacement for Moviolas, which go back to the '20s. And you and your editor Michael Kahn still use both?
SPIELBERG: I own about 30 KEMs. We cannibalize them for bulbs and parts. It's like the Concorde in the last three years of its service.
LUCAS: Steven enjoys the look and feel of the technology that existed when he came into the movie business. He's familiar with it, it's comfortable, he likes it, he's nostalgic about it. But he is not above, when we've got a problem, using new technology to say, ''I will solve this problem that way. I am not gonna just do it the old way for its own sake.''
SPIELBERG: Look, I will never take full credit for this, but I provided the opportunity for the very first digital [CG-character] shot in film history, in a movie I produced, Young Sherlock Holmes.

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Right — the shot of the stained-glass window coming alive.
SPIELBERG: And I basically provided the opportunity for digital dinosaurs in the first Jurassic Park. So I may be a Luddite in my own personal preferences of the tools I need to make myself feel comfortable. But George and I have been on the cutting edge of all the technology that exists today.
LUCAS: When Steven works on his scripts, he does his work on a computer. I wouldn't touch a computer. I do mine on nice yellow tablets with a No. 4 pencil, and I will not change.
SPIELBERG: This interview must seem like we're in Bellevue.

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: You've both used John Williams as a composer on nearly all your films. How early does he start work on his themes?
SPIELBERG: The themes come to him when he sees the movie.
LUCAS: But it sounds like the music was first, and then we did the movie around it. It feels like that.

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: John Williams is 76 now, and you've both passed 60 yourselves. Is that alarming?
LUCAS: We just refuse to accept it. We are not gonna get gray. We are not gonna get old. We are as young as we've ever been, and we don't recognize the fact that we've gotten older. Do we? [Laughs]
SPIELBERG: It's true. I'll never forget when I was making Jaws, [producer] David Brown said, ''I'm nearly 60 years old and I feel like I'm 24.'' I've always felt that way about myself. I got to a point in my life where I was happy and satisfied, and had a burgeoning family and a wonderful career. I've always sort of time-locked and mind-blocked myself in my 30s, and that's always the age I feel.
LUCAS: We still kid each other and cause trouble with each other. We still bug each other the same way. I think our relationship has stayed exactly the same.
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That's it. Thought you guys might find it interesting. I certainly did.

Like them or dislike them, their history and innovation in the industry is legend - and it should be. They are two heavy hitters that changed the film industry forever.

*edit*

Spielberg\Lucas interview link

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Author: zombie84
Time: 2-Jun-2008 6:34 PM
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Thanks for posting that, it was very entertaining and revealing.

One thing I found interesting was Spielberg saying he used CG with a soft touch and that Ford is 60 so he should be more aching and panting in the Indy film--but my biggest complaint about the films is it has too much CG in places and that Indy never feels the blows, he's more superhuman and unharmable than in any of the previous films.

I liked how Lucas says "people will hate the film because they just will, because that happened on the prequels" and then Spielberg says "George speak for yourself"--apparently, Lucas still doens't get that the prequels were criticised because they fucking sucked.

Still, a good read though.

Author: Ziz
Time: 2-Jun-2008 7:14 PM (Edited)
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zombie84 said:

I liked how Lucas says "people will hate the film because they just will, because that happened on the prequels" and then Spielberg says "George speak for yourself"--apparently, Lucas still doens't get that the prequels were criticised because they fucking sucked.

But that's Lucas' point - are the prequels really as bad as people say they are, or do people THINK they're bad because of all the build-up to what fans were expecting over the years?

With each series - SW or Indy - you've got 20 years of familiarity and maturity in between there. No matter how hard you try, you're not looking at the new film thru the same eyes or with the same attitude as you did the originals, so naturally you're going to be more critical of it.

I'm not saying the PT or Crystal Skull are flawless - sure they have their rough spots, But are those the fault of the film making process or is the audience just better at finding the faults than they were 20 years ago?

My outlook on life - we’re all on the Hindenburg anyway…no point fighting over the window seat.

Author: zombie84
Time: 2-Jun-2008 7:50 PM
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Ziz said:

You can't watch Attack of the Clones and say "people criticized the acting and writing in this film because they're not 8 years old anymore." Thats ridiculous, and insulting to the tastes and standards we hold our movies by. Jedi has some weak writing too, which is why we don't look rosy-glassed back at it either. Phantom Menace got unfairly reviled because you'd think it was the worst movie of all time judging by some peoples reactions, its not a complete waste, there were way worse movies that summer, but the prequels were very weak films and thats why they got bad reviews and bad reputations. Its not some nostalgia thing. But Lucas puts up some bullshit to excuse bad moviemaking by blaming the viewers.

Crystal Skull has actually been recieved in pretty much the same manner as the previous two sequels, which tells me its more or less at the same level. It got mostly warm reviews, but some negative ones--better than Temple of Doom, which was hugely criticised by viewers and only got so-so reviews, and similar to Crusade which got good reviews but as fantastic as we might expect. And going by the current estimates, Crystal Skull will probably be the third-highest grossing movie of the year or theareabouts--which is on par with Crusade, which got beat by Batman, and Temple of Doom, which got beat by Beverly Hills Cop and got seriously beat by Ghostbusters. So, Spielberg has been pretty consistent with the franchise, it didn't get the prequel reaction because its not on that low a level, even if it might be the weakest of the three Indy sequels.

Author: canofhumdingers
Time: 3-Jun-2008 1:06 AM (Edited)
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STEVEN SPIELBERG: Here's the difference. The [background] matte paintings that you saw, let's say, in Raiders of the Lost Ark, when the carload of Nazis went off the cliff? Or the Pan Am clipper sitting in that obviously painted dockside waterfront? Our digital paintings now look like we were there on location. We have just as many matte-painting shots in this movie as we had in the other movies. The difference is, you won't even be able to tell that there's a brushstroke. For a while, I wanted to make them look bad, so they looked exactly like they did in the other movies.

I found this particularly interesting, what with the recent HD cable broadcasts..... I just fear that they're already well under way on the Indiana Jones SEs.....UGH

Oh, & i agree that the anticipation didn't affect the reaction to the prequels THAT much. Maybe a little, but the majority of the negativity was because they were just BAD movies. They had crappy acting, unbelievable dialogue, and a director who didn't give the actors ANY direction (seriously, watch the making of's). George just doesn't get it anymore. Technology is just a means to an end. It's the story & the CHARACTERS that are the heart of the movie. A heart that was totally lacking in the prequels.

Author: Anchorhead
Time: 3-Jun-2008 1:29 AM (Edited)
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Ziz said:

...are the prequels really as bad as people say they are, or do people THINK they're bad because of all the build-up to what fans were expecting over the years?

That's insulting to the fan base.
The time in between films has nothing at all to do with fan reaction. Fans are expecting greatness (or at least as good) in a sequel as soon as the film leaves the theaters. They want the next one to continue the adventure - whether it's two years later or twenty.

The prequels are disliked because they're bad - not because of the release date, the anticipation, or because people mistakenly "THINK" they are.

With each series - SW or Indy - you've got 20 years of familiarity and maturity in between there. No matter how hard you try, you're not looking at the new film thru the same eyes or with the same attitude as you did the originals, so naturally you're going to be more critical of it.

Two things I'd like to address & question, with regard to that statement.

1. The opposite is true with me. For the sake of this discussion, I should point out that I'm 46 years old and I grew up with these two franchises. I was there at the inception of both and I've waited for, and anticipated, all the sequels*.

For Star Wars, I found all the sequels to be a disappointment - each one worse than the one before (*I've not bothered with the last two).

For Indiana Jones, I've enjoyed all of the sequels a great deal. Some more than others.

2. How do you account for the twenty-somethings that dislike the prequels? They don't have "20 years of familiarity and maturity in between" the films. They didn't grow up with them, they didn't experience the awe of the theatrical birth in 1977, nor did they have to wait years between each release. Many of them were able to first experience the original trilogy in a single afternoon. For my generation, that same experience took seven years.

The twenty-somethings don't have a lifetime of emotional investment in Star Wars. Something else is the deciding factor in their dislike of the prequels.

Quality of story & depth of characters drive my emotional reception of sequels, not time between releases. I suspect that's the case with most fans, regardless of when they first saw the original films.

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Author: canofhumdingers
Time: 3-Jun-2008 2:21 AM
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Anchorhead's right, i didn't see Star Wars until '95. No 20 years of anticipation for me.

Author: CO
Time: 3-Jun-2008 7:08 AM (Edited)
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Ziz said:

But that's Lucas' point - are the prequels really as bad as people say they are, or do people THINK they're bad because of all the build-up to what fans were expecting over the years?

With each series - SW or Indy - you've got 20 years of familiarity and maturity in between there. No matter how hard you try, you're not looking at the new film thru the same eyes or with the same attitude as you did the originals, so naturally you're going to be more critical of it.

I'm not saying the PT or Crystal Skull are flawless - sure they have their rough spots, But are those the fault of the film making process or is the audience just better at finding the faults than they were 20 years ago?

No, but these movies are living off their names, and that is why people are going to see them, despite being average movies. Do you think that Lucas could have put out a movie like TPM as the first SW movie, and it would be as popular as SW? Do you think Lucas/Spielberg could have put out The Crystal Skull and it would be as popular as Raiders?

I saw Temple of Doom back in '84, and after the first viewing didn't think it was a great as Raiders. I didn't even see Last Crusade in '89, cause I wasn't juiced for it, and when I finallly saw it on HBO, it was the 3rd best. I still havent' seen Indy IV, cause I know it will be more of the same, so I will wait for DVD and rent it one night.

What Lucas doesn't get is that we always thought the sequels were inferior!!!! Except Empire, most sequels are not as good, and if anyone was around in the 80's/90's, people unloaded on sequels that sucked: Superman III & IV, Jurassic Park II & III, Batman & Robin, Rocky V, I could go on and on. And the most controversial Matrix Reloaded & Revolutions, where many thought they were brilliant, and just as many think they are pure shit.

Nothing has changed in assessing these movies, only Lucas is more on the defensive because this was the first time HIS movies were getting criticized by the fans. Just tell Lucas to ask Stallone about how fans felt about Rocky V. Fans like myself really hated that movie so much he almost ruined the series, and redeemed himself with Rocky VI.

What Lucas doesn't get is nobody goes into these sequels/prequels expecting a classic movie like the original, it is so rare (Aliens, Empire, GodfatherII), but there are really good sequels like Rocky II, Superman II, and T2 that don't rely on the brand name to sell the movie. I don't think the PT is crap but I don't think they are good movies either, and if it didn't have Star Wars slapped in front of it, I probably would have never given it a second viewing.

Author: Yoda Is Your Father
Time: 3-Jun-2008 10:26 AM (Edited)
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Ziz said:

NNo the prequels sucked. Indy 4 was bad compared to what had gone before but not terrible as a movie (I guess) so I take your point. But the prequels were just balls. And besides, a good filmmaker should be able to make a sequel (or prequel) that plays on and complements the film it is following, not completely go against the grain of your own creation, unless you are a) doing exactly that intentionally to turn things on their head because you're some kind of storytelling genius or b) retarded.

War does not make one great.

Author: Max_Rebo
Time: 3-Jun-2008 11:30 AM
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That makes for interesting reading, but I'm not sure that Lucas really understands what he's talking about

Anchorhead said:

LUCAS: We wrote complete scripts on other MacGuffins [for the third film]. And finally I said, look, let's just try the Holy Grail. [Adopting another voice] ''Ohhh, it's too cerebral, we'll never make it work....'' So we turned it into a tangible magic cup with healing powers, instead of an intellectual thing. It wasn't until the idea of introducing the father came along that we kind of pulled [the third movie] out of the fire. Because it then shifted from being about the MacGuffin.

A lose deffinition of a MacGuffin from Wikipedia: "The MacGuffin is common in films, especially thrillers. Commonly, though not always, the MacGuffin is the central focus of the film in the first act, and later declines in importance as the struggles and motivations of characters play out. Sometimes the MacGuffin is all but forgotten by the end of the film."

By saying that the introduction of Indy's farther meant it was no longer about the MacGuffin (i.e. the holy grail) what he fails to realize is this means the holy grail is no longer the MacGuffin, Henry's Grail diary becomes the MacGuffin as Indy has no interest in the Grail itself but is interested in finding his Farther. Indy's rooms are broken into to find the diary, the diary leads him to Venice, his room is broken into again to find the diary, the diary is taken from him at the castle, and they go to Berlin to retrieve it, and once everyone knows where the grail is the diary is still important.

The same could be said about Raiders because the search for the headpiece of the staff is a lot more important in getting the story going and establishing the characters motives.

and in Crystal skull the letter that Mutt delivers to Indy at the beginning serves as the MacGuffin, the letter is sent to Mutt, Mutt takes it to Indy, the Russians follow the trail of the letter and the letter leads them to Peru, Indy is never even looking for the crystal skull.

Anchorhead said:

But ultimately, these are supernatural mysteries. They aren't action adventures. Everybody thinks they're action-adventure films, but that's just the genre we hang them on.
SPIELBERG: There's not one that hasn't been supernatural.

I just think this is rubbish, the original Indy films are clearly action-adventure films, in Raiders and Last Crusade nothing supernatural happens until the climax of the film, they may be searching for supernatural objects but that doesn't make them "supernatural mysteries", temple of Doom has a bit more supernatural stuff i.e. ripping out hearts and voodoo dolls, but it's no mystery!

I think this is just George's excuse for having so much supernatural in the latest film with so little explanation, therefore it is 'mysterious'

Author: skyjedi2005
Time: 3-Jun-2008 11:41 AM (Edited)
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the new indy was so bad they had to rip off rip off's like national treasure, and even rip off stargate and x-files.

I don't think there was a single original scene in the whole movie, and the script is so poorly written as to give the prequels a run for their money.

This was a movie which tried very hard to find its own plot and pace and failed, poor Harrison even did his best. You cannot act with a shit script and bad cgi.

I so badly wanted to love this movie and left the theater feeling empty and unfullfilled just like episodes 1-3 of the prequels.

“Always loved Vader’s wordless self sacrifice. Another shitty, clueless, revision like Greedo and young Anakin’s ghost. What a fucking shame.” -Simon Pegg.

Author: PSYCHO_DAYV
Time: 3-Jun-2008 12:37 PM
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skyjedi2005 said:

the new indy was so bad they had to rip off rip off's like national treasure, and even rip off stargate and x-files.

I don't think there was a single original scene in the whole movie, and the script is so poorly written as to give the prequels a run for their money.

This was a movie which tried very hard to find its own plot and pace and failed, poor Harrison even did his best. You cannot act with a shit script and bad cgi.

I so badly wanted to love this movie and left the theater feeling empty and unfullfilled just like episodes 1-3 of the prequels.

I TOTALLY AGREE. YES, THERE WERE SOME GOOD SCENES IN THE MOVIE, BUT THOSE WERE HELD TOGETHER BY REALLY BAD SCENES. YOU ALSO DIDN'T GET THE SAME EMOTIONAL REACTION TO THE CGI ANT SCENE AS YOU DID WITH THE REAL SNAKES, THE REAL BUGS, AND THE REAL RATS.

I REALLY THOUGHT THAT I MIGHT LIKE THE MOVIE AFTER A SECOND VIEWING. I WAS COMPLETELY WRONG. I THINK I DISLIKE IT EVEN MORE. WITH THIS MOVIE THERE REALLY ISN'T A MIDDLE GROUND. YOU EITHER LOVE IT, OR YOU HATE IT.

IT'S GREAT THAT THIS MOVIE HAS MADE SO MUCH MONEY AT THE BOX OFFICE. IT HAS SHOWED THE WORLD THAT WILL ALL STILL LOVE THESE CHARACTERS. HOWEVER, BECAUSE THE FILM WAS SO BAD AND YET IT'S STILL EARNING MONEY, WE'RE DOOMED TO A POSSIBLE INDY 5 & 6.

"I'VE GROWN TIRED OF ASKING, SO THIS WILL BE THE LAST TIME..."
The Mangler Bros. Psycho Dayv Armchaireviews Notes on Suicide

Author: Anchorhead
Time: 4-Jun-2008 9:42 AM (Edited)
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LUCAS said:

But ultimately, these are supernatural mysteries. They aren't action adventures. Everybody thinks they're action-adventure films, but that's just the genre we hang them on.

Might be time for an SE of the Temple Of Doom teaser.

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Author: Johnboy3434
Time: 7-Jun-2008 1:34 AM
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I actually agree with Lucas on this one. There's a strong supernatural vibe throughout all the Indy films. Even though the displays of the supernatural are not many, the belief in them and the quest for the power granted by these objects are omnipresent in the villain's motives. I get what he saying: these are supernatural mysteries (well, actually "quests" or something would be more appropriate) in the garb of action-adventure movies. The same way the Matrix films are philosophy discourses in the garb of technopunk action films.

Author: zombie84
Time: 8-Jun-2008 2:55 PM
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I guess it depends on how you look at it. The plots are propelled by the hunt for a mysterious item with possible supernatural powers, but I don't think people view the series as a "supernatural mystery" one, the supernatural part takes a back seat to everything in else in the film, namely plot, action and character.

Author: skyjedi2005
Time: 8-Jun-2008 4:18 PM (Edited)
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talking about the so called supernatural aspects of the first 3 films is lucas way of excusing the non existent plot of the new movie, a very lame way to try and hoodwink the audience the same way he tried with the star wars prequels.

The next thing you will hear is this lame plot and fake cgi fest of crystal skull were his original vision, LOL.

Supernatural mystery is a big blanket statement to hide the fact that the 4th outing of Indiana Jones has no plot.

This could be dubbed cinema verite style by lucas and he has done it in movies before star wars like his student films and THX 1138. Make a film abstract but the visuals have to have resonance or at least make people think, this film succeeds in neither avenue. Lucas can claim the french new wave and auteur theory and cinema verite until he is blue in the face the prequels sucked big time, Indy 4 was mediocre. It felt like in the words of bilbo baggins "butter that has been scraped over too much bread".

It is time for Lucas to retire and do those experimental films he has promised since 1983, and this time for good.

Too bad every time he sees dollars signs he changes his tune. He said there would be no Indiana Jones IV and low and behold it was made, he now wants to do part V. He said there would not be any more star wars movies after episode III but there is this animated star wars movie coming out in august.

He claimed Lucasfilms future was television and that Indy 4 and Red Wings would be his Last big screen outings. People the fact that he wants to Do Indy 5 is horrible, please make him stop before he does episodes 7-9 of star wars all on fake cgi green screen. You know if he ever runs of of money he will do them. He has even admitted he did episodes 1-3 for financial freedom. The art of filmaking was of a secondary nature. I don't even think he was a fan of star wars anymore he just saw it as a cheap cash cow because sheep will eat anything up that has Star Wars written on it.

“Always loved Vader’s wordless self sacrifice. Another shitty, clueless, revision like Greedo and young Anakin’s ghost. What a fucking shame.” -Simon Pegg.