The Indiana Jones Franchise (Steven Spielberg/James Mangold, 1981-2023)

[dda1996a]

This isn't even the last time this has happened, there was evidence connecting Inception to Uncle Scrooge as well!

[chiendent]

George Lucas even wrote a brief introduction to one of the Fantagraphics volumes (which I can't recommend highly enough).

[Cremildo]

Steven Spielberg Won’t Direct ‘Indiana Jones 5,’ James Mangold in Talks to Replace.

[Finch]

Mangold is okay, I guess. Jonathan Kasdan though wrote an awful script for Solo. I wish they'd asked Rian Johnson to do writing duties.

[Reverend Drewcifer]

Pretty sure Johnson will not write for anything he isn't directing himself.

[Finch]

You're probably right, and I get it in that the screenplays I write for myself, I want to direct myself, and it's entirely up to Johnson if he wants to write on commission or not, but if he did, and with the leverage he has, he could conceivably get a substantial amount for a script "for hire" and, if he was so inclined, stick that in a funding pot for his passion projects. But yeah, he probably feels that a) he has enough original projects on his plate and b) doesn't want to write on spec anyway.

[Brian C]

I like Mangold for this actually, he has a slightly old-fashioned style that I think would suit Indiana Jones. I thought it was clear from Crystal Skull that Spielberg's interest in the whole Indy ethos had waned, and there seems to be little point in trying to reinvent the wheel for Indiana Jones 5, so someone like Mangold seems like an appropriate and relatively high-end choice. So today I want to see a new Indy movie slightly more than I did yesterday ... progress.

[Monterey Jack]

I'm all for a fresh directorial voice in this series...provided they re-cast the title role, as seeing a gimpy, 80-year-old Harrison Ford back in the costume would depress me greatly. We've had six 007s, so another Indy will be accepted provided they get a good actor for it. Hell, Ford wasn't even the original choice (Tom Selleck screen-tested for the role, and I would love to see that alternate-universe version of Raiders). Chris Pratt has the right brash sense of humor, but lacks Ford's gravitas. I'm sure a talent search would turn up hundreds of actors who would love to slap that fedora on.

Spielberg was attached to what would eventually become The Mask Of Zorro for a big chunk of the 80's and 90's, but handed it over to Martin Campbell, and, honestly, what's a better post-80's Indiana Jones movie...that, or Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull? Spielberg is still a great filmmaker, but he's not the same filmmaker who did the Indy films in the 80's. Hell, even Last Crusade was pretty bland and by-the-numbers compared to the first two films, both of which possessed a wild, adolescent energy that can only come from a filmmaker before he has children and settles down for "respectable" fare.

[Nasir007]

Spielberg remains one of our very great action film-makers. His sense of staging, blocking, mis-en-scene and cutting is almost the best since John Ford when it comes to staging actions. Even Crystal Skull has that ridiculous but ridiculously fun jungle chase sequence.

My main concern would be - is John Williams coming back?

[Monterey Jack]

Williams' work on the recent Disney Star Wars music lacked his old sparkle, sad to say. Even his Crystal Skull score wasn't a patch on his 80's stuff. I'd rather have Williams score this than almost anyone else, but the man is past his prime.

[Nasir007]

I disagree. I think Williams work on the sequel trilogy is by and large outstanding with a wealth of memorable new thematic material and beautiful scoring throughout. The films have treated his work like shit - cutting it to shreds. But his work is above reproach. I still think he's just as vital today - churning out extraordinary work at his advanced age, work that simply by its technical proficiency stands head and shoulders above of most of the music being written for the movies today.

[colinr0380]

I'm all for a fresh directorial voice in this series...provided they re-cast the title role, as seeing a gimpy, 80-year-old Harrison Ford back in the costume would depress me greatly. We've had six 007s, so another Indy will be accepted provided they get a good actor for it. Hell, Ford wasn't even the original choice (Tom Selleck screen-tested for the role, and I would love to see that alternate-universe version of Raiders). Chris Pratt has the right brash sense of humor, but lacks Ford's gravitas. I'm sure a talent search would turn up hundreds of actors who would love to slap that fedora on.

I was just assuming that Shia LaBoeuf would be inheriting the mantle of being the new Indy, something that amusingly got played with in the final scene of Crystal Skull with Harrison Ford stealing his hat back!

[Monterey Jack]

I disagree. I think Williams work on the sequel trilogy is by and large outstanding with a wealth of memorable new thematic material and beautiful scoring throughout. The films have treated his work like shit - cutting it to shreds. But his work is above reproach. I still think he's just as vital today - churning out extraordinary work at his advanced age, work that simply by its technical proficiency stands head and shoulders above of most of the music being written for the movies today.

I mean, compared to most of the garbage that passes for film "music" these days, I'd take Williams any day of the week, but his Star Wars and Indiana Jones work in the 80's was noteworthy for how individual cues would be meticulously molded to the contours of the scenes they accompanied to the point where they practically functioned as stand-alone concert pieces (I love "Bug Tunnel and Death Trap" from Temple Of Doom). In Crystal Skull and the SW prequels and sequels, his music often is used like ketchup, glopped over scenes so that there's a constant sense of frantic motion, but just lacking an overall narrative shape. It's impeccably well-orchestrated, of course, but any individual cue in the SW movies from the last 20 years is often interchangeable from scene-to-scene, leaning heavily on fanservice quotations of established themes instead of allowing those quotations to build organically from a rigorously structured framework of new thematic material. Compare Williams' scoring for the truck chase in Raiders to his scoring for the jungle chase in Crystal Skull, and you'll see what I mean. The former is a coherent piece of music with a definitive opening, middle section and ending, whereas the later just flails about, hitting all of the individual flourishes without shaping the overall scene's narrative ebb and flow.

[Finch]

Chris Pratt has the right brash sense of humor, but lacks Ford's gravitas.

God please, anybody but Chris Pratt. I think Bradley Cooper was once considered but I don't like him either. Too smooth, too perfect.

[solaris72]

I disagree. I think Williams work on the sequel trilogy is by and large outstanding with a wealth of memorable new thematic material and beautiful scoring throughout. The films have treated his work like shit - cutting it to shreds. But his work is above reproach. I still think he's just as vital today - churning out extraordinary work at his advanced age, work that simply by its technical proficiency stands head and shoulders above of most of the music being written for the movies today.

Agreed, the score is almost the only good thing about episode 9.

[Nasir007]

I disagree. I think Williams work on the sequel trilogy is by and large outstanding with a wealth of memorable new thematic material and beautiful scoring throughout. The films have treated his work like shit - cutting it to shreds. But his work is above reproach. I still think he's just as vital today - churning out extraordinary work at his advanced age, work that simply by its technical proficiency stands head and shoulders above of most of the music being written for the movies today.

I mean, compared to most of the garbage that passes for film "music" these days, I'd take Williams any day of the week, but his Star Wars and Indiana Jones work in the 80's was noteworthy for how individual cues would be meticulously molded to the contours of the scenes they accompanied to the point where they practically functioned as stand-alone concert pieces (I love "Bug Tunnel and Death Trap" from Temple Of Doom). In Crystal Skull and the SW prequels and sequels, his music often is used like ketchup, glopped over scenes so that there's a constant sense of frantic motion, but just lacking an overall narrative shape. It's impeccably well-orchestrated, of course, but any individual cue in the SW movies from the last 20 years is often interchangeable from scene-to-scene, leaning heavily on fanservice quotations of established themes instead of allowing those quotations to build organically from a rigorously structured framework of new thematic material. Compare Williams' scoring for the truck chase in Raiders to his scoring for the jungle chase in Crystal Skull, and you'll see what I mean. The former is a coherent piece of music with a definitive opening, middle section and ending, whereas the later just flails about, hitting all of the individual flourishes without shaping the overall scene's narrative ebb and flow.

I agree with you here. And I actually think the evolution of film-making itself is to blame for a lot of these. Action has gotten much more frenetic over the decades. The action scenes today cut a lot, helter skelter and here and there. The pace of cutting has increased simply as a reaction to how people consume information on youtube or Instagram and how attention spans have reduced.

I think this film-making approach is essentially antithetical to golden age film-scoring. You can barely get in a note of a character melody before the action has cut to another character and something else. Williams tries valiantly but the directors fail him constantly. Take ep 9. JJ fiddled with the cut so much that he kept recutting scenes even after Williams had scored them multiple times. There's only so much he can do.

There is also modern technology. When you can now edit major motion pictures on literally a laptop and the digital assembly means the cut can go from your laptop to theaters in less than a day, there is all the more imperative for directors to keep fiddling with their cuts. What can't catch up is a film score. Because it has to be written, orchestrated, assemble an orchestra, book a recording hall, practice and then record and then be mixed into the film. Atleast for actual film scoring. For the soundscape suite like film scoring today, just write a damn suite and the editor will apply it like wallpaper.

But for JW's style, he very carefully times his music to basically cuts or individual things in the scenes. Only Spielberg still seems capable of handling a JW score properly. All other film-makers tear it to shreds.

As for whether JW can still write coherent pieces to support entire sequences - we have the lovely and tragic example of Speeder Chase from Ep 9. What a glorious cue, with its own individual theme like Asteroid Field in Ep 5 or Basket Chase in Indy 1. But in the movie it is absolutely butchered by JJ.

[The Fanciful Norwegian]

The recasting speculation seems way premature. Granted, a week ago I doubt anyone thought Spielberg wouldn't be directing this, so everything's subject to change⁠—but Ford has been doing interviews for The Call of the Wild and it's been literally just a few days since he talked about doing Indy 5 in the near future. Looking over his recent comments it also appears he hasn't actually mentioned Spielberg, so I'm sure he knew what was coming.

[Monterey Jack]

I agree with you here. And I actually think the evolution of film-making itself is to blame for a lot of these. Action has gotten much more frenetic over the decades. The action scenes today cut a lot, helter skelter and here and there. The pace of cutting has increased simply as a reaction to how people consume information on youtube or Instagram and how attention spans have reduced.

The sad thing is, movies like Star Wars and Raiders were considered short-attention-span Action Porn by a lot of critics when they were originally released (Paulene Kael referred to the former as "A Box of Cracker Jack that is all prizes"), and yet both films seem positively sedate by today's razzamatazz MCU style of action/adventure filmmaking, where everything is constantly moving, every character communicates in sarcastic quips instead of actually talking to each other, and the soundtrack is drenched in such non-stop 5.1 audio overkill that music has to flatten itself out into a vacuum-cleaner drone just to be heard at all. It's hard to think of the last summer action blockbuster that A.) spaced out the action scenes so there could be a coherent story connecting them, and B.) had a soundtrack reasonably-mixed to allow music to speak, instead of constantly shouting over the cacophony just to be heard. A lot of the classic blockbusters scored by Williams deliberately had scenes where he did not write music, knowing that it'd get obliterated by the sound effects (think of the shootout in Marion's bar in Raiders, the speeder bike chase in Return Of The Jedi, or the T-Rex scene in Jurassic Park). These days, if a movie runs 120 minutes, there'll be about 105 minutes of score, lessening its overall effectiveness.

[thirtyframesasecond]

Chris Pratt has the right brash sense of humor, but lacks Ford's gravitas.

God please, anybody but Chris Pratt. I think Bradley Cooper was once considered but I don't like him either. Too smooth, too perfect.

A rebooted Indy would be one of these young guys who can't really act/open movies but might look the part - Alden Ehrenreich, Dane DeHaan, Ansel Elgort.

[bearcuborg]

So much for “top men” the Ark just showed up on Antique Roadshow.

[JSC]

Trailer's up for Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (which is a silly title in my opinion).
Dial M for Make More Money at All Costs.

https://www.blu-ray.com/news/?id=31754

[soundchaser]

The title's pulpy as hell, so it should work, but I'm not buying it for some reason. Reads as very fanfic-y.

[Matt]

DoD (Dept. of Defense?) makes for a more apt initialism that the previous KoCS, but maybe not better than TLC, ToD (“death”), or RoLA (“roller”)

[colinr0380]

Apparently there have been rumours that after Kingdom of the Crystal Skull tackled aliens, this one is going to touch on another perhaps divisive pulpy sci-fi (rather than pulpy religious mythology) theme of:

SpoilerShow

time travel, with 1960s Indy returning to World War Two - as if it was some kind of inescapable nexus for him - presumably using the titular Dial of Destiny

with some commenters already being upset by the idea that the film may be (major potential spoiler if it turns out to be true)

SpoilerShow

potentially resetting the timeline for the younger generation to take on the mantle by doing a Force Awakens-style sacrifice

[Matt]

Oh my god, what if Indy

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goes back in time and kills Baby Hitler?