Caffeinated Clint
A couple of days ago we had “Jurassic Park” actress Ariana Richards on our podcast and among topics discussed, we chinwagged over a possible “Jurassic Park 4” (wondering, of course, whether there might be a spot for her character, Lexi, in it). Richards said she’d heard a fourth film was in the works but has seemingly been relying on the internet for all information on it.
Today, she’ll have seen a story over at Empire in which “Jurassic” director Steven Spielberg offered an update on the long-gestating fourth “Jurassic Park”.
“The screenplay is being written right now by Mark Protosevich. I’m hoping that will come out in the next couple of years. We have a good story. We have a better story for four than we had for three…”
Protosevich wrote “I Am Legend” and “Thor” (as well as the upcoming Spike Lee directed “Oldboy”), so he’s a fairly nifty writer. “Jurassic Park 3”, I thought, was actually fairly decent so if the storyline they’ve got for “4” is better, expect something pretty solid.
Spielberg was also quizzed about the fifth “Indiana Jones” movie (while taking some of the blame for the fourth, “Crystal Skull”).
“You have to ask George Lucas. George is in charge of breaking the stories. He’s done it on all four movies. Whether I like the stories or not, George has broken all the stories. He is working on Indy V. We haven’t gone to screenplay yet, but he’s working on the story. I’ll leave it to George to come up with a good story.”
And Crystal Skull? “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.”
And on the specifics of the criticisms, Spielberg takes some of them as a badge of pride. “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.”
Such a pity Steven didn’t get to wear the crown on “Crystal Skull”, we might’ve been treated to a half-decent movie.
To listen to Ariana Richards on this week’s edition of The Hole Cast click here.
