The “tension” Steven Spielberg and George Lucas experienced while making ‘Indiana Jones’
When it comes to the greatest cinematic storytellers of the 20th century, it would be foolish to look beyond the obvious choice of Steven Spielberg, one of Hollywood’s greatest storytellers. But, so prolific was the director that often people give him credit for things he didn’t achieve alone, with some believing he directed Back to the Future when he was only ever an executive producer and others assuming that he invented Indiana Jones when this was actually the work of George Lucas.
Inspired by the movie serials of the early 20th century, Lucas penned The Adventures of Indiana Smith, seeing the script as an opportunity to modernise classic adventure tales. Lucas then worked on this concept with Philip Kaufman before taking it to Spielberg, who was convinced to dump his wish to helm a James Bond flick to take on this new project, giving the character a new surname in ‘Jones’ before starting work on 1981’s Raiders of the Lost Ark.
In the process, Lucas and Spielberg invented one of the most iconic movie heroes of all time, with film fans of the 1980s begging the director for more from the same universe. The first sequel, Temple of Doom, followed in 1984 before The Last Crusade boxed off the near-perfect trilogy in 1989, with Harrison Ford hanging up the hat of the iconic character, giving him to the annals of cinema history in the process.
Of course, this was never going to happen. Hollywood is a business like any other, and such a hot property was never going to be left in the ‘80s without being needlessly revived in the 21st century. As a result, along came 2008’s Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, a bizarre sequel that brought down the overall quality of the series, becoming one of the most disappointing movies of all time in the process.
No longer the chiselled action star that he used to be, Ford’s title character seemed more like a begrudging old man than a genuine movie hero, with the archaeologist being dragged out of obscurity to take on ‘one last adventure’. But this wasn’t any old Indiana Jones tale involving Nazi plots to steal ancient artefacts. Instead, Lucas thought it was a good idea to introduce the concept of aliens.
Underpinning the story of the 2008 sequel, the introduction of aliens ultimately became the downfall of the movie, with the preposterous sci-fi concept making way for a nonsensical plot that attempted to justify their existence. Although Spielberg was very much against the idea, he eventually compromised with Lucas after much debate, allowing the extraterrestrials to find a way into the long-awaited sequel.
“Really, with the last one, Steven wasn’t that enthusiastic,” Lucas admitted in a conversation with Vulture before explaining the disagreement that he and Spielberg had behind the scenes, “Steven’s in the past. He’s trying to drag it back to the way they were, I’m trying to push it to a whole different place. So, still we have a sort of tension. This recent one came out of that”.
Ironically, it was Lucas who was eventually responsible for dragging the franchise back, but not to the heyday of the 1980s, but instead, the 1990s when cinema was in a rut of bombastic sci-fi plotlines that made no sense.
