If the theme is going to be like a 50s sci-fi movie as Lucas suggested, then wouldn't the aliens be seen as a threat, or as evil creatures? Indy movies use over-the-top archetypes (Nazis, Thuggees) and those archetypes reflect the era the film is set in. So, a 50s setting would have archetypal evil Soviets, and threatening, must-be-destroyed aliens to reflect that era. Could the Ark be a tool to destroy an alien threat, as someone suggested?
Not necessarily evil... in the emergence of aliens in the 50s, there was a indeed a herd of dangerous "Things From Another World" on the one side - but on the other, there was a considerable crowd of the benevolent Klaatus and their "Days the Earth Stood Still".
I would assume that George Lucas means the overall ambience and style of the genre in the 50s rather than its actual subject matters...
But we'll see... (I still hope Shia will turn out to be the evil alien )
Last edited by JerryKing : 02-05-2008 at 04:02 PM.
Great. Aliens in an Indiana Jones movie - talk about officially jumping the shark.
Seems like over the years George Lucas has really become out of touch with what made his franchises good in the first place. Just see the awful Star Wars prequels.
Still interested in seeing this movie, I just hope I don't have to pretend it doesn't exist alongside "Terminator 3," and "Episodes 1,2,3 & The Special Editions."
bonus points for vampira and tor johnson. ::looks around:: yeah, yeah. i like the tim burton movie (ed wood).
have any of you subjected yourselves to eegah!? that's horror to write home about. though the turkish star wars might give it a run in the all-time razzies. eegah! has to be seen to be believed.
speaking of turkish cinema--you want z-movie paradise--that's it. check out winners like turkish star wars, e.t., the wizard of oz, superman, etc... there's also a pretty sad bollywood version of superman with his girlfriend spidergirl--and it's a musical.
little shop of horrors (1960) was filmed in 2 days and still managed to be hilariously entertaining. eegah! (1962) is not entertaining. it is horrifying for all the wrong reasons, tries to make a singing sensation after someone who can't act OR sing out of a paper bag and is frightfully dull, cheesy and is about a caveman. 'nough said.
at least ed wood is sometimes so bad he's good. next to eegah!, what i've seen of ed wood's actual movies on youtube--it doesn't look half bad. i actually had a friend who had one of those collections of the 50 worst films of all time or whatever. eegah! was the one he showed us. it was truly awful.
the '50s rocksploitation flick, go, johnny, go!, despite the awesome musical cameos is a pretty dire piece of dreck (the two young leads--good god! help! cheese! wimp! saccharine!) from alan freed soon before he ended up in the payola scandal. the '60s brought us frankie & annette. at least the elvis movies started and ended well with a iffy section in the middle (and some are downright awesome like jailhouse rock--the rocksploitation flick that all others with lesser budgets wished they could duplicate)--still not even remotely on the level of the majority of lesser budget rocksploitation flicks that you don't hear about anymore and with good reason.
it was the era of giant insects, end of the world radiation and bomb scares, sci-fi radiation causing said mutants, giant insects and zombies, aliens, commies, blobs, man-eating plants, one monster meets another monster, etc...
hopefully the ants won't be quite so... "them!"-sized.
I thought that with the fact that the movie was now set in the 50's...well this was a period when people started talking about Alien encounters. It was a time when people started looking for different things and what in the past might have been considered acts of gods or just not report were now being reported as alien encounters.
However if you look at a lot of books about our past like Finger prints of the gods some arcaeologists started theorizing that the great monuments of our ancient worlds, which archaeologists are deep into were actually built by alien entities.
The 50's certaily were a change in the perception of the world. A lot of movies and TV shows certainly show the 50's as a changing era. Take Spielberg's mini series, Taken. There was heavy development during the 50's of Alien interest. I think it's not too bad an idea to touch on Alien subjects. Iems like the Ark in the 30's may have been looked upon as Holy, but in the 50's people were becoming skeptical of these things and were looking for something else other than god. Also does anyone remember Dark Skies? I think that was set in the 50's or the 60's perhaps. The Roswell incident in 1947 certainly hanged a lot of things.
Really Indiana Jones would be touching on theories that inspired the movie Stargate. Looking at what look like miraculous feats or events and looking towards paranormal reasons for explaining them.
Was the Ark of the Covenant some Alien Device that has a reason for using it. belloch didnt know how to use it properly. Indiana knew about it. Imagine giving someone a loaded gun who didn't knw what it was about and then they fired it indiscriminatly at people? or perhaps the Sankara Stones is some form of power source from another planet that affects our world in a different way. Compare it to Nuclear power. Ok Nuclear power isn't the best example, but Nuclear power although dangerous used to power peoples home is a better use than it is to kill someone. The Sankara Stones had power, in the wrong hands they could prove devastating Mola Ram, bad. The innocent villa=good.
And the Holy Grail? Well who knows about that. often things we don't understand would be considered magic. Show a caveman a lighter and he would think it was the Holy Grail because he only knows one way to create fire.
I seem to have digressed, but my point was that Indiana Jones is set in era post Roswell and people started theorising moe about Aliens then and in more recent years a lot of debate has went into whether or not the creation of some o our ancient wonders were in fact influenced by visitors from other worlds with technology far more advanced than ours.
Maila Nurmi, who played Vampira in Plan 9 From Outer Space, was Finnish.
Back to Indy... I always thought Creature From the Black Lagoon wasn't so bad. I certainly wouldn't want to see a monster like that in an Indy film, but the overall mood in that film is pretty classic stuff. Didn't Lucas even mention that film as one of the influences for KotCS?
I trust the filmmakers' judgment on what stuff from the 50's is still usable and which ones should be left there.
speaking of turkish cinema--you want z-movie paradise--that's it. check out winners like turkish star wars, e.t., the wizard of oz, superman, etc... there's also a pretty sad bollywood version of superman with his girlfriend spidergirl--and it's a musical.
The following clip was my first encounter with the cosmic horror also known as Turkish Star Wars: http://youtube.com/watch?v=M9w99hX3LCs
Even though it's not really possible to feel actual physical pain from just watching a movie, the sense of grueling discomfort I experienced while subjecting myself to the above clip came pretty close.
It's pretty clear that Aliens aren't the 'baddies', the Reds are. The Aliens - which are yet to be confirmed, lest we forget - will be the Macguffin, like the Ark or the Grail, and in that context they're a suitably fantastical fit.
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