Indiana Jones, the brave tomb-raider and adventuring archaeologist, was one of the most beloved characters of the ’80s—and many fans wish it could have stayed that way. Nonetheless, two more films came out after the year 2000. One of those was Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, which was nobody’s favorite—even the director’s, according to new comments from Kathleen Kennedy.
Crystal Skull was a legacy sequel to the original trilogy. It came almost twenty years after the “final” film, The Last Crusade. It holds a steady 77% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, by no means a bad score. However, it is certainly not the highest-revered movie in the series.
Lucasfilm producer Kathleen Kennedy has said that the most significant contributor to why Crystal Skull was so ill-received was the fact that nobody working on it had their heart fully in it—and the fans seemed to know.
According to a Spielberg career overview from Vulture, the alien aspect introduced in the franchise’s fourth movie created a significant rift between he and George Lucas. Spielberg and star Harrison Ford believed aliens didn’t quite fit into the world of Indiana Jones. Kennedy told the publication:
“Steven was struggling with that movie. Harrison was struggling with the movie. They didn’t want to do a ‘Raiders’ movie that involved aliens, and they kind of got into a fight with George [Lucas] about it.”
Lucas said that his original idea for the movie was War of the Worlds-esque, even featuring UFOs. The team went through five scripts before settling on one. It satisfied everybody enough, but still kept the concept of otherworldly beings.
Kennedy says that Spielberg and Ford still never entirely bought into the concept. She thinks this is why the movie was worse than the previous installments. Spielberg went on to pull out of production for the fifth movie, The Dial of Destiny, in 2023. George Lucas, for the first time in the franchise’s run, played no role at all.
Whether or not this lack of participation from the franchise’s founding fathers was due to the tension ignited in 2008 is unclear. James Mangold took over, and the 2023 movie was rated even lower than its predecessor. But at least it didn’t have aliens.