apropos of nothing

Relax: The New Indiana Jones Movie Won’t Have That Many Aliens

Courtesy of Paramount Pictures


In their seemingly unending quest to undermine our hopes that Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull might not be bad, Harrison Ford and George Lucas gave an interview with the AP yesterday in which (as noticed by the Playlist) they not so subtly hint at a heated, decade-long behind-the-scenes battle over whether to put aliens in the movie. AP says that the major stumbling block to getting Crystal Skull made was a “way-out-there initial idea†Lucas had for the film (obviously extraterrestrials since part of it takes place in Roswell, New Mexico, and also this), which Ford and Steven Spielberg, probably correctly, thought was stupid.

Says Ford:

“It was the three of us, Steven, George and I, coming to agreement … I think the original idea is still a large piece of it in the movie, but it’s been developed and worked on in ways that made it a lot more palatable to Steven and I.â€

Says Lucas:

“The MacGuffin of it slowed down a little bit from what my original enthusiastic version was … They wanted to go off on some other tangent. I said, ‘I’m not going to do that. I’m going to stick with this no matter what, so we either do this or we don’t. That’s it.’ Finally, we got something that we could all compromise on and all be happy with. It wasn’t quite as wacky as I wanted it to be, but it still is subtle and nice and works really well and has the same idea behind it.â€

So fear not! Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull will only have a few aliens. Not that many! In fact, you may not even notice them as they will definitely not be the film’s focus. They’ll probably just be tertiary characters that serve only to further or enhance the greater action, like Greedo or the Cantina band in Star Wars — certainly they wouldn’t look at all out of place in an Indiana Jones movie, right? Ford and Lucas are just subtly trying to tell us that Shia LaBeouf will not be the next Jar Jar Binks, at least not literally anyway. Nope, there’s absolutely no reason to believe that this might turn out terrible.

’Real guy’ Indiana Jones ready to return [AP/CNN]
Harrison Ford Strongly Implies George Lucas Has Shit For Taste; ‘Indy 4’ Won’t Be “Wacky†Enough For Lucas (Audiences Sigh In Relief) [Playlist]