In case you haven’t been to Burger King, eaten a pack of M
‘n’ Ms or a Snickers bar, or been to the grocery store lately to see a must-be-record-setting number of products endorsing the movie . . .
Tonight is THE night for Indiana Jones fans. At 12:01 AM, “Indiana Jones 4” (“Indiana Jones and the Legend of the Crystal Skull”) begins showing in theaters.
Maybe the most advertised and longest-awaited sequel ever, fans of Harrison Ford are sure to be pleased regardless of how good the movie is. How bad could it be considering Stephen Spielberg is directing? It’s going to have the kind of Saturday matinee/comic book feeling we all love him for, so we can all be 12 again and off on some adventure in a far away place.
Reportedly going to great lengths to keep the feel of the earlier movies in shooting style, pacing, and refraining from using some modern techniques, Wikipedia reports that George 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.”
Among all the merchandising offered on the web, a “Jones/Ravenwood ’08” bumper sticker is my favorite—which gives away that they are bringing back Abner Ravenwood, Marion’s father, as well as Marion, who is on the poster (and pictured at left).
Joining the cast is arguably the best actress of our time, Cate Blanchett, as the villan, and teen heartthrob Shia LaBoeuf (he played the lead character “Sam Witwicky” from “Transformers“, as Indy’s sidekick.
Missing are Indy’s father “Henry Sr.” [Sean Connery (who turned down a cameo)], and Marshall College Museum Curator “Dr. Marcus Brody” (Denholm Elliott passed away in 1992).
Harrison Ford does many of his own stunts and refused to dye his hair for the role. Wanting to portray the 19 years of real time past since the last part of the story, this 4th installment picks up in 1957 (where the Last Crusade took place in 1938) and uses the Soviet Union and the Cold War as a backdrop. Having a little fun with Harrison Ford’s age (64) Spielberg said Ford was not too old to play Indiana: “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.'” Spielberg recalled the line in Raiders, “It’s not the years, it’s the mileage”, and felt he could not tell the difference between Ford during the shoots for Last Crusade and Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. (quoted from Wikipedia)
Read more on the official Indiana Jones site . . .