Look, just because we want to see the guy locked up for crimes against our (and most others') childhoods doesn't mean we despise George Lucas. We're getting there, of course, but there's no denying that beneath that wavy tuft of white hair and sprawling wattle is a thoughtful, brilliant, self-made billionaire whose accomplishments as a single father aren't far behind those of the Star Wars franchise he clearly so yearns to destroy. Which is why a revealing London Times profile of Lucas has us so torn today. Yes, we can accept Lucas's preoccupation with raising a female cagefighter by himself as a likely contributor to Howard the Duck's downfall. Fine. But, no — no, no, no — we cannot believe he actually thinks Indiana Jones 5 is an idea worth squabbling over with anyone, let alone Steven Spielberg:Really, though, [Indiana Jones 4] was a challenge getting the story together and getting everybody to agree on it. Indiana Jones only becomes complicated when you have another two people saying ‘I want it this way’ and ‘I want it that way’, whereas, when I first did Jones, I just said, ‘We’ll do it this way’ — and that was much easier. But now I have to accommodate everybody, because they are all big, successful guys, too, so it’s a little hard on a practical level. “If I can come up with another idea that they like, we’ll do another. Really, with the last one, Steven wasn’t that enthusiastic. I was trying to persuade him. But now Steve is more amenable to doing another one. Yet we still have the issues about the direction we’d like to take. I’m in the future; Steven’s in the past. He’s trying to drag it back to the way they were, I’m trying to push it to a whole different place. So, still we have a sort of tension. This recent one came out of that. It’s kind of a hybrid of our own two ideas, so we’ll see where we are able to take the next one.” Wow. Just as we think that's a thinly veiled acknowledgment of the film's inarguable awfulness, we know it portends a billionaire battle royale between Spielberg's hoary throwbacks and Lucas's planned '70s-era LeBeouf showcase Indiana Jones and the Doomed Left At LaBrea. With another trillion at stake (give or take; according to the still-active Indiana Jones PlunderWatch Ticker™), here's hoping for an inevitable resolution we can all tolerate through nubby, ground teeth.
