The New em Indiana Jones /em May Be Unnecessary--but It's a Blast

In 1979, when Steven Spielberg and George Lucas signed with Paramount Pictures to develop a film series based on classic Hollywood adventure serials, the deal they struck was to make five separate movies. The first, Raiders of the Lost Ark, was released in the summer of 1981 and became that year's top-grossing movie, beating even the long-anticipated Superman II and remaining on screens in some cities for more than a year. By 1984, it was Raiders' sequel, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, that had become the year's most anticipated movie, banking that year's biggest opening weekend, and the third entry in the franchise, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, became not only the highest-grossing movie of 1989 but the top-earning Indiana Jones movie yet. Given that track record, and viewed from the perspective of our own IP-crazed times, it seems inconceivable that Spielberg and Lucas decided not to move forward immediately with a fourth Indiana Jones picture (though Lucas did go on to produce a spinoff TV series, The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles). Lucas' idea, a riff on the 1950s sci-fi films that would have been contemporaneous with a middle-aged Indy, was to introduce extraterrestrial beings into the previously earthbound Raiders universe.