by Chris Neumer
If there’s anyone who could get a sense of déjŕ vu from the incredibly anticipated Indiana Jones release, its writer/director George Lucas (whom it should be noted is not credited as either writing or directing Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull; he serves as the film’s executive producer).
In 1999, after a sixteen years break between Star Wars films, Lucas unleashed Episode One: The Phantom Menace on an otherwise unsuspecting American public. The reaction, particularly amongst diehard fans of the original trilogy, was one of immense disappointment. For whatever reason, this seemed to catch Lucas off guard.
To Lucas, he was doing the same thing in The Phantom Menace as he’d done in every other movie in the Star Wars family. To the audiences though, Lucas had finally managed to Ewok-ize an entire movie; The Phantom Menace wasn’t another chapter in the story, it was merely a collection of talking toys, cute kids, unusual creatures farting and neatly CG’d space battles that were spliced together to create the illusion of a movie. (And to be fair to Lucas, he’d been drifting down this path since The Return of the Jedi, so maybe it really did feel like what he’d done on the originals. I’ll ignore the fact that nobody much liked his special edition changes to the first three films either).
| ALSO IN THIS COLUMN | • Investigating the 'Johns' composing soundtracks
• Inside the Miley Cyrus pseudo-scandal
• Julia Roberts smells
• Classic Quotes
• Behind-the-scenes of Stumped's interview with Heather Graham
|
In 2008, after a nineteen year break between Indiana Jones films, Steven Spielberg and Lucas are giving the world a fourth movie in the series. And Lucas is prepared for disappointment this time. While certain members of the film world never learn from their mistakes or change their approaches to their craft not matter what failure they endure, Lucas is not one of these people. As a matter of fact, if it’s possible, Lucas has actually learned too much. Talking to The USA Today, Lucas almost seems to be expecting The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull to be bad. “When you do a movie like this, a sequel that’s very, very anticipated, people anticipate that it’s going to be the Second Coming. And it’s not. It’s just a movie… You probably have fond memories of the other movies, but if you went back and looked at them, they might not hold up the same way your memory holds up,” Lucas says.
So, not only is there nothing special about the new film, but the old ones suck too? We’re just remembering things wrong?
Before you start worrying too much about Lucas’ comments, understand that it’s all part of a somewhat off-the-wall marketing strategy: lowering expectations for 2008’s most anticipated new film. Lucas, Spielberg and Harrison Ford didn’t do the movie for money, critical approval or even, apparently, the thrill of making a genuine work of art. Nope, they did it to have fun. So says Lucas.
Unfortunately, if we listen to Academy Award nominated writer/director Frank Darabont, Lucas’ statement seems like it might be true. Darabont spent a year writing a script for the fourth installment of the Indiana Jones series, one he and Spielberg thought was extremely well done. Lucas, however, felt differently. Lucas is renowned for his stubbornness and he was completely unwilling to budge on Darabont’s version of the film. Darabont was so upset at Lucas that he not only called the experience of working with the man the worst of his career, but went so far as to call Lucas “insane”… to Lucas’ face.
And thus we have a marketing campaign designed to sell people on the fact that The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is just another movie; a run-of-the-mill product that the studio will be happy to see deigned ‘mildly entertaining’. Much like the stand-up comedian who ponders why they don’t just make the whole airplane out of the material used to construct the black box, I am the film writer who will suggest that all of these psychological ploys and tricks would be rendered obsolete if the filmmakers would just, you know, make the movie good in the first place. It would sure save us all a lot of trouble.
It’s one thing to downgrade a film’s box office potential so that people don’t get the idea that a given project is an enormous failure (more on this approach to things and Iron Man in a minute); nobody wants to pay money knowing they’re going in to see a horrendously received bomb. It’s another thing completely to start downgrading the actual quality of the film before its release.
I can understand the idea of not wanting audiences to go into a movie theater expecting to see the best movie of the year—though the prospect of this is what generates such enormous revenues for the Academy Award Best Picture nominees—but to attempt to lower expectations by calling your own epic blockbuster “just another movie” seems stupid for two reasons:
1) If The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull truly is bad, people will be genuinely confused as to why Lucas knew the movie wasn’t good ahead of time and didn’t do anything to make it better, and 2) If The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is good, people will laugh at Lucas’ comments and then begin to wonder, “Wait, exactly how insecure is this man? He’s behind two of the most popular series’ in Hollywood history, has more money than God and still needs constant affirmation from the American public?” What’s that old saying? You can take the nerd out of the A/V lab, but you can’t take the A/V lab out of the nerd?
If nothing else, consider this: one of the following statements promoting their latest movie is courtesy of Paris Hilton (talking about The Hottie and the Nottie) and the other is from Lucas (talking about The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull).
• “I’m just doing a good job… I’ve worked really hard for this and… I’m taking it seriously.”
• “You’re not going to get a lot of accolades doing a movie like this. All you can do is lose.”
The latter statement is Lucas’. You know you’re in trouble when Paris Hilton seems to think more of her upcoming release than you do.
If there’s a worse part of this supposed marketing strategy, it’s the fact that this esthetic seems to have been worked into the film’s final poster as well (you can see the poster at the top of the page; click to enlarge). For whatever reason, Paramount picked the worst photo of Harrison Ford that they could find—a photo of him looking forlorn, disappointed and most assuredly upset about something—and used that picture on their poster. This was an interesting choice given how good the film's teaser poster was.
Indiana Jones and The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull: Where Even He’s Disappointed.
THE QUESTION: I was scrolling through iTunes last week and saw that four of the biggest soundtrack composers in Hollywood all have first names that start with the letter ‘J’. John Williams, James Horner, James Newton Howard and Jerry Goldsmith. Is there any other letter in the alphabet that can claim as many composers? Tim R. via e-mail
THE ANSWER: I respond to this question as proof that A) I get a lot of, uh, interesting questions e-mailed to me and B) the questions don’t necessarily have to be good to be answered. My initial response to Tim’s question was that he had too much time on his hands… until I started poking around on my own iTunes (the program, not the web-site) and noticed that the man had a distinct point. Because of the way the iTunes’ software is set up, artists are sorted in alphabetical order by their first names. This is a lot different than the way most people would expect it to be. As such, The Beatles are filed under ‘B’… but so is Bruce Springsteen. And sure enough, I noticed an inordanent amount of movie music talent under the letter ‘J’. Not only do Williams, Horner, Howard and Goldsmith have first names that start with ‘J’, but so do John Powell (Shrek), John Ottman (The Usual Suspects), Jody Talbot (The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy), John Debney (The Passion of the Christ), Jon Brion (Punch-Drunk Love), John Swihart (Napoleon Dynamite), John Barry (Indecent Proposal) and Jack Johnson (Curious George). The name John is a common one, I’ll grant you, but even should you remove the Johns, there’d still be five composers left. I began looking for other letters that would turn up multiple composer names, starting with ‘D’ for Danny Elfman… and promptly struck out. Same with ‘B’ for Basel Pouladaris and ‘C’ for Chris Young. d ‘E’ laid claim to three composers that I could find. Ennio Morricone, Erich Wolfgang Korngold and Elmer Bernstein. The only other letters I found that did better than ‘E’ were 'M' and, of all things, the letter ‘H’. ‘H’ had Hans Zimmer, Henry Mancini, Howard Shore and Harry Gregson-Williams, while 'M' had Mark Knopfler, Michael Kamen, Michael Nyman and Mychael Danna. So ‘J’ indeed is the victor. For Tim’s sake, I hope neither Joan Jett nor Jessica Simpson ever decide to scratch the itch to compose a soundtrack.
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