COOL STUFF

Top Ten 1950s Inspirations for Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

by Alex Billington
May 20, 2008
Source: MovieWeb

A few weeks back, MovieWeb posted an awesome article looking at the top ten 1950s inspirations for Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. They had spoken with George Lucas, who had told them that since the new film takes place in the 1950s, they "wanted to use that as our uber-genre. With this new film, we didn't look at it as a Saturday matinee serial from the 40s. We wanted it to reflect what was going on with the B movies of the fifties." Collaborating with Lucas, they came up with a list of 10 movies from the 1950s that should give moviegoers "a better understanding of the mythology and subtext found in George Lucas' latest film." If you've got time over the next few days, you might want to check these out.

From George Lucas: "When we made the original films, they all took place in the 1930s. They would have been impossible to do without having the Nazis as our antagonists. Now that we are dealing with the 50s, it's the same thing with the Russians. Because that's who we were up against at that time."

We were asked by MovieWeb to remove the content that was below, so in turn I'll ask that you head over to their site to check out the complete list with details. We've provided an abridged version below. We apologize for any inconvenience, as we were simply looking to share what I thought was a great list.

1. Rocketship X-M (1950)
2. King Solomon's Mines (1950)
3. The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951)
4. The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T (1953)
5. Them! (1954)
6. Naked Jungle (1954)
7. Rebel Without a Cause (1955)
8. Around the World in 80 Days (1956)
9. Atomic Testing (1945-1955)
10. Matinee (1993)

Please visit MovieWeb for complete details on all ten of the films.

What I particularly love about this list, again courtesy of MovieWeb, is that it really provides a thorough understanding of what George Lucas and Steven Spielberg are attempting to achieve with Kingdom of the Crystal Skull and where most of their major inspirations actually came from. You may eventually wonder, why did they choose ants?! Well, here's the answer! This isn't a film being made in the 2000s for this era, necessarily, it's being made to emulate the 1950s and productions like these above. That's what I love about Spielberg - he's not just making an action movie for the hell of it, he has an agenda.

Honestly, I hadn't really heard of most of these - give or take those like Them!, The Day the Earth Stood Still, and Around the World in 80 Days. But I'm now very curious to check them all out, especially in connection with Crystal Skull. I love exploring great classic cinema and each of these sounds as exciting as the one before it. After seeing the particularly 1950s inspired scenes in Crystal Skull, all I want to do is go back and relive actual films that were made in that time and this is the perfect list! If you need to, hold onto this until after you see Crystal Skull - it may come in handy then as well!

Thanks again to MovieWeb for for the quotes and inspiration. This article is part of our Indiana Jones Week special feature in anticipation of the release of Kingdom of the Crystal Skull this Thursday.

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