In a recent interview with The Sun (via The Hollywood Reporter), Steven Spielberg suggested that he’d be open to a future Indiana Jones star being a woman, noting that they’d “have to change the name from Jones to Joan” and that there’s “nothing wrong with that” (other than the fact that last names don’t work that…
Broadly defined, a set piece is a thriller within a film, a self-contained showstopper-slash-showcase whose success depends in large part on a director’s chops. Since the 1970s, Steven Spielberg has reigned as its Hollywood master; regardless of what one thinks of his sentimental or narrative instincts, it’s hard to…
As long as you ignore the opinions of a few outliers, pretty much all of us can agree that Disney has done a good job taking over the Star Wars brand—we’re getting a movie every year, it’s all much more inclusive than it used to be, and all of our lives have been enriched by the existence of Porgs. That being said,…
Here’s another cautionary tale for men who plan to be obnoxious on the internet any time soon. After a screenshot from a recent Jeopardy! episode was shared on Facebook, one foolish dude took to the comments to argue that a question about the inspiration for Indiana Jones’ outfit in Raiders Of The Lost Ark was…
Defying the fridge-nuke-decrying, Crystal Skull-loathing masses, Steven Spielberg has made it clear that his least favorite Indiana Jones movie is still 1984’s bug-covered, monkey-brain devouring weirdness factory, Indiana Jones And The Temple Of Doom. This is per The New York Daily News, which recently confirmed…
The internet has developed a small cottage industry out of repurposing footage of white nationalist and certified Bad Human Being Richard Spencer getting punched in the face last month on the day of the Trump inauguration. Now, Nazi punching videos are moving out of the realms of Giphy and YouTube and into the real…
A good biography should endeavor to not simply tell the story of its subject’s life, but also to interrogate that life—by challenging and defending it, putting both its successes and missteps into a greater context. Every person is complicated, and a biography that merely recounts the life instead of probing it is…
Everybody knows Indiana Jones from his three good movies, his TV prequel series, his questionably canonical video games, his one bad movie, his many books, and his thrilling theme park attractions, but an artist named Patrick Schoenmaker wasn’t satisfied with all of that. He wanted more Dr. Henry Jones Jr. in his…
When Disney announced that it’d be releasing a fifth Indiana Jones movie directed by Steven Spielberg, it was inevitable. Since it purchased Lucasfilm, Disney has aggressively expanded Star Wars, but with few other franchise options available (sorry, underground Radioland Murders fandom), it was only a matter of when…
Adventurer-archaeologist Indiana Jones has borne witness to countless unimaginable horrors—a man’s face shredded in an airplane’s propellers, a human heart pulled still-beating from its thoracic cavity, the entire 119-minute run-time of Indiana Jones And The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull—and yet the merciful caress of…
True believers should brace themselves: The Indiana Jones saga never even happened. And that doesn’t just mean that the films are fictional, though they are. It means that they’re even less real than most fiction. In fact, the whole franchise is a lengthy dream/hallucination of a character from yet another multi-film…
Harrison Ford’s globe-hopping archaeologist encountered any number of completely impossible, frankly ludicrous obstacles over the course of four Indiana Jones films. But apparently, even that fantasy-based series had its logical threshold. When Indy survived a nuclear blast by hiding himself in an ordinary…
“Nobody talks like that anymore.”
When most people think about computer generated special effects in movies, they may imagine digitally created monsters, like Doomsday in Batman V Superman, or inanimate objects imbued with life, like the toys of Toy Story. But these days, digital effects artists in the movie business are also plying their trade in…
Even as the Lucasfilm casting department busies itself trying to find just the right young actor to reembody Han Solo in a potential string of Star Wars Anthology films, Steven Spielberg is echoing the sentiments of producer Frank Marshall and insisting that Harrison Ford’s other iconic action role will remain his in…
Noted prankster Steven Spielberg is up to his old tricks, teasing Indiana Jones fans with the possibility of a fifth film in the geriatric adventure franchise. Spielberg deployed his japes via a pre-recorded statement at the British Academy’s Britannia Awards this week, during a segment honoring Harrison Ford for his…
“Once I open the vault,” Jerry Seinfeld once said, “it ceases to be a vault.” Such quandaries do not seem to be an obstacle for Paramount Pictures, which has recently launched a YouTube Channel called the Paramount Vault where it will be making many of its full-length motion pictures available for free streaming.…
Today in comments that had the cadence of a joke but came across a little more threatening than intended, Steven Spielberg says he’ll “probably” do a fifth Indiana Jones movie with Harrison Ford. This terrifying information—well, terrifying for people who saw Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull—comes from an interview…
Stories about heroes are basically all alike. It doesn’t really matter when or where they take place or even if the characters have supernatural abilities or not. The same basic stuff is going to happen every single time. Columbia-educated mythologist Joseph Campbell (1904-1987) made a career of figuring this stuff…
Setting a new record in the field of “nerds spending good money on fake Star Wars crap,” auctioneers Profiles In History have announced that someone just spent $450,000 on a spaceship model from the iconic 1977 film. Specifically, the craft in question is the blockade runner, the ship carrying Princess Leia and the…