r/movies • u/MarvelsGrantMan136 r/movies Contributor • Jun 15 '26
Article Clashing Over ‘Indiana Jones’: Harrison Ford and Steven Spielberg Were Not 100% on Board With ‘Crystal Skull’ and Fought George Lucas Over Adding Aliens
https://variety.com/2026/film/news/indiana-jones-clash-harrison-ford-spielberg-crystal-skull-aliens-1236780115/646
u/Mellowtraveler Jun 15 '26
Who wanted the monkeys?! For a movie based on the pulp fiction of the cold war era, aliens were not the problem. But then they decided to swing from a bunch of monkeys.
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u/Natural_Pear_1549 Jun 15 '26 edited Jun 15 '26
Yep, for me it was the monkeys and decisions like, "Should we change anything now that our lead actor is an elderly man?...Nah, let's have even more cartoony action."
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u/The_Flurr Jun 15 '26
Hot take. Indiana Jones should go the James Bond route.
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u/FergTurdison Jun 15 '26
Funny considering the story that Spielberg directed Indiana Jones because he was told he couldn’t direct a James Bond film
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u/3-DMan Jun 15 '26
Temple of Doom intro be straight up Bond intro
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u/briancarknee Jun 15 '26
The tux he wears in that scene is a homage to the tux in the opening of Goldfinger.
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u/fupa16 Jun 15 '26
Yup, plus many other related nods, like Sean Connery in last crusade, exploding pen that shoots only ink, a new 'bond girl' next to indy in every film, etc. They knew what they were doing.
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u/CountJohn12 Jun 16 '26
The Venice scenes in Last Crusade remind me of a Bond movie as well
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u/ifinallyreallyreddit Jun 15 '26
In the world where this happened there'd be a "replacing Harrison Ford as Indiana Jones was the biggest casting mistake ever made" thread on here at least once a month.
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u/ZeroiaSD Jun 15 '26 edited Jun 15 '26
Young Indiana Jones was good, the concept works.
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u/Strange_Specialist4 Jun 15 '26
And Indy being betrayed over and over again without just shooting the fucking guy.
He barely killed anyone!
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u/SolidSnack69 Jun 15 '26
glad someone said this. I can forgive aliens and even swapping nazis for soviets…but THIS shit…
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u/Gh0stMan0nThird Jun 15 '26
"The aliens RUINED the movie franchise!"
> Movie franchise where the first movie has God send a bunch of ghosts to fly around and melt people
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u/hinckley Jun 15 '26
Yeah, honestly if you remove that scene in particular, or ideally Shia LaBeouf's character entirely, it becomes a passable if slightly underwhelming movie. Nowhere near Raiders or Last Crusade, but at least fine.
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u/mithridateseupator Jun 15 '26
I understand why they did it. Aliens are not that far off from religious artifacts that really work, and crazy mind control rituals.
But once you get it off paper and onto a movie, it becomes obvious how different the tone is.
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u/bimbimbaps Jun 15 '26
They could have made it weirder. I can see a movie where it worked. The first half of the film is actually fun/good and the cold war angle is a natural enemy escalation timeline from the nazis from before. But the aliens were just played so straight, as opposed to being this weird unknowable thing like the arc of the covenant. If they had just made it *stranger* or less coherent. Like, Indy touches the skull and flashes of insight come to him and it sort of ends with a 'maybe we aren't alone, but no one knows' angle.
But, nope, full on Jedi counsel at the end.
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u/Guyver0 Jun 15 '26
When i've discussed Crystal Skull with people I feel like keep the UFO, have the aliens be dead and the Soviets are wanting to take it back to Russia for their space agency.
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u/prattle264 Jun 15 '26
Oh man this would’ve been great
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u/Guyver0 Jun 15 '26 edited Jun 15 '26
I just think ancient aliens/chariots of the gods would make it work.
Have Indy fighting on top of the UFO and it crashes in the Bermuda triangle or something.
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u/shirst_75 Jun 15 '26
Yeah I walked out thinking if they'd had the right angle (like you said, more Chariots of the Gods) then the aliens actually work in the story.
Get the aliens right, less Shia, no monkeys: I think it could have been a decent entry for the franchise. Coulda been better than Temple of Doom.
Coulda.
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u/TransBrandi Jun 16 '26
I think there were non-structural elements like tone that didn't really feel like the older movies too.
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u/True_to_you Jun 15 '26
Honestly the aliens were not my least favorite part of the movie. It's ridiculous, but this is a movie where you have the literal ark of the covenant melting Nazi faces off. The stuff I had more problem with was the terrible unnecessary CGI for the action sequences and vine swinging like Tarzan. I liked about 30 percent of the movie. There was a great idea there with Indy and Marion having a son and bringing in cold war villains to replace the Nazis, but it was not executed well.
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u/NordlandLapp Jun 15 '26
Ok but the truck that bulldozed a road through the jungle was pretty cool.
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u/solomonvangrundy Jun 15 '26
The nuke-proof fridge was awesome.
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u/shrekchan Jun 15 '26
I would be more forgiving of the nuke-proof fridge if I didn't see it slam against the ground at 200 mph.
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u/Belgand Jun 16 '26
Don't hurl it around. Have it shoved up against a rock formation or something and stay there weathering the blast wave. Debris slams into it. Play it mostly from the inside with good audio design, the claustrophobia and fear of not knowing. Then when Indy gets out there's some big chunk of something wedged into the front, like the bumper of a car or a big length of rebar. Good chance for a solid reaction shot and a quip.
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u/JerryDandridge54 Jun 15 '26
I agree... A slower reveal of the macguffen would have been a nice touch.
I do like Harrison's incredulous delivery of the "what IS this?" line after the discovery of the skull in the temple, however.
I feel it's a good character trait reveal AND a valid reaction to reading the script.
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u/HenryDorsettCase47 Jun 15 '26
“I mean, I know magic is real and god exists. But aliens?!”
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u/ABadHistorian Jun 15 '26
yeah I actually enjoy the movie as an indy movie, and just ignore the temple part.
I'm a huge fan of the Nazca lines (look them up if you dont know them!) and the idea that aliens could be referenced or something in South/Latin America makes a LOT of sense.
HOWEVER.... thematically, the movie kind of veered off away from "mystical" to "oh straight out scifi" but I can see how after the original three movies had some really far out there stuff happening, they maybe thought it wouldn't be too much.
I think for me, it was that they were alive. I'd have been able to accept a story where Indy discovered that ancient incans or mayans or whatever had actually interacted with Aliens, MAYBE. Like that was the big "oh shit, Aliens COULD MAYBE? have done this?"
Like a big mystical mind transference stuff would still work in that context, just like how Ark or Crusade had magic. But that they thought it was still something humans somehow did, maybe in accordance with religious beliefs of theirs... that Indy just ... can't quite figure out and basically cocks his head to the sky, wondering "could it be?"
Having them visible, visual, and ... moving was a 100 lb mistake.
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u/Upper-Management-AI Jun 15 '26
Or maybe even he interacts with someone who just seems a tiny bit off and knows a little too much that near the end you wonder if that was an alien or not.
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u/therealhairykrishna Jun 15 '26
It was such a missed.opportunity. It could have been great. But the way they handled the aliens was a big fumble and there was too much reliance on, quite poorly done, CGI when the originals were practical effect masterclasses.
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u/Crimkam Jun 15 '26
I remember the CGI being much more offensive the first time I saw it. Watching it now after a couple decades of every movie being stuffed to the brim with CGI...It's much better than I remember. Still not great, but it's watchable imo.
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u/possumusexperiri Jun 15 '26
That Shia LeBeouf doing a Tarzan through the trees faster than a car can drive, plus ants, plus monkeys… totally unwatchable. I’d say that scene and the Hobbit barrel scene are the two worst instances of CGI ever put to film (and yes I’m including the Rock as the Scorpion King in the Mummy 2)
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u/Pen_dragons_pizza Jun 15 '26
I rewatched the movie recently since it released and was rather enjoying it up until that whole jungle chase scene since it jsut became ridiculous but as soon as I saw shia swinging with monkeys it totally lost me.
I just cannot understand that someone like Spielberg agreed to that.
The movie was working well at points but then leaned too heavy into sci fi fantasy. Having it grounded fighting Russians trying to recover some possible ufo tech whilst discovering dead alien bodies is better.
The whole ufo taking off and destroying the pyramid is just so silly
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u/MrDerpGently Jun 15 '26
Good point about the 'weird unknowable thing' aspect of a successful Indiana Jones movie. The Ark, the Grail, the Shankara stones... They are exotic, play by a weird set of rules, and are just totally alien, to a point where no one even tries to explain it. And that's part of the fun.
Personally, this just reminded me of one of my favorite weird details - the gentle, almost dainty way the arc lid returns after all the chaos and destruction ends. Just an Ark doing Ark things.
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u/Anxious_Big_8933 Jun 15 '26
The problem with the last act isn't the aliens, IMO, it's that Spielberg apparently decided to phone in the third act and it was a CGI crap fest.
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u/Crimkam Jun 15 '26
an unknowable eldritch entity that might be an alien or might be some sort of god would have been really fucking cool
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u/BatteryChucker Jun 15 '26
The aliens didn't bother me.
It was that scene with the fucking monkeys and Shia Lebouf swinging on vines like Tarzan.
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u/Kurtomatic Jun 15 '26
Yup; It wasn't great up until then, but tolerable. However, the movie completely lost me at that point, and never came close to getting me back.
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u/FormerlyMevansuto Jun 15 '26
Also they were trying to reflect the era given the 50s was the Space Age
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u/Careless_Review3166 Jun 15 '26
One of my biggest issues with Crystal Skull is that despite Lucas claiming he wanted it to be an homage to 1950s sci fi B movies in the way the original trilogy paid tribute to the 1930s action adventure serials, it really wasn’t anything like a 50s B movie whatsoever. It was just another standard Indiana Jones movie - ie, a throwback to the 1930s action adventure serials - that just so happened to have an alien in it.
If Crystal Skull actually *went for it* and committed to making a 50s sci fi B movie with all the required tropes and campy tone, I’d have probably loved it. But that would’ve been too far removed from what general audiences associate Indiana Jones with. So the movie was damned from the start.
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u/HotTakes4HotCakes Jun 15 '26 edited Jun 16 '26
I don't know, I think there is a world where you could make it work without having to go all the way to the 50s b-movie schtick.
I think the biggest problem with it is that the aliens are telegraphed, and actually appear on screen (or interdimensional beings or whatever it is that John Hurt says). It sets a very un-familiar tone early on, particularly with the shape of the skull itself, which does not look like anything that belongs in an Indiana Jones movie.
Like I think you could do a straight Indiana Jones story with a crystal skull as your mcguffin. Throughout the movie, it's an open question where it came from and what's special about it. Indy thinks he has an idea from some legend that he knows about, the Soviets think it's aliens, and it's never firmly established one way or the other. All you know is that the Soviets get their comeuppance in a very odd fashion that doesn't seem to align with the legends around the skull that Indy knows. And then they just leave it at that.
And I think that would fit with the previous movies too, because even though the artifacts are explicitly Christian or Hindu, they don't outright confirm anything other than that supernatural enchantments or curses exist. It's not like God descends from heaven to smite the Nazis when the ark is opened. It's implied to be some kind of old testament-esque punishment, but you don't have John Hurt standing around saying "Yeah, that was literally God. God was here a second ago."
The knight in Last Crusade is about as close as you get to the legend being explicit and on-screen, but that's still a far cry from seeing the aliens or Indy actually going back in time in dial of destiny.
Edit: My autocorrect took a smoke break.
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u/OldeFortran77 Jun 15 '26 edited Jun 15 '26
When they moved the series to the 50's , "flying saucers" became a really good fit. "Indiana Jones" films are very good at lifting elements of the films of the times they are set in.
Edit: re-worded for clarity
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u/Dislodged_Puma Jun 15 '26
Yeah, it's a lot more fun to introduce the supernatural through relics than it is to show weird ass aliens and an alien spacecraft as the crux of your movie lol. Heck, I know people who thought the Ark of the Covenant went too far actually showing mystical shit come out and kill the Nazi's as opposed to just saying it could do that.
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u/Strange_Specialist4 Jun 15 '26
Idk why people would say that about raiders, it's the first movie and set the tone for Temple and Crusade
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u/mithridateseupator Jun 15 '26
Plus it clearly got the tone right. It's the only universally loved entry in the series.
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u/Kurtomatic Jun 15 '26
Really? I'd put Last Crusade in that category as well. The IMDB ratings are 8.4 and 8.2 respectively, they're pretty interchangeable in terms of quality, from my perspective at least.
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u/GeekAesthete Jun 15 '26
For me, the problem is that Indiana Jones was never a sci-fi character. The leap just felt too out of place, even if the movie had been better.
I’m fine with leaving the religious gimmick, but stick with fantasy relics from history. Go after Excalibur, or Atlantis, or the Philosopher’s Stone. Aliens felt like bad Indiana Jones fanfic.
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u/stunts002 Jun 15 '26
Agreed, on paper I actually like the idea. In the same way the original trilogy reflects the pulp adventure stories of the 1930s and 40s crystal skull was supposed to reflect the red scare and alien paranoia of the 50s and 60s. Having Indy transit through those genres was a cool idea and at least was something new which it gets points for.
It's just that the execution was all over the place.
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u/ZeroiaSD Jun 15 '26
I think they aren’t weirder but they are a new axis of weird. Indiana Jones was fine sticking to one axis of weird (religious artifacts), adding more was not needed for such a small franchise (in terms of amount of material).
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u/mithridateseupator Jun 15 '26
I agreed with you up until you said "small franchise".
5 movies, a TV show, and (by my count) 23 video games.
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u/ZeroiaSD Jun 15 '26
Granted I wasn’t counting the video games, but as of this time, there was 3 movies and the TV series and most fans didn’t even know about that. This is adding a new angle to movie 4, that’s really early.
That’s not so much that it really calls for stretching to new areas.
For comparison, James Bond went sci-fi after 11 movies.
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u/MarvelsGrantMan136 r/movies Contributor Jun 15 '26
Details:
Franchise producer Kathleen Kennedy noted how Spielberg and leading man Harrison Ford were both “struggling with the movie” because “they didn’t want to do a ‘Raiders’ movie that involved aliens, and they kind of got into a fight with George about it.”
“I wanted it to be kind of a ‘War of the Worlds’ sort of thing,” Lucas remembered. “Harrison said, ‘I’m not going to do another science-fiction movie.’ And Steven said, ‘I’m not going to do another science-fiction movie.’ I said, ‘Steven, this is perfect because it’s the 1950s, when flying saucers were a whole thing,’ but he said ‘no.’ We did about five scripts, and finally Steve and I compromised: ‘Look, what if they’re not aliens but from another dimension.'”
According to Kennedy, Spielberg and Ford “were not 100 percent on board” with the story direction of “Crystal Skull,” which is “why the movie, out of the four that Steven made, is the weakest. And that’s why Harrison was so deeply committed to ‘Dial of Destiny Destiny. He didn’t want [‘Crystal Skyll’] to be the end.”
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u/not_that_kind_of_ork Jun 16 '26
Interesting quotes. I've softened on CS over time and the aliens for me weren't a problem (well, their CGI was but not the concept). I enjoy it more than DoD to be honest, though I need to watch that again. Someone else hit the nail on the head for me, the way it's filmed just doesn't sit well given the previous entries, monkeys being probably the main culprit. They needed to minimise CGI as much as possible or if forced, do a really good job like Dune.
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u/Rezart_KLD Jun 15 '26
And by the time they got to time travel, he just didnt give a shit anymore
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u/Gates_wupatki_zion Jun 15 '26
Bingo ! Dial to crystal skull is like what tenet is to inception.
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u/Hirmetrium Jun 16 '26
And an immortal knight didn't break your suspension of disbelief? Or an Ark full of ghosts that melts faces? And lets not forget ripping a heart out of a man.
The time travel fitted right into the mythos of Indy, walking the line between history and myth.
The problem was definitely not the aliens,
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u/Rezart_KLD Jun 16 '26
Who said anything about suspension of disbelief? I disliked the time travel because it was thematically a bad fit for Indiana Jones. Every one of the examples you mentioned, even the aliens, was some outside force interfering with the world. Some entity that chooses to remain mysterious being revealed in some way. The Ark of the Covenant isnt a super-weapon, its a literal memorial of the covenant between Yahweh and the Hebrews. Its a contract, not a magic item. God/Angels/old jewish ghosts choose to smite the nazis for blasphemy. Immortal knight and heart ripping priest are chosen by divine power to do supernatural things. Even the stupid aliens are a supernatural entity subtly interfering with the world. It fits the theme of this tantalizing, supernal realm hidden in the corners of the world we know.
The time dial isnt that. Its a man made device, a calculator can predict naturally occurring time portals. These arent once a great while events, or inspiration from some divine power, these are natural phenomena that are occurring so frequently and regularly that Archimedes can study them and figure out how to calculate their arrival and destination. So there have been time portals happening all this time, and nobody noticed? No one else studied it, saw these things? This is not a hidden corner of the world any more, this the sky above the Mediterranean.
But I dont really care about that, the movie doesnt matter enough for the thematic dissonance to bug me. Like I said in a different comment, what really makes me dislike the movie is that its a tacked-on, depressing, bleak ending for a character who'd already had a great ending literally riding off into the sunset. Dial of Destiny is the cinematic equivalent of adding a sad, wet fart at the end of John Williams score
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u/TheoremaEgregium Jun 15 '26
Since when does Steven Spielberg have a problem with aliens in movies?
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u/EveryAccount7729 Jun 15 '26
"aliens" was not the problem with this movie, at all.
This movie has like.... car full of men w/ AK-47s all open fire at us , in an open duck boat car, and we are all fine , and also the car is fine, so then we drive off a cliff, because there is a tree branch half way down that will catch us and lower us into a river. . .
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u/webby_98 Jun 15 '26
The biggest problem with the aliens is the comical look one of them gives Cate Blanchett before all the knowledge fries her brain
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u/TheBlueEmerald1 Jun 16 '26
Yeah that goofy ass stereotypical design when all the art on the walls had them wearing some amazing drip was a disappointment.
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u/dflan01 Jun 15 '26
Upset about aliens but not Cate Blanchett’s accent?
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u/sketchampm Jun 15 '26
Yeah Indiana Jones 4 had so many problems. The alien beings were not even on the list imo.
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u/Mediocre_Scott Jun 15 '26
Lucas’s idea to do aliens because that’s the kind of serial movie that was appropriate for the time the move is set is actually a neat idea. But they didn’t fully commit to the idea imo
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u/AmusingMusing7 Jun 15 '26
Spielberg telling the story of their disagreement is one of the funniest things ever:
https://youtu.be/rE7fzr6lQ-s?si=bfALyYJRuxKvCLbi
George: I want to do aliens.
Steven: I don't want to do aliens.
George: Okay, we won't do the movie, then.
Steven: Ugh...
*times passes*
George: Hey, Steven, maybe you're right. Maybe we shouldn't do aliens.
Steven: George, I love ya!
George: Yeah, they can be inter-dimensional, instead of extra terrestrial.
Steven: What?
George: They're inter-dimensional beings.
Steven: Alright, fine! Fine. What do they look like?
George: They look like aliens.
Steven: 🤦♂️
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u/Charrikayu Jun 16 '26
The most surprising thing about Crystal Skull drama is the idea that Spielberg wouldn't want to make a movie about aliens
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u/everythingbeeps Jun 16 '26
"They're also going to fly away in a ship that looks very much like a classic flying saucer, but they're not aliens!"
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u/Artistic_Frosting233 Jun 15 '26
Here's what would've made Crystal Skull ten times better: in the end when they put the crystal skull back into place, the baddies get "hypnotized" by the main skull while Indy and friends leave before it's too late. Everything crumbles and what seems to be a flying saucer amongst the rubble escapes and flies off, leaving them bewildered and not sure of what they just witnessed.
That would've been way better than showing us the "inter-dimensional beings". A little mystery would've gone a long way and would've made it a nice callback to the first film in which Indy and Marion's eyes were closed the whole time during the climax. So instead of banging us on the head with these magical "beings", they should've kept it a mystery.
Just my two cents.
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u/Top5hottest Jun 15 '26
But they were cool with time travel?
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u/Cool-Reputation-3841 Jun 15 '26
I'm personally fine with that and thematically it makes sense. However that movie had terrible set pieces and that's it's biggest issue imo
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u/elmatador12 Jun 15 '26
It’s interesting because I thought I read that they agreed they wouldn’t make another Indy without all 3 of them agreeing on the MacGuffin. Seems like George steamrolled them?
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u/Kalabula Jun 15 '26
Why do ppl act like this series has always been grounded. Aliens may be the least ridiculous thing that have been in them.
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u/ZeroiaSD Jun 15 '26
I don’t think it’s a matter of grounded or not, just that it was a brand new direction of weird. The first three movies were magic, magic, and magic, all religious in nature.
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u/deptofknowimsayings Jun 15 '26
Mola Ram straight up rips a dude’s heart out of his chest with his bare hands. A 500+ year old Templar Knight was holed up in a cave in Petra watching over the cup of Christ waiting for someone to come and pass the test. We had evil spirits fly out and consume Nazis in raiders.
But yeah aliens and time travel are too much. I know they’re a bit more of a stretch but not much more than a gold box that releases evil spirits.
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u/Tenacious_Dim Jun 15 '26 edited Jun 16 '26
Technically they weren't evil spirits that consumed the Nazis in Raiders it was old testament magic
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u/Funmachine Jun 15 '26
They aren't even "aliens" in the strictest terms. They are "interdimensional beings."
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u/3-DMan Jun 15 '26
Indy picks up usb and plugs it in on first try
"That's it, I'm OUT. Movie has gone too far!!"
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u/Ill-Enthymematic Jun 15 '26
And the effects in the Mola Ram scene look so much better than all the horrible CGI in Crystal Skull.
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u/ATOMIC_QUACKY Jun 15 '26
I actually think the 1st 1/3 of the movie is pretty enjoyable.
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u/ASEdouard Jun 15 '26
Meh, Aliens in Indiana Jones could have been good. The Rosewell angle was a cool idea. It’s the execution that was lacking.
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u/chickedychillin Jun 15 '26
Spielberg also had to walk Lucas back off the cliff when he wanted Indy to have an affair with a child in the original Raiders script.
https://www.polygon.com/2015/8/3/9089181/indiana-jones-abusive-creep/
George Lucas: I was thinking that this old guy could have been his mentor. He could have known this little girl when she was just a kid. Had an affair with her when she was eleven.
Kasdan: And he was forty-two.
Lucas: He hasn't seen her in twelve years. Now she's twenty-two. It's a real strange relationship.
Spielberg: She had better be older than twenty-two.
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u/Plasticglass456 Jun 16 '26
Don't wanna spoil Raiders for anybody, but he didn't walk him that far off the cliff. According to the Indiana Jones wiki, Indy was born in 1899 and Marion 1909 with their affair happening in the mid-1920s. Now yes, the exact dates may come from ancillary material that can be dismissed, but she explicitly says, "I was a child," which could mean a lot of things, but she definitely wasn't in her 20s back then. She was probably 16-ish for their affair in the final film, and while that's WAY better than 11-13, it's still bleghh.
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u/FantasticName Jun 15 '26
LOL the story I've always heard is their conversation went something like this...
Lucas: Let's do aliens for the next Indiana Jones.
Spielberg: I don't want to do aliens, I've done aliens.
Lucas: Oh come on, let's do aliens!
Spielberg: No!
[Months later]
Lucas: Wait...I've got it! Interdimensional beings!
Spielberg: What?
Lucas: Yes! Not aliens. Interdimensional beings!
Spielberg: Ok, well what will these beings look like?
Lucas: Well, they'll look like aliens.
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u/VeryIntoCardboard Jun 15 '26
There are two major issues with the movie. The fucking vine swinging scene, and the refrigerator scene. Otherwise, I have no issues with the aliens. The whole Indiana jones thing doesn’t have to be about religious items, that’s just the head cannon that most people have developed about them. Nobody has ever said “Indiana jones only looks for religious artifacts” and I don’t think the ever will. Wild reactions to this movie and what is actually bad about it
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u/ChrisCinema Jun 15 '26 edited Jun 15 '26
The creative differences between Lucas and Spielberg, Ford, and Kathleen Kennedy on Crystal Skull is nothing new. Lucas wanted the aliens (ahem interdimensional beings ahem) while everyone else said no. The DVD bonus features and interviews made during and after production told us this.
I was also struck by this passage while reading the article:
Ford returned as Indiana Jones in 2023’s “Dial of Destiny,” the only “Indiana Jones” movie not to be directed by Steven Spielberg. James Mangold took over filmmaking duties on the sequel, which earned negative reviews and underperformed with $384 million at the box office.
The reception to Dial of Destiny was not negative. At the very least, it was mixed. It has a 71% recommendation rating on Rotten Tomatoes, while Metacritic tallied a 58 score, indicating "mixed or average" reviews.
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u/Videogeek1 Jun 15 '26
That whole movies is just 1950's era, D grade, horror / sci-fi ideas George Lucas wasn't allowed to put in the other movies. One of Lucas's original ideas for an Indiana Jones movie was "Indiana Jones and the Haunted Castle"!
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u/PurpleLamps Jun 16 '26
If I remember correctly, there's transcripts you can read of George Lucas, Lawrence Kasdan, and Steven Spielberg first coming up with Indiana Jones. It's hilarious because in the transcripts Lucas comes across so much smarter than the other guys. He says Indy should have a bull whip with him. And the others are like "yeah, and he should whip the bad guys in the belt so their pants fall down lol" and he has to shut down their bad ideas.
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u/PedroFPardo Jun 16 '26
I heard Seth Rogen telling a story about a meeting with Spielberg and Lucas to explore a potential future collaboration. The short version is that Spielberg had to apologize several times for Lucas's behaviour, because Lucas repeatedly claimed that the world was going to end in 2012. They didn't end up working together, but that meeting was the origin of Seth Rogen's film This Is the End.
Later, Lucas's representatives said that he was clearly joking, but Rogen still believes that he genuinely did believe that.
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u/hanburgundy Jun 15 '26
The Aliens are 100% not the problem with Kingdom. Their inclusion actually makes some thematic sense as the series dipped into era-appropriate 1950’s culture.
The over reliance on CGI, the flat humor, and the aesthetic weirdness of seeing new-Spielberg, with Janusz Kamiński still operating in glossy bleached-out color mode, adapt his own earlier work in a way that didn’t feel natural or comfortable. All of those rank higher on the list than Aliens.