Spielberg Blames Lucas for “Indy 4”

Another day, another creative talent with Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull distancing themselves from the movie.

This time it’s director Steven Spielberg who says that if you didn’t like the alien aspect of the film, blame screenwriter George Lucas.

I’m very happy with the movie. I always have been,” Spielberg tells Empire Magazine. “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.”

But Spielberg won’t completely throw Lucas under the bus.  The director owns up to being the one behind one of the most infamous moments from the film.

“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,” he says. “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.”