"This ain't gonna be easy…."
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Harrison called me and said, "Why don't we make another one of these pictures? There's a fan base out there that wants it."
Steven Spielberg |
Steven Spielberg (Director): Harrison called me and said, "Why don't we make another one of these pictures? There's a fan base out there that wants it. He was tenacious. He called George and George got to thinking about it, and then George called me and said, "Well Steve, what do you want to do? It could be fun to make another movie."
Harrison Ford (Indiana Jones): Every once in a while a script would show up and it wouldn't be exactly what we hoped for one or the other of us. It took us all a long time to get on the same page. Or 120 pages. I think it was worth the wait. We've ended up with something we're all happy with. That was the way to go to work.
George Lucas (Executive Producer): The supernatural part has to be real. Which is why they're very hard, and you run out [of options] very fast. You have to have a supernatural object that people actually believe in. People believe that there was an Ark of the Covenant, and it has these powers. Same thing with the Sankara stones, same thing with the Holy Grail.
Frank Marshall (Producer): The Crystal Skulls are something that people have been interested in for a long time. There's thirteen of them around the world now and are believed to have magical or healing properties or being full of the entire knowledge of the Universe. It's about power. If you look at the Ark of the Covenant - people get power hungry. That's what the journey is here - everyone is after this source of power.
Ford: The mysterio-crypto elements are not really my bag. I like the relationship elements, the adventure elements. George feels that the 'ooh-ey ooh-ey' stuff is a strong string in our bow. I admit he's right. He's always right. More or less.
Spielberg: All the traditions of Indiana Jones are back again. We've got the map; we've got the plane and the vehicles with the little red line showing you how you're hop-scotching across the globe - and it's just part of the milieu that we've spent many years establishing.
Kathleen Kennedy (Executive Producer): It's always interesting when you look at a trilogy and the first, second and third movie is almost like the first, second and third act. It happened with Star Wars, it happened with Back To The Future. The second movie is often a dark movie because that is where the conflict occurs and the third movie is often upbeat for the resolution. The three movies very much travel in that vein. Doing the fourth movie, this many years later, I think there's a sense to repeat some of the overall feelings of those three movies in one film. I think people will feel that way.
Kathleen Kennedy (Associate Producer): With Bond being the inspiration behind the whole series to begin with, it was just a great way to pull that all together.
Spielberg: Crystal Skull follows the same sign wave pattern as the first three films. There is the characteristic teaser that is the third act of a film we never got to see; then the MacGuffin is introduced, there is that long but I hope not boring explanation of what the MacGuffin is and what its potential powers are. Then the adventure gets out of the gate and just goes racing down the track.
Age Concerns
Lucas: There was never any question about the fact that we were going to have Harrison play his age.
Spielberg: There's a line that was thematic for me, and it's not a line that's actually in the movie. And it illustrates why I was comfortable letting Harrison age 18, 19 years. In the first movie, he says, ''It's not the years, sweetheart, it's the mileage.'' Well, my whole theme in this movie is, It's not the mileage sweetheart, it's the years. When a guy gets to be that age and he still packs the same punch, and he still runs just as fast and climbs just as high, he's gonna be breathing a little heavier at the end of the set piece. And I felt let's have some fun with that. Let's not hide that.
Kennedy: The fifties were an interesting period, because it was still an age of innocence, a time when we were coming out of World War II and people were exciting about moving into the future.
Spielberg: It was important for me that the character move into The Atomic Age. Our film takes place in 1957 which is totally informed by the Cold War, by McCarthyism, by hot rods, and girls wearing letter sweaters, ponytails and saddle shoes. For me, the '50s were emblematic of music, of the very beginning of rock and roll. It was Technicolor. The Fifties means the bright young faces that Norman Rockwell loved to paint.
The Baddies
Lucas: If you're going to make a movie about the 1930s, it's almost impossible to do it without the Nazis. And it's the same thing when we got to the '50s here. We have to deal with the Russians because that's where we were. It's not like we set out to make a film about Russians. It was more about what was going on in the world. What were the issues? Who was doing what?
Spielberg: Setting the story in 1957 planted us firmly in the middle of the cold war with the threat of nuclear annihilation and The Red Menace, as it used to be known in America. Those were the things that were in the headlines on a daily basis, so when it came to who the villains would be, the Russians got the job.
Cate Blanchett (Irina Spalko): Spalko has an almost impenetrable steel-like quality to her - not a hair out of place, whatever she's doing, never anything on her boots whatever mud she's walking through. There's a remarkable precision about her. She's penetrating and, therefore, potentially lethal.
Spielberg: Cate scared me at times. Cate really took over the full interpretation of Irina Spalko and this went right to the costume, the hair and the make-up. Cate was the one who made all of those decisions.
Ford: Spalko's properly bad. It was wonderful to work with Cate Blanchett, she's a wonderful actress. She's a very easy person to work with. She doesn't exactly stay in character but I had not seen her out of that wig and costume till about the third week. When she wandered on the set, I didn't know who she was. She made a great foe.
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