Re: Perhaps...

Posted by Indiana Joe from dialup142.multilinkws.com on November 11, 1999 at 00:07:01:

In Reply to: More thoughts on Lucas vs. Spielberg & Ford posted by Dirk Pitt on November 10, 1999 at 23:06:59:

: Yes, Lucas initiated the creative process of Indiana Jones, but keep in mind that were it not for fate we'd have had Tom Selleck instead. Not that Selleck would have been bad, but let's face it: Selleck's Indy would be to Ford's what Brosnan's Bond is to Connery's. Brosnan's is merely a character, little more than a cog in a marketing wheel; Connery, on the other hand, took a novelistic character and turned him into an icon. Just as Ford did with Indy.

... although it’s also well-known that Spielberg originally wanted to do a James Bond film, Bond being a character with considerably less heart than Indy, at least to me.

: Remember that orginally Lucas didn't want to use Ford (since he'd already cast him as Han Solo), but it was Spielberg who realized Ford was perfect for the role. If Lucas had had his way, Indy would be a soul-less playboy whose main purpose in archaelogical adventuring would be to fund his night life. It was Ford and Spielberg who steered Indy away from Lucas's ill-advised playboy, treasure-hunting fantasy. And I would venture that it was Ford who turned Indy from the selfish, cigarette-smoking, trigger-happy, bulletproof grave-robber into something more sublime: a universal, HUMAN hero. (It was Ford who made sure that Indy would appear scratched and bruised, as when he's on the ship with Marion)

: In all three films the quest is not actually for "fortune and glory," but rather a battle between good and evil. Were it not for Ford and Spielberg I doubt we'd hear Indy uttering such lines as "It belongs in a museum!". Nor would we have had Indy's sheer frustration, his indignation, with the government at the end of Raiders for packing away the Ark in that chilling scene from Citizen Kane. It is the intellectual and moral Indy of Ford and Spielberg that argues that the Ark needs to be studied. Lucas's treasure-hunting playboy would simply have pocketed his honorarium and hopped on the next college co-ed.

Actually, I don’t get the impression Ford and Spielberg mandated that at all. It is true that Indy was initially conceived as a more mercenary character, but Lucas has often gone through numerous permutations of a concept before reaching the one he puts on film. By most accounts, the creation of “Raiders of the Lost Ark” was a highly collaborative process, but also one in which the end result came out as something more than anyone’s conception, and had neither Spielberg nor Ford been involved there’s still no reason to think Lucas would have kept to his initial ideas - given just how much he tinkered with Star Wars, one might even suggest that the final Indy would be even further from the concept than he wound up. If nothing else, I think Lucas’s development of the character in “The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles” demostrates a (perhaps belated) desire to slightly ennoble the character, or move him a little further from the less admirable qualities that defined the initial conception and to some extent remained, however vestigially, in the final realization in the feature films. Of course, it also fits well to have the younger version be a more idealistic individual and to see him become more and more pragmatic with age, but I can’t help but think that to a slight extent, it’s Lucas revising his initial version of the character to make him more of a decent, human person.

I’ll also say that to me, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade seems to bear more of Spielberg’s imprint relative to Lucas’s than the other two, and it’s my least favorite of the three, partly because Indy seems a bit less reverent than I would like. I love the film, but have some difficulty reconciling some of Indy’s actions in it with the basically respectful, decent scholar I feel he is in the others (simply smashing the floor tile in the library to get underneath, tearing apart a burial for a bone to use as a torch, etc.). I remind myself that it’s a couple of years after what must have been to him the somewhat souring experience with the Ark, that as his life has gone on he’s become generally more pragmatic and less idealistic, and so on to enjoy the film (actually, I think this development of his character is attributable more to scripter Jeffrey Boam than to either Lucas or Spielberg, but of course they essentially endorsed this vision of Indy by making the film this way, and to be honest I wish they hadn’t; I hope that if there is to be one more film, that someone other than Boam gets to write the screenplay).

: -- Dirk

- IJ

Follow Ups:

Post a Followup:

Name:    
E-Mail:  
Subject: 
Comments:

: : Yes, Lucas initiated the creative process of Indiana Jones, but keep in mind that were it not for fate we'd have had Tom Selleck instead. Not that Selleck would have been bad, but let's face it: Selleck's Indy would be to Ford's what Brosnan's Bond is to Connery's. Brosnan's is merely a character, little more than a cog in a marketing wheel; Connery, on the other hand, took a novelistic character and turned him into an icon. Just as Ford did with Indy.

: ... although it’s also well-known that Spielberg originally wanted to do a James Bond film, Bond being a character with considerably less heart than Indy, at least to me.

: : Remember that orginally Lucas didn't want to use Ford (since he'd already cast him as Han Solo), but it was Spielberg who realized Ford was perfect for the role. If Lucas had had his way, Indy would be a soul-less playboy whose main purpose in archaelogical adventuring would be to fund his night life. It was Ford and Spielberg who steered Indy away from Lucas's ill-advised playboy, treasure-hunting fantasy. And I would venture that it was Ford who turned Indy from the selfish, cigarette-smoking, trigger-happy, bulletproof grave-robber into something more sublime: a universal, HUMAN hero. (It was Ford who made sure that Indy would appear scratched and bruised, as when he's on the ship with Marion)

: : In all three films the quest is not actually for "fortune and glory," but rather a battle between good and evil. Were it not for Ford and Spielberg I doubt we'd hear Indy uttering such lines as "It belongs in a museum!". Nor would we have had Indy's sheer frustration, his indignation, with the government at the end of Raiders for packing away the Ark in that chilling scene from Citizen Kane. It is the intellectual and moral Indy of Ford and Spielberg that argues that the Ark needs to be studied. Lucas's treasure-hunting playboy would simply have pocketed his honorarium and hopped on the next college co-ed.

: Actually, I don’t get the impression Ford and Spielberg mandated that at all. It is true that Indy was initially conceived as a more mercenary character, but Lucas has often gone through numerous permutations of a concept before reaching the one he puts on film. By most accounts, the creation of “Raiders of the Lost Ark” was a highly collaborative process, but also one in which the end result came out as something more than anyone’s conception, and had neither Spielberg nor Ford been involved there’s still no reason to think Lucas would have kept to his initial ideas - given just how much he tinkered with Star Wars, one might even suggest that the final Indy would be even further from the concept than he wound up. If nothing else, I think Lucas’s development of the character in “The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles” demostrates a (perhaps belated) desire to slightly ennoble the character, or move him a little further from the less admirable qualities that defined the initial conception and to some extent remained, however vestigially, in the final realization in the feature films. Of course, it also fits well to have the younger version be a more idealistic individual and to see him become more and more pragmatic with age, but I can’t help but think that to a slight extent, it’s Lucas revising his initial version of the character to make him more of a decent, human person.

: I’ll also say that to me, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade seems to bear more of Spielberg’s imprint relative to Lucas’s than the other two, and it’s my least favorite of the three, partly because Indy seems a bit less reverent than I would like. I love the film, but have some difficulty reconciling some of Indy’s actions in it with the basically respectful, decent scholar I feel he is in the others (simply smashing the floor tile in the library to get underneath, tearing apart a burial for a bone to use as a torch, etc.). I remind myself that it’s a couple of years after what must have been to him the somewhat souring experience with the Ark, that as his life has gone on he’s become generally more pragmatic and less idealistic, and so on to enjoy the film (actually, I think this development of his character is attributable more to scripter Jeffrey Boam than to either Lucas or Spielberg, but of course they essentially endorsed this vision of Indy by making the film this way, and to be honest I wish they hadn’t; I hope that if there is to be one more film, that someone other than Boam gets to write the screenplay).

: : -- Dirk

: - IJ

Optional:

Link URL:   
Link Title: 
Image URL:

[ Follow Ups ] [ Post Followup ] [ The Indyfan Forum ] [ FAQ ]