It’s not a secret that Steven Spielberg would like to see more adventures about his mildly popular films about Jurassic Park. He’s been talking about a sequel to the Joe Johnston directed 3rd entry for a few yrs now and managed to give us a brief update on the status of the proposed 4th movie as well as give us some insight on Indiana Jones 5 and his collaborative process with George Lucas.
Source: Empire
On his dinosaur series, the signs are good. “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 didn’t think the 3rd entry was all that terrible story wise. It certainly was a departure and maybe a cheap excuse to re-visit the 2nd island but I remember enjoying myself and the movie back when it was released although the movie did have its faults.
Then he starts talking bout Indiana Jones and gave us a little insight about his feelings on the stories created for Indy.
“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.”
I appreciate the insight on the way they collaborate. George makes the stories and Steve shoots the picture. So when asked specifically about that Crystal Skull stuff…
“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.”
That’s respectable but if Steve isn’t the guy to say “Hey, I don’t know if that’s such a good idea” and get Lucas to actually, well, listen then who is? Can anyone stop Lucas from inserting some of his more far fetched ideas out there? Are all of the issues of the Crystal Skull solely on Lucas? no.
“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.”
Can’t say the guy isn’t influential. I like the candidness about the status of both franchises and this interview kinda resparked my interesed in re-visiting Jurassic Park more than it helped any interest in Indiana Jones. Hopefully Mark Protosevich can knock the script out of the park and we return sooner rather than later.
