The Indiana Jones Franchise (Steven Spielberg/James Mangold, 1981-2023)

[Antoine Doinel]

New trailer.

[Fletch F. Fletch]

LA Times interview/profile of Ford:

Harrison Ford returns as Indiana Jones

By Geoff Boucher, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer. May 4, 2008

HARRISON FORD arrived at the private hangar he uses to fly in and out of Santa Monica Municipal Airport with the expression of someone waiting in line at the DMV. It's not that he is rude or mad, there's just other places he'd rather be -- the sky is crystal blue, and for a guy who owns a few planes and a helicopter, the prospect of another earth-bound interview just isn't that scintillating. ¶ Munching on a bran muffin, the sinewy 65-year-old movie star admits as much: "I don't know if 'patience' is the word, but the press and promotion, it does take a different kind of energy and a different kind of commitment than making the film itself, but I'm ready for it." ¶ He'd better be: After nearly two decades, Ford is returning to his most iconic role with " Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull," the mega-release that arrives in theaters May 22. For Ford, it's been years since he has had a major hit (you have to track back to his creepy career departure in "What Lies Beneath" in 2000 or the more familiar heroics of "Air Force One" in 1997) and, considering how beloved Indiana Jones is to filmgoers, you can imagine Ford feeling plenty of bittersweet emotions by donning the old fedora. But you'd be wrong, he said, taking another bite of that dry muffin.

"It's not really a sentimental thing," Ford said. "I feel close to a lot of the people involved, so it was nice to be able to revive those relationships and work on this character. The character is special because it's really brought so much pleasure to so many people. That's what's special about it . . . [while filming] we knew we were making what we know will be a popular success -- or what we anticipate will be a popular success -- and there's no feeling that we're making something that deserves anything less than our best effort."

Maybe it's just the adrenaline roles he's played through the years, but, in person, Ford seems especially laconic and unimpressed by the dream factory aspects of Hollywood. The Chicago native lives on an 800-acre ranch in Jackson Hole, Wyo. (he calls California "the silly state," although he has a residence in Santa Monica) with his girlfriend, actress Calista Flockhart, and their 7-year-old son, Liam.

Want proof that Ford takes a distant flight path from his celluloid creations? "My son doesn't really know who Indiana Jones is. So far, he vaguely knows what I do for a living and that it has something to do with 'Indiana Jones,' but anything he knows about it is from friends, and it's not extensive."

That will probably change this summer. The franchise that has grossed $620 million domestically has been on hiatus since "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade" in summer 1989, and little Liam will see his dad staring out from billboards, television screens, magazine ads, toy aisles and Burger King cups. The actor no longer finds any of that surreal or interesting. "I'm at peace with it myself," he said as some prop planes buzzed overhead.

Indiana Jones was created by George Lucas and Steven Spielberg (Lucas has been a producer and writer throughout the franchise, Spielberg has directed), and everyone involved wanted to see the hero back but, for reasons of creative agreement and scheduling, it took a little longer than expected.

Ford explains: "It worked like this: George and Steven have a rough discussion about the story. George goes off and creates the basic story line. It goes back to Steven for comments and approval. And then when those two have satisfied each other, then it comes to me and I get to have my say about it. That entire process? That takes about . . . 18 years."

It would seem reasonable to assume then that this is the final farewell to the character that the American Film Institute ranked as the second greatest screen hero (just behind Gregory Peck's Atticus Finch in "To Kill a Mockingbird"). But Lucas has hinted that there might yet be one more movie there, and Ford himself is vague, suggesting that in another decade we might have "Indiana Jones and the Hunt for Haight-Ashbury."

That talk may just be part of the team's smoke screens, though; the secrecy surrounding "Crystal Skull" has been a bit staggering. Here's what is known: It's 19 years after "Last Crusade," and the grizzled Indy has aged appropriately, he's still a college professor, and his sense of fashion has not changed a whit. He will meet up again with Marion Ravenwood ( Karen Allen, back for the first time since the franchise launched with "Raiders of the Lost Ark" in 1981) as well as a young sidekick in a 1950s greaser named Mutt Williams ( Shia LaBeouf).

This time the quest involves a death-defying scamp through Peru, power-pulsing Crystal Skulls that may or may not be of extraterrestrial origin and a Cold War nemesis.

"I was happy to acknowledge the passage of time because I'm not sure how you could do it without that. I think there's some good fun to be had with his age and doing the things he does at the age he might be, would be, could be. For me, it actually wasn't so hard. I was in better shape probably than I have been in the others." Even if Ford didn't get goose bumps as he walked in front of the camera, others did: "Everyone who saw Harrison on the set kind of turned into a little kid again," Lucas said. "He really defines Indiana Jones."

Ford knows how his character echoes in pop culture, and (because he sees the moviegoing public as "my customers") he goes out of his way to sign autographs and say hello to fans. Sometimes it gets a bit much, though: He's a volunteer pilot back in Wyoming, and he's picked up some stranded hikers through the years only to see the gesture reported on in the news.

"I'm part of a county search and rescue with a lot of people, but suddenly it's all about me," Ford said. "I really got tired of picking people up and having them show up on 'Good Morning America.' The next time maybe I will just push them back out. 'Hi, I'm here. Never mind.' "

That little fantasy brings a big grin to Ford's face for the first time during the interview and he laughs out loud. Then it's time to go. Asked what he thinks about a whole new generation of kids playing with fake bullwhips in their backyard this summer, the customer-service actor shrugged. "They'll get over it. I did."

[rs98762001]

Lots of early reviews up at the bastion of good taste that is Ain't It Cool News (Glenn Kenny may be gone, but it's heartening to see that "ShogunMaster" still has an appropriate forum to share his insights).

Anyway, most of their "reviewers" seem to have hated it, which actually bodes well and now makes me quite excited to see this.

[domino harvey]

If even stupid fanboys hate it, how could that possibly bode well for the film? It's not like they had previously failed to grasp Indiana Jones, this movie was made for those guys.

[rs98762001]

I guess I just subscribe to the theory that whatever AICN thinks, the opposite is usually true.

[Fletch F. Fletch]

I guess I just subscribe to the theory that whatever AICN thinks, the opposite is usually true.

True. Some of their occupants are obsessive to the point psychosis.

[domino harvey]

But this isn't an art house film. If AICN likes the worst popular garbage, trashing a blockbuster like this is the kiss of death.

[Antoine Doinel]

Hey guys, stop reading about the film. You're making Papa Spielberg sad!

From IMDB:

Lucas Says He Reassured Spielberg About Indy Leaks

Director Steven Spielberg was "depressed" over the number of leaks about the plot of the upcoming Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull that appeared in the press and online and had to be reassured by George Lucas that they would not affect the film's box office, Lucas disclosed in an interview with the London Sunday Times. The producer told the newspaper that he told Spielberg that audiences would not be "coming to see the plot. They're coming to see Steve Spielberg interpret a story. You can't get that any other way than by seeing the movie."

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[Fletch F. Fletch]

The Digital Bits reviews the new box set. Ehh.

[miless]

I think a case could be made that Raiders of the Lost Ark could be considered a NEW new testament. This, of course, is with regards to Germans possibly discovering the resting place of the Lost Ark. I just hope they don't let out the curse.

[Antoine Doinel]

Further evidence that Lucas has lost the plot:

If George Lucas had had his way the new Indiana Jones movie would be called "Indiana Jones and the Saucer Men From Mars", and the iconic archaeologist adventurer would be battling space aliens instead of communists.

[Dale]

It's great to hear the music again in the trailer, but let's face it, Lucas has been pretty iffy as a story-teller in recent years. Spielberg couldn't save the first two sequels. It still comes down to the script and David Keopp is no Lawrence Kasdan. The CGI also seems out of character for these films...but I'm sure it will be a nice ride. Looks like he's going after the Arc in that government warehouse...

[Fletch F. Fletch]

It still comes down to the script and David Keopp is no Lawrence Kasdan.

Exactly. And that's been my problem with Temple and Last Crusade (not as much). The scripts just weren't as strong as Kasdan's which set the bar pretty high. Last Crusade was pretty good but the female lead was lacking any kind of substance. Karen Allen is still the best and it bodes well that she returns in this film.

[Antoine Doinel]

Lucas is already cookin' up ideas for Indy 5.

[David Ehrenstein]

Lucas-Spielberg shouldn't count their boxoffice receipts before they're hatched.

This very dull and visually unimaginative movie is a vehicle for launching Shaia Laboeuf as the new Tom Cruise -- now that Tom's "sell by" date has lapsed. He's competent but uninteresting.

Spielberg gives him a Big Entrance -- riding a motorcycle in a black leather jacket cap and shades like Brando in The Wild One. The stylist, however has made him look like the Scorpio Rising version of Brando in The Wild One. Sadly Shia lacks the "camp gene." There's nothing homoerotic about him. He's no River Phoenix.

Hell, he's no Emile Hirsch.

Karen Allen is frisky, but Harrison Ford looks like he's about to snore in her face. Cate Blanchett (as an Evil Russian) is incapable of giving a bad performance, and was therefore the only thing that kept me from walking out.

CGI is the Death of Cinema. When something spectacular is put on screeen one is supposed to gasp and say "How did they ever do that?' But in a CGI film you know perfectyly well how they did it. Therefore jungle temples collapse legions of ants and monkeys rise, ancient skeletons come alive -- as we stifle a yawn.

[Fletch F. Fletch]

The reaction at Cannes.

[exte]

I could be wrong, but I think the deal with Shaia Laboeuf is that they're banking on his super-stardom to hit when he's in his 30s, like what happened with Russell Crowe... Of course, that's a long way off.

[tavernier]

Manohla hates it:

Each year a Big Hollywood movie clomps into the Cannes Film Festival like Godzilla, stirring up an orchestrated panic among media members frantic to get a piece of the action for the folks (and editors) back home. Two years ago the beastie was called “The Da Vinci Code,” which withstood mass attacks to conquer the world box office. This year it goes by the name of “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull,” which was shown on Sunday afternoon to a pumped-up crowd that cheered more enthusiastically during the opening credits than it did at the end.

Whether the audience was disappointed or just wrung out by the two hours of chase sequences and noise is probably less relevant than that so many of us dutifully filled the theater, which of course is the scenario that Paramount Pictures hopes to replicate worldwide when the movie opens across the globe on Thursday. I’ll have more to say on the movie then, by which point it will already have been thoroughly masticated, spit out and chewed all over again in the media that has already sunk its little teeth into Indy’s tired body with early negative notices. I was bored out of my mind while watching the movie, which makes me think that Steven Spielberg was terribly bored while directing it. But that’s a germ of an idea that I would like to actually contemplate for a few days.

I am, for instance, still working my way through the often amazing and intricately structured “24 City,” the latest from the Chinese director Jia Zhang-ke. Shot in digital so sharp it looks hyper-real and projected digitally, the movie takes as its point of departure the closing of a state-owned munitions factory in southwest China, which is being replaced by a gargantuan luxury housing complex called 24 City. Much as he did in “Still Life (2006), about the Three Gorges Dam project that has uprooted millions, Mr. Jia is working at the border where fiction and nonfiction meet, which is where this fantastically surreal country itself seems to exist.

The movie’s formal complexity creates a web of connections — interviews with former factory employees are fluidly integrated with actor monologues, snatches of Yeats, old factory work slogans (which read like old Communist Party commandments), group portraits and landscape images. But it is Mr. Jia’s gift for what the photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson called the decisive moment that pushes form into the realm of feeling. “We photographers deal in things that are continually vanishing,” Cartier-Bresson wrote in 1952, “and when they have vanished, there is no contrivance on Earth that can make them come back again.” Without nostalgia but with sensitivity and depth of feeling, Mr. Jia is documenting a country and several generations that are disappearing before the world’s eyes.

What’s curious about seeing a movie like “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull” in close proximity with “24 City,” as one tends to do here, are their points of convergence and divergence. There are the obvious differences, of course: one keeps the volume turned up while the other employs a more modulated register; one fosters distraction while the other encourages contemplation. In “Indiana Jones” you can see Team Spielberg recycling durable genre favorites (adventure, science fiction) and old Spielberg (adventure, science fiction), whereas in “24 City” you can see China repurposing what come across as very American ideas about the pursuit of happiness, success and especially money. Mr. Jia is one of the most original filmmakers working today, creating movies about a country that seems like a sequel.

[domino harvey]

I love how every interview with Ford or Lucas preemptively assumed that the film was gonna get bad reviews, the studio must have told them to start doing damage control. Even the positive reviews of this movie have been apologetic.

[Len]

CGI is the Death of Cinema. When something spectacular is put on screeen one is supposed to gasp and say "How did they ever do that?' But in a CGI film you know perfectyly well how they did it. Therefore jungle temples collapse legions of ants and monkeys rise, ancient skeletons come alive -- as we stifle a yawn.

Just what I was afraid for. When I was a kid, there was this great tv show about how film special effects were made. It was purely promo stuff, with each episode centering on a few different films (most of them pretty new). It had a alot of enthusiastic sfx guys showing all the cool models and camera rigs and weird mirror and matte painting setups and whatnot. Seeing how unreal they looked in full view, then seeing how realistic they looked on the screen made me really appreciate the magic of cinema (cheesy, yes, but I can't think of a better way to describe it).

If the same series were running today, it'd have a bunch of enthusiastic sfx guys playing around with keyboards. I'm not totally against CGI (Zodiac showed it can look good), but most directors just haven't got the slightest clue about how to use it.

Not to mention that CGI still doesn't look good in most films. I was watching tv with my dad a couple of weeks ago, and the tv ad for Indy 5 came on. My dad's not exactly a discerning fan of cinema, he's of the opinion that the artform peaked with 1969's Battle Of Britain and it's all been downhill from there. However, he liked the Indy films, and the first thing about the trailer that he said was that it all looked like a video game. I agree.

[rs98762001]

I love how every interview with Ford or Lucas preemptively assumed that the film was gonna get bad reviews, the studio must have told them to start doing damage control. Even the positive reviews of this movie have been apologetic.

I don't think that's true at all. We can all make up our own minds over the weekend, but the majority of the reviews so far seem genuinely surprised that the movie works at all. I'm sure everyone was expecting a Phantom Menace-style disaster so to see that around 3/4 of the notices are relatively positive is heartening; it would have been so much easier just for everyone to take a big old dump on the film.

[Barmy]

The enemedia mainstream press have far too much invested in Indy to diss all over it. WE HAVE BEEN WAITING FOR THIS FOR 20 YEARS!!!!!!!!!!!!11 For it not to be at least watchable is too shattering to acknowledge.

And keep in mind that Phantom Menace, a film I have not and never will see, was not universally panned (it got a 64% rottentomatoes thingy). Like TPM, KOCS is not the *sort* of film that crix will gang up on.

For me, the trailer is boring as batshit and I have no interest in seeing this in a theater that, no doubt, will be filled with rank, wheezing codgers and grimy, snotwiping brats. But I never cared much about Indy to begin with (I don't even remember whether I have seen the first 2 sequels). I pray that it bombs. I might even threaten to leave the Board if it makes more than $250,000,000 domestically.

[Dylan]

Therefore jungle temples collapse legions of ants and monkeys rise, ancient skeletons come alive

When Willis O'Brien did this sort of thing 75 years ago, or Ray Harryhausen 50 years ago, or Jim Danforth 40 years ago, or Phil Tippett and company at old ILM 25 years ago, it looked a hell of a lot better and more interesting (and more mysterious and fun) than the best CGI I've ever seen (sans when it's used to enhance a location in the narrative or conjure a period, re: Zodiac, etc.). But in CGI, this stuff looks maybe a few steps up from one of those horrible video games, and in a few years, video games will look as good as the best CGI now, which will date all of this horribly. I just saw some of Return of the Jedi the other day (the original version, mind you), and while it's certainly not a great film by any stretch of the imagination (nor are any of these, really, which isn't to say they're not fun), the effects sure are a hell of a lot more impressive and fun than any CGI they're cranking out these days. Stop-motion or miniatures or matte paintings (in my opinion) will always remain fresh and fascinating (and, yes, far more cinematic).

If nothing else, I'm sure KOCS has a lovely and exciting (and, gasp, thematic, progressive and orchestral) John Williams score.

For me the best visual effects films are Close Encounters of the Third Kind (absolutely gorgeous model and matte work), Gone With the Wind and Citizen Kane (Xanadu!). Dick Tracy and Blade Runner's effects are gorgeous, too. Even something like Honey, I Shrunk the Kids has really great-looking effects, and miles ahead of new effects films.

For recent films, I'd agree that Zodiac utilized modern computer graphics fabulously (the opening shot is astounding). Some of A.I. was brilliant, as well (though a lot of that was miniatures mixed with CG and old fashioned make-up/creature effects, so the combination was good).

[David Ehrenstein]

Actually the score's nothing to write home about either. Williams stick's to familiar strains and doesn't try anything remotely new or innovative at all.

[Antoine Doinel]

John Williams is one of the most uninventive and overrated composers in Hollywood right now period.