Steven Spielberg discusses JURASSIC PARK 4 and INDIANA JONES 5
In a recent interview with Empire Magazine director and producer Steven Spielberg talked about a couple high profile movies we've been hearing a little about recently... Jurassic Park 4 and Indiana Jones 5.
On the Jurassic Park 4 front things are looking good, Spielberg says,
The screenplay is being written right now by Mark Protosevich. I'm hoping that will come out in the next couple of years. We have a good story. We have a better story for four than we had for three...
I actually enjoyed Jurassic Park 3, so if the fourth film ends up being better then that's awesome. As much as I enjoyed Jurassic Park 2 I thought it was worst in the franchise. I'm just excited to see what they have planned for the fourth movie, I love this franchise and I'm excited that there's solid movement with it.
As far as Indiana Jones goes Spielberg basically says it's all in the hands of the almighty George Lucas.
You have to ask George Lucas. George is in charge of breaking the stories. He's done it on all four movies. Whether I like the stories or not, George has broken all the stories. He is working on Indy V. We haven't gone to screenplay yet, but he's working on the story. I'll leave it to George to come up with a good story.
So the reason Kingdom of the Crystal Skull sucked is because Lucas has lost his talent as a storyteller. Spielberg goes on to talk about the Crystal Skull movie saying,
I'm very happy with the movie. I always have been... I sympathise with people who didn't like the MacGuffin because I never liked the MacGuffin. George and I had big arguments about the MacGuffin. I didn't want these things to be either aliens or inter-dimensional beings. But I am loyal to my best friend. When he writes a story he believes in - even if I don't believe in it - I'm going to shoot the movie the way George envisaged it. I'll add my own touches, I'll bring my own cast in, I'll shoot the way I want to shoot it, but I will always defer to George as the storyteller of the Indy series. I will never fight him on that.
Whoa! So even though Spielberg didn't care for the story, and he basically did the best he could with it. I find it incredibly interesting that not even Spielberg can win with Lucas who is truly the judge, jury and executioner. The director goes on to talk about one of his proud moments to come out of the film,
The gopher was good. I have the stand-in one at home. What people really jumped at was Indy climbing into a refrigerator and getting blown into the sky by an atom-bomb blast. Blame me. Don't blame George. That was my silly idea. People stopped saying "jump the shark". They now say, "nuked the fridge". I'm proud of that. I'm glad I was able to bring that into popular culture.
After seeing what Lucas came up with for Indiana Jones 4, I could care less for what he has planned for part 6.The guy just isn't a good storyteller anymore which is a shame. What do you all think about what Spielberg had to say in this interview?