For much of the 1990’s, Indiana Jones fans dreamed of a fourth film, and rumours spun around faster than a circular alien-but-not-quite-alien vessel. Chief amongst those rumours was that George Lucas had written an adventure called Indiana Jones and the Saucermen from Mars, which would feature Indy, Marion, Short Round, Salah and an alien mystery that eventually petered out after the arrival of the 1996 smash hit Independence Day, but elements of the story remained and lived on in the 2008 adventure Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. However, there was a key change; unwilling to do another alien related movie (Harrison Ford after Star Wars and Steven Spielberg after CE3K, E.T and War of the Worlds) the MacGuffin had to be tweaked, so to speak.
Lucas, who shepherded the creative direction of Crystal Skull as well as the preceding three Indy films, took credit for the movie’s sci-fi elements — and said Spielberg and star Harrison Ford didn’t want to work on another alien movie.
“I wanted it to be kind of a War of the Worlds sort of thing,” Lucas recalled, referring to the legendary H.G. Wells alien invasion novel that Spielberg later adapted into a film in 2005. “Harrison said, ‘I’m not going to do another science-fiction movie.’ And Steven said, ‘I’m not going to do another science-fiction movie.'”
Lucas said that tried to convince Spielberg to accept the alien component of the story because it was appropriate for the era in which the film was set. “I said, ‘Steven, this is perfect because it’s the 1950s, when flying saucers were a whole thing,’ but he said ‘no,'” the Star Wars filmmaker said.
The American Graffiti director said that Spielberg eventually acquiesced on the condition that the climax’s otherworldly visitors were not space travelers. “We did about five scripts, and finally Steve and I compromised: ‘Look, what if they’re not aliens but from another dimension,'” he said.
