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Indiana Jones and the Search for a McGuffin

By Eric Robinette | Monday, August 21, 2006, 03:46 PM

Much as I hate to say it, the more I hear about the long-delayed fourth Indiana Jones movie, the less excited I am about the prospect.

Take, for example, this report from Empire magazine that quotes George Lucas and Steven Spielberg.

Lucas talks about his story’s McGuffin, a Hitchcock-created term that refers to whatever object the villains are after, which drives the plot.

“Unfortunately, it was a little too ‘connected’ for the others. They were afraid of what the critics would think. They said, ‘Can’t we do it with a different McGuffin? Can’t we do this?’ and I said ‘No’. So we pottered around with that for a couple of years. And then Harrison really wanted to do it and Steve said, ‘Okay’. I said, ‘We’ll have to go back to that original MacGuffin and take out the offending parts of it and we’ll still use that area of the supernatural do deal with itâ€?

Huh?

Aside from sending out that smokescreen, Lucas is cheating the classic definition of the McGuffin. In Hitchcock’s terms, the audience isn’t supposed to care what the McGuffin is. In Notorious, it was uranium. In North by Northwest, it was microfilm. But they could have been anything. The fact that everyone is so concerned about Indy’s McGuffin raises a red flag to me. I guess you could say the ark of the covenant was a McGuffin, as was the holy grail in Last Crusade, but those objects are too sacred, too ostentatious, to be true McGuffins.

Spielberg isn’t much help, either, when he says: “Hopefully it will be different in all the right ways and the same in all the familiar ways.”

Wha?

Seems to me that even after all this time, no one has a grip on what this movie is supposed to be. Lucas is aiming for a 2008 release, but for now, Indy IV still falls under the “I’ll believe it when I see it” category.

Your thoughts?

Permalink | Comments (2) | Categories: Coming Attractions

Comments

By Allie D.

August 31, 2006 5:19 PM | Link to this

I think it could still be pulled off. Ford isn’t too old for the part just yet. In another five years, he may be, so it’s really now or never.

By SRCputt

August 22, 2006 10:21 AM | Link to this

They’ve waited too long. With Harrison Ford too old and River Phoenix dead, I don’t want to see the role recast, so I don’t want to see Indy IV ever.
 

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