Empire Online has posted excerpt from their interview with Steven Spielberg, currently doing the rounds for The Adventures of Tintin: Secret of the Unicorn and his award-buzzy War Horse. He spoke candidly on the prospects of sequels to his most famous films, and his feelings on the mixed-reception to Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.
On Jurassic Park 4, things seems to be well underway:
Unfortunately, while Spielberg has left the dinosaur duties to the experienced writer of I Am Legend and the story for Thor, the Indiana Jones sequel is in less reliable hands.
Yet Spielberg remains loyal to Lucas and doesn’t blame him for the wide criticism of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, despite his reservations about the sci-fi elements of the title:
“I’m very happy with the movie. I always have been… I sympathise with people who didn’t like the MacGuffin because I never liked the MacGuffin. George and I had big arguments about the MacGuffin. I didn’t want these things to be either aliens or inter-dimensional beings. But I am loyal to my best friend. When he writes a story he believes in – even if I don’t believe in it – I’m going to shoot the movie the way George envisaged it. I’ll add my own touches, I’ll bring my own cast in, I’ll shoot the way I want to shoot it, but I will always defer to George as the storyteller of the Indy series. I will never fight him on that.”
“The gopher was good. I have the stand-in one at home. What people really jumped at was Indy climbing into a refrigerator and getting blown into the sky by an atom-bomb blast. Blame me. Don’t blame George. That was my silly idea. People stopped saying “jump the shark”. They now say, “nuked the fridge”. I’m proud of that. I’m glad I was able to bring that into popular culture.”
The Adventures of Tintin and War Horse are both due out 26 December 2011 in Australia from Paramount and Disney respectively.
