Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
File:Crystalskullteaserposter.jpg Teaser poster
Directed by	Steven Spielberg
Written by	Screenplay: David Koepp Story: George Lucas Jeff Nathanson
Produced by	Frank Marshall Denis L. Stewart George Lucas Kathleen Kennedy
Starring	Harrison Ford Cate Blanchett Karen Allen Ray Winstone John Hurt Jim Broadbent Shia LaBeouf
Cinematography	Janusz Kamiński
Edited by	Michael Kahn
Music by	John Williams
Distributed by	Paramount Pictures
Release dates	May 22, 2008
Country	USA
Language	English
Budget	US$125 million

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is a 2008 adventure film directed by Steven Spielberg and executive produced by George Lucas. Set in 1957, this fourth film in the Indiana Jones film series pits an older and wiser Indiana Jones (Harrison Ford) against agents of the Soviet Union—led by Spalko (Cate Blanchett)—for the crystal skull. Indy is assisted by his former lover Marion Ravenwood (Karen Allen) as well as the greaser Mutt (Shia LaBeouf) and fellow archaeologist Mac (Ray Winstone). John Hurt and Jim Broadbent also play fellow academics.

The film was in development hell since the 1989 release of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, because Spielberg and Ford initially disagreed over Lucas's choice of the skulls as the plot device. Screenwriters Jeb Stuart, Jeffrey Boam, M. Night Shyamalan, Frank Darabont and Jeff Nathanson wrote drafts, before a script by David Koepp satisfied all three men in 2006. Shooting finally commenced on June 18 2007, and took place at locations in New Mexico, New Haven, Connecticut, Hawaii, Fresno, California, and soundstages in Los Angeles. In order to keep aesthetic continuity with the previous films, there will be minimal use of computer-generated imagery and more of a reliance on traditional stuntwork, and cinematographer Janusz Kaminski has adapted his style to that of Douglas Slocombe from the previous films.

Marketing will rely heavily on the public's nostalgia for the series, with products taking inspiration from all four films. Anticipation for the film resulted in a legal dispute over an extra violating his non-disclosure agreement, and another man was arrested for stealing a computer containing various documents related to the project. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is scheduled for a worldwide release on May 22, 2008.

Premise

Producer Frank Marshall has confirmed that the film is set in 1957, making it nineteen years since Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, thus acknowledging the real-life passing of years between films. Indiana Jones is having a quiet life teaching before being thrust back into his old adventuring. He battles agents of the Soviet Union for the crystal skull. "The theory is they are shaped by higher powers or alien powers or came from another world, or an ancient Mayan civilization had the powers," Marshall explained. Indy's journey takes him across New Mexico, Connecticut, Mexico City, and the jungles of Peru, as well as the warehouse from the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark. There will be mild humor regarding Indiana's age.

Cast

• Harrison Ford as Professor Henry "Indiana" Jones, Jr. To prepare for the role, the 64-year-old Ford spent three hours a day at a gym, and relied on a high-protein diet of fish and vegetables. Ford kept fit during the film series' hiatus anyway, as he was always hoping for another film. When asked if Ford was too old, producer Frank Marshall quoted Raiders of the Lost Ark: "It's not the years, it's the mileage". What'll be interesting is you're seeing him in a different decade, so there's all kinds of new, interesting things that he has to deal with. Indy seems to be a little smarter [as an older man] — wiser, let's say." He added that the age adds to "Indy [as] a fallible character. He makes mistakes and gets hurt. He has a few more aches and pains now. That's the other thing people like: He's a real character, not a character with superpowers."
• Shia LaBeouf as Mutt Williams, a motorcycle-riding greaser and Indiana's sidekick. Frank Marshall states that Mutt brings a youthful arrogance to the story, giving him banter with the older and wiser Jones. When he agreed to appear in the film, LaBeouf did not know what role he would play; he signed on in excitement at the idea of being in an Indiana Jones film, and did not even read the script. He worked out and gained fifteen pounds of muscle for the role, and also repeatedly watched the other films to get into character. Though it has been rumored Mutt is Indiana's son, Spielberg laughed off the idea: "I wouldn't say it's a father-son story. The new Indy movie is about a great quest, an amazing quest — and that’s all I’m gonna say."
• Ray Winstone as Mac, both a friend and competitor of Jones. The character acts as a spin on Sallah and Rene Belloq — Jones' friend and nemesis, respectively, in Raiders of the Lost Ark. According to Marshall, Indy and Mac might have worked together during World War II, and "are friends, but the natural forces of greed take over at some point". Winstone tore his hamstring during filming. "I keep getting these action parts as I’m getting older," he remarked.
• Cate Blanchett as Irena Spalko, a villainous Russian agent. "Indy always has a love-hate relationship with every woman he ever comes in contact with," Frank Marshall explained.
• Karen Allen will reprise her role as Marion Ravenwood.
• John Hurt in a still-unrevealed role. He would not confirm or deny if he was playing Abner Ravenwood, Marion's father, who was said to be dead in Raiders of the Lost Ark. Marshall would only reveal Hurt's character was "a person that Indy knew in the past, but much more on the university side of things, like [Brody]". Frank Darabont had suggested Hurt when he was writing the screenplay. Hurt wanted to read the script before signing on, unlike other cast members who came on "because Steven — you know, 'God' — was doing it. And I said, 'Well, I need to have a little bit of previous knowledge even if God is doing it.' So they sent a courier over with the script from Los Angeles, gave it to me at three o'clock in the afternoon in London, collected it again at eight o'clock in the evening, and he returned the next day to Los Angeles." Hurt only appears in the film's second half.
• Jim Broadbent has a role as an academic colleague and friend of Jones at Yale University. Broadbent's character stands in for Marcus Brody, as actor Denholm Elliott died in 1992. As a tribute to Elliott, the filmmakers put a portrait of the character in the film on the Marshall College set.
• Alan Dale in an unnamed role.
• Igor Jijikine, Andrew Divoff and Pavel Lychnikoff play Russian soldiers. Spielberg chose to cast Russian-speaking actors as Russian soldiers so their accents would be authentic.

Sean Connery turned down making a cameo appearance as Henry Jones, Sr., finding retirement too enjoyable. Lucas stated that in hindsight it was good that Connery did not briefly appear, as it would disappoint the audience when his character would not come along for the film's adventure. Ford joked, "As I told Sean, I’m getting old enough to play my own father, so we don’t need him anymore."

Production

Development

During the late 1970s, George Lucas and Steven Spielberg made a deal with Paramount Pictures for five films about archaeologist Indiana Jones. Following the theatrical release of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade in 1989, Lucas let the series end as he felt he could not think of a good plot device to drive the next installment. Lucas became fascinated with the crystal skulls while producing The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles in 1992, as it was an idea in an unused script. He was shooting Harrison Ford's cameo when he learned of them, and felt they were as powerful a concept as the Ark of the Covenant was. In 1992, Jeb Stuart was writing the screenplay, and Last Crusade writer Jeffrey Boam was set to pen another draft three years later. However, Spielberg and Ford were not interested in the skulls, and development halted when Lucas made the Star Wars prequels.

Meanwhile, author Max McCoy incorporated the crystal skull mythology as a recurring theme in his four Indiana Jones novels, and the skull was also featured in the 2001 Tokyo Disney theme park attraction Indiana Jones Adventure: Temple of the Crystal Skull. The film's long gestation coincided with Ford growing older, and this meant the filmmakers were allowed to give a new approach and setting. Instead of tributing Republic Pictures's serials of the 1930s, the film could instead tribute a 1950s B-movie, which give the skulls an appropriate context given their origins. By 2000, Spielberg's personal interest was ignited as his son asked when the next Indiana Jones film would be released. M. Night Shyamalan was hired as Boam's replacement for an intended 2002 shoot, but he was overwhelmed writing a sequel to a film he loved like Raiders of the Lost Ark, and claimed it was difficult to get Ford, Spielberg, and Lucas to focus.

Afterwards, Stephen Gaghan and Tom Stoppard were approached to write a new screenplay. With a title already planned, Frank Darabont, who wrote several episodes of The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles, was hired in May 2002 to write. Darabont's screenplay was set in the 1950s, with surviving Nazis pursuing Jones. Darabont came up with reintroducing Marion Ravenwood (Karen Allen), but he did not include Indy's son, as rumored. In December 2002, Spielberg said he planned to shoot two films before filming Indiana Jones 4 in 2004 for a 2005 release. In February 2004, Lucas rejected the draft for reasons unknown, although Spielberg called this version the best screenplay since Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Jeff Nathanson was hired in October 2004 to write a new draft, which was set around 1949. Completed a year later, the script was handed over to David Koepp. As 2006 began, Harrison Ford declared that if the film was not made by 2008, then the filmmakers should drop the idea altogether. Spielberg confirmed Indiana Jones 4 as his next film, calling it "the sweet dessert I give those who had to chow down on the bitter herbs that I've used in Munich". Koepp looked at all previous scripts, and kept what he felt were good ideas. He tried not to make his work a "fan script", in that he hoped to avoid any trivial references to the previous films. He also aimed to make it less dark than Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom yet less comic than Last Crusade, aiming for the balance from the first film. Frank Marshall disagreed, feeling the film's banter made it tonally closer to Last Crusade.

Filming

File:Indiana jones 4 location new haven .jpg

The production crew converts a storefront in downtown New Haven, Connecticut to be used in a scene set to take place in the 1950s.

Shooting began on June 18 2007 at Deming, New Mexico, for scenes set in Morocco. An extensive chase scene set at Indiana Jones' fictional Marshall College was filmed between June 28 and July 7 at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. They moved to Hawaii, shooting twenty percent of the film for three weeks on private property, keeping production secretive. Scenes set in the jungles of Peru were shot in Hawaii. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is the biggest film shot in Hawaii since Waterworld, and was predicted to generate $22 million to $45 million in the local economy. Half the film was scheduled to shoot on sound stages at Los Angeles. The five studios used were the Downey, Sony, Warner Bros., Paramount and Universal lots. Filming moved to Chandler Field in Fresno, California, substituting for Mexico City International Airport, on October 11, 2007. After shooting aerial shots of Chandler Airport and a DC-3 on the morning of October 12, 2007, filming wrapped. Filming lasted for a total of 79 days, and Spielberg found no need for re-shoots after watching his first cut of the film.

Spielberg and Lucas wanted to maintain the look of the first three films, but cinematographer Douglas Slocombe had retired. Spielberg and Janusz Kaminski, who has shot all of the director's films since 1993's Schindler's List, watched the first three films at an Amblin screening room to study Slocombe's style. "I didn’t want Janusz to modernize and bring us into the 21st century," Spielberg said. "I still wanted the film to have a lighting style not dissimilar to the work Doug Slocombe had achieved, which meant that both Janusz and I had to swallow our pride. Janusz had to approximate another cinematographer’s look, and I had to approximate this younger director’s look that I thought I had moved away from after almost two decades." Spielberg also did not want to fast cut action scenes, relying on his script instead for a fast pace, and had confirmed in 2002 that he would not shoot the film digitally, a format Lucas had adopted. Lucas felt "it looks like it was shot three years after Last Crusade. The people, the look of it, everything. You’d never know there was 20 years between shooting."

The film will showcase Indiana's home, which was only previously seen in Raiders of the Lost Ark. As nineteen years (both fictional and real) have passed, the filmmakers decorated the sparse living room with numerous artifacts Indiana has collected during his travels. Production designer Guy Hendrix Dyas said this was done to hint at the adventures he might have had in-between the first three films and Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. There are also photos of Sallah, Marcus Brody, Willie Scott, Henry Jones, Sr., and Jones' Egypt adventure from the pilot episode of The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles.

Effects

Harrison Ford performed many of his own stunts during the shoot. Spielberg stated he could not tell the difference between Ford during the shoots for Last Crusade and Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. While shooting War of the Worlds in late 2004, Spielberg met with stunt coordinator Vic Armstrong, who doubled for Ford in the previous films, to discuss three action sequences he had envisioned. However, Armstrong was filming The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor during shooting of Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, so Dan Bradley was hired instead.

Producer Frank Marshall stated in 2003 that the film would not rely on CGI; it would instead use traditional special effects and stuntwork so as to be consistent with the previous films. He reiterated this in 2006. During filming, Steven Spielberg anticipated 30% of visual effects would be CGI, for elements such as backdrops. The movie only contains "a couple of hundred" effects shots. The film will not involve sound designer Ben Burtt, (who was also an editor and director on The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles), as he left Lucasfilm in 2005.

Music

John Williams stated on the 2003 DVD documentary The Music of Indiana Jones that he hoped to return to write the score for the film, as he did for the previous three. Williams began scoring the film in February 2008.

Release

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull will be released in approximately 4000 theaters in the United States. It will be dubbed into 25 languages for its worldwide release. George Lucas intended to unveil the title with the first teaser trailer, but Shia LaBeouf announced it earlier at the 2007 MTV Video Music Awards on September 9, 2007. Although the film's title had been decided upon in October 2006, five other titles were registered with the Motion Picture Association of America before the announcement: The City of Gods, The Destroyer of Worlds, The Fourth Corner of the Earth, The Lost City of Gold and The Quest for the Covenant. These fake titles were registered to distract fans from the true title.

Marketing

Howard Roffman, President of Lucas Licensing, has stated that the film will have a large marketing campaign. He attributed the massive marketing push to the fact that "It's been nineteen years since the last film, and we are sensing a huge pent-up demand for everything Indy." Boston-based design studio, Creative Pilot, created a packaging style for the merchandise which merged Drew Struzan's original illustrations "with a fresh new look, which showcases the whip, a map, and exotic hieroglyphic patterns". In October 2007, the reedited episodes of The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles were released in three DVD box sets. Random House, Scholastic, and DK will publish books based on all four films, and Del Rey Books will publish James Rollins' novelization. Scholastic will release children's novelizations of all four films. Dark Horse Comics will publish a two-issue comic book adaptation of the film, written by John Jackson Miller and drawn by Luke Ross (Samurai: Heaven and Earth). A child-aimed comic, Indiana Jones Adventures, will also begin publication. Diamond Comic Distributors will begin publishing the official Indiana Jones Magazine on the film's release date. Hasbro and Lego will produce toy lines for the film, and Burger King, Hallmark Cards, Cartamundi, and Sideshow Collectibles will sell tie-ins. LucasArts will release two video games: The working title of one is Indiana Jones, and the other is a Lego edition. THQ will also release a game for mobile phones.

Because of the anticipation, the first teaser trailer was delayed to February 14, 2008, on which it debuted on Good Morning America, and was subsequently released on the internet and in theaters with The Spiderwick Chronicles the same day. Spielberg spokesman Martin Levy explained, "[Indy is] such a well-known character that it's not like you have to get out there and introduce something new [...] We also want[ed] to keep a lot of the surprises. That's part of the fun." Reaction to the trailer was positive, with criticism over the number of computer-generated shots shown. A shot of Indiana and Mac was edited from the American version to exclude armed Soviet soldiers surrounding them. Mac's belt, Indiana's breast pocket and a background soldier's gun were computer-generated into the shot. Critic Drew McWeeny wrote, "What we're left with as our first glimpse in 19 years of this character that is so much a part of the film lives of a generation is this distracting, fuzzy, fucked-with image that will be fixed in the film anyway." The American flag is not seen in some versions of the international trailer.

Leaked plot details and theft

An extra in the film, Tyler Nelson, violated his nondisclosure agreement and gave an interview to the The Edmond Sun on September 17 2007, which was then picked up by the mainstream media. Spielberg has yet to decide if he will cut Nelson's scene. At Nelson's request, The Edmond Sun subsequently pulled the story from its website. On October 2 2007, a Superior Court order was filed finding that Nelson knowingly violated the agreement. The terms of the settlement were not disclosed.

A number of production photos and sensitive documents pertaining to the film's production budget were stolen from Steven Spielberg’s production office. An official of the Indiana Jones production reported the missing items to the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department on September 24, 2007. Marvin Levy, Steven Spielberg's spokesman, said the director was concerned that the thieves would try to sell the materials, and on October 2, the people believed to be involved in the burglary sent out e-mails to several entertainment gossip websites offering to sell the images. According to IESB, TMZ.com obtained some of the stolen property and was on the verge of running the story on its TV division until Paramount lawyers stepped in. After Paramount was notified about the emails, they contacted sheriff's investigators. A member of the online press helped the detectives by posing as a potential buyer and setting up a meeting in West Hollywood. When the seller arrived, he was arrested on suspicion of receiving stolen property. On October 4, Roderick Eric Davis, age 37, was charged with one felony count of receiving stolen property. He later pleaded guilty to two felony counts and will serve two years and four months in jail.

External links

• Official website
• Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull at IMDb
• Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull at TheRaider.net
• Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull at Yahoo! Movies
• Uncensored trailer at The Sun