Entertainment Weekly:
An interesting interview with George Lucas (particularly for Star Wars fans) about the upcoming CGI Clone Wars series, the live-action Star Wars series being developed for 2010, the status of work to transform the Star Wars trilogy into 3-D, and his feelings before Indiana Jones' fourth adventure hits cinemas.
After reading it, I really don't think Lucas has his finger on the pulse (outside of the latest audio/visual developments with ILM, anyway). His comment about Indiana Jones & The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull was particularly eye-opening for me:
"... we know that for the fans it won't be the movie that they have been making in their minds for the last 19 years, so they all get bent out of shape. A lot of the critics forget that they didn't like the first three, and so they get off on this one, too — or it's not the Second Coming."
"And, yeah, we didn't make it bigger and better, we made it exactly the same. So if you loved the other ones, you'll love this one. But if you expect to have F-14s flying under freeways — that isn't there. It's just another period adventure movie with this wacky archaeologist. It's funny. I think it's funnier than the other ones, and it's exciting. So it's got all the stuff that all the other ones have. And Harrison's great in it."
I mean, is he for real? Does he seriously think audiences want Indy 4 to be an ultra-modern explosion of CGI and stunts like every other bland blockbuster? Didn't he learn from the Star Wars prequels that people actually hated all the CGI excess and wanted the storytelling and likeable characters from the Original Trilogy? And he thinks critics hated the first three? I think most critics would agree that Raiders is a superb blockbuster, and the films as a whole were always entertaining.
I don't know any Indiana Jones fan who is expecting, or hoping, for Crystal Skull to be anything but a fitting companion to the 80s films (with some gloss afforded by modern filming techniques.) In this interview, Lucas sounds like he's been hurt by the negative reactions to his Star Wars prequels -- so now thinks everyone just has silly, outrageous expectations that can't ever be met. There may be some broad truth to that, but he's crazy if he thinks fans want from Doctor Jones' latest adventure what Lucas delivered with Darth Vader's -- i.e, computer-generated creatures and landscapes crammed into every frame!
Thank God it's Steven Spielberg who films the Indiana Jones movies; a film-maker who made his fortune by understanding the minds of both casual filmgoers, intelligent critics, and passionate fans, across four decades... and hasn't just been obsessing about the mechanics of film.
