Indiana Jones: The Fiscally Responsible Hero
You never forget your first melting face.
That’s just one of the thrills of Indiana Jones: The Adventure Collection, a three-disc set that collects the first three Indy films along with new bonus features, including a close-up look at how the melting faces in Raiders of the Lost Ark came to be.
Our favorite is a short, new introduction that includes archival footage from the filming. In it, Steven Spielberg and George Lucas reveal that Spielberg hoped to make a globe-trotting action-adventure movie that he could shoot fast so he wouldn't go over budget, as he had on his previous film, 1941.
“I was trying to make a movie that was fiscally responsible,” said Spielberg.
Turns out, he did.
Lucas, for his part, says he just wanted to see the film get made by someone so he could watch it. And yes, as Harrison Ford says in an archival clip during the making of the film, Indiana Jones really was named after Lucas' dog.
There may not be enough new material to require a purchase if you already have the films on DVD, but there’s plenty to slake your jones for the adventurous archaelogist before the new Indiana Jones is released in theaters.
Also Out: Saturday Night Live: The Complete Third Season, Youth Without Youth, The Great Debaters
Lucas Has Idea for Indiana Jones 5; Spielberg, LaBeouf, and Ford Don’t Rule it Out
Rumors began in July 2007 that Shia LaBeouf signed a contract to reprise his role of Mutt Williams, in a series of Indiana Jones sequels. MTV quickly got a denial from LucasFilm, although it turns out that IESB.net’s source probably wasn’t far off after all. It has now been revealed that George Lucas has an idea to make more Indy films with Mutt as the lead character.
“I haven’t even told Steven or Harrison this,” Lucas told Fox News. “But I have an idea to make Shia [LeBeouf] the lead character next time and have Harrison [Ford] come back like Sean Connery did in the last movie. I can see it working out.”
And I’m betting that like most Hollywood contracts, LaBeouf probably has stipulations which lock him into a sequel/spin-off if Paramount wanted to make one, despite what LucasFilm claimed last year. And LaBeouf says he would be interested.
“I don’t think a Mutt spinoff would be as big as Indiana Jones,” LaBeouf told MTV. “[But] fingers crossed!”
Harrison Ford told USA Today in April that “he also might consider a fifth installment of Indiana Jones, though he hopes it wouldn’t take 20 years to pull together.”
“And it’s not like Harrison is even old,” admits Lucas. “I mean, he’s 65 and he did everything in this movie. The old chemistry is there, and it’s not like he’s an old man. He’s incredibly agile; he looks even better than he did 20 years ago, if you ask me.”
Even director Steven Spielberg admitted a years back while developing Crystal Skull, that he wouldn’t rule out a fifth film.
“Oh, I don’t know,” Spielberg told the Chicago Sun Times. “Of course, I said the third INDY would be the last one. And obviously it’s not. So I can’t even comment whether the fourth will be the last one or not. I’m not looking to redesign the wheel. I just want to continue the saga.”
If Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull does the business that everyone is expecting, I don’t see how they couldn’t launch a sequel/spin-off. What about a storyline where Shia has to find and rescue Indiana Jones, a callback to The Last Crusade.
Indiana Jones 4 Shot and Edited like an Old School Action Movie; Four New Television Spots
Tired of the same old action movie? Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull was shot and edited to feel like an old school action film. Star Harrison Ford recently told The Australian that “we didn’t shoot it like a Matrix style where if you hit somebody they end up in this big space and you didn’t feel the hurt, you don’t feel the fear. I feel you very quickly lose emotional connection with the character if it’s like that. We are more old school.”
Director Steven Spielberg also told N.Y. Times that he tries to cut as little as possible in the action sequences because “every time the camera changes dynamic angles, you feel there’s something wrong, that there’s some cheating going on.”
“The idea is, there’s no illusion; what you see is what you get. My movies have never been frenetically cut, the way a lot of action is done today. That’s not a put-down; some of that quick cutting, like in ‘The Bourne Ultimatum,’ is fantastic, just takes my breath away. But to get the comedy I want in the Indy films, you have to be old-fashioned. I’ve studied a lot of the old movies that made me laugh, and you’ve got to stage things in full shots and let the audience be the editor. It’s like every shot is a circus act.”
Spielberg’s goal is “to do the shots the way Chaplin or Keaton would, everything happening before the eyes of the audience, without a cut.”
When my colleagues and I had the chance to sit down with Spielberg during the filming of Indiana Jones 4 he explained the importance of the audience knowing where they are in the context of a big action scene. He used words like “geography” and expressed his dislike for the “MTV style” fast-cut editing that have plagued modern day action films It should be noted that Spielberg also exec-produced Michael Bay’s Transformers, so figure that out. In January, Spielberg reaffirmed the same feelings in an interview with Vanity Fair:
“I go for geography. I want the audience to know not only which side the good guy’s on and the bad guy’s on, but which side of the screen they’re in, and I want the audience to be able to edit as quickly as they want in a shot that I am loath to cut away from. And that’s been my style with all four of these Indiana Jones pictures. Quick-cutting is very effective in some movies, like the Bourne pictures, but you sacrifice geography when you go for quick-cutting. Which is fine, because audiences get a huge adrenaline rush from a cut every second and a half on The Bourne Ultimatum, and there’s just enough geography for the audience never to be lost, especially in the last Bourne film, which I thought was the best of the three. But, by the same token, Indy is a little more old-fashioned than the modern-day action adventure.”
I think Spielberg has a great point. Some recent action films have been so intense that you can’t even keep up with what’s going on. Not that those type of action sequences don’t have a place in cinema (for example The Bourne series). Everytime I watch Raiders of the Lost Ark I’m amazed at the construction of every single frame, and every single cut. It’s almost like directing action has become a lost art, something delegated to less competent filmmakers. Remember when Spielberg was nominated for Best Director for a popcorn action movie?
Paramount has also released four new television spots for Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Each of them contains a little more new footage. Check them out below.
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