“We did about five scripts, and finally Steve and I compromised,” Lucas recalled.

George Lucas explains why Steven Spielberg and Harrison Ford resisted including aliens in Indiana Jones 4

"We did about five scripts, and finally Steve and I compromised," Lucas recalled.

By Wesley Stenzel

Wesley Stenzel

Wesley Stenzel is a news writer at **. He began writing for EW in 2022.

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June 11, 2026 4:18 p.m. ET

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George Lucas, Harrison Ford, and Steven Spielberg in Cannes, France, in 2008. Credit:

Stephane Cardinale/Corbis via Getty

- George Lucas said that Steven Spielberg and Harrison Ford both didn't want to include aliens in *Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull*.

- The *Star Wars* filmmaker said, "We did about five scripts, and finally Steve and I compromised."

- Producer Kathleen Kennedy said that Ford and Spielberg "were not 100 percent onboard" with the sequel.

Many audiences have groaned about the inclusion of the flying saucer at the end of 2008's *Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull* — and its creators weren't particularly enthusiastic about it, either.

In an extensive new oral history of director Steven Spielberg's career in Vulture, several key collaborators on *Kingdom of the Crystal Skull* discussed how the film came together, including producer George Lucas, producer Kathleen Kennedy, screenwriter David Koepp, and cinematographer Janusz Kamiński.

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.'"

The inter-dimensional being in 'Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull'.

Paramount Pictures

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.

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Despite Spielberg's resistance to making *Crystal Skull* too alien-heavy, Lucas said that it was the *E.T.* filmmaker's idea to include a circular vehicle that strongly resembles a spaceship.

"Steven put that last shot in, where they get into a flying saucer and take off," he recalled. "He was rationalizing it by saying, 'Well, they're going to another dimension. They have to get there somehow.' I said, 'It looks like a flying saucer.'"

Steven Spielberg and George Lucas in Los Angeles on June 9, 2016.

Frederick M. Brown/Getty

Lucas also noted that neither Spielberg nor Ford stuck by their commitments to avoid sci-fi projects, as Spielberg directed 2018's *Ready Player One* and this year's *Disclosure Day,* and Ford went on to star in 2011's *Cowboys and Aliens*, 2013's *Ender's Game*, and two *Star Wars* sequels.

"He did make a science-fiction movie after that, and Harrison did an alien movie," Lucas said.

Kamiński also said that shooting *Crystal Skull* was intensely challenging, in part because he was trying to mimic the aesthetic of the previous *Indiana Jones *movies. "*Kingdom of the Crystal Skull* by far was the hardest movie I've ever done in my life," he said. "It's the only movie where I was trying to copy another look, and I don't think I succeeded, because Douglas Slocombe, who did the other *Indiana Jones* movies, was just brilliant, and I'm not Douglas."

Harrison Ford, Shia LaBeouf, and Karen Allen in 'Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull'.

David James/Lucasfilm Ltd

Koepp said that he took the *Crystal Skull* screenwriting gig with "some trepidation" despite positive experiences working with Spielberg on the *Jurassic Park* films and *War of the Worlds*, and noted that he thinks Lawrence Kasdan, who wrote *Raiders of the Lost Ark*, might have been a better choice.

"Larry Kasdan is a friend of mine, and I was talking to him about a problem I was having with the scene where Harrison and Karen Allen are in this truck and he's talking about how he's gone out with a lot of women since her," he remembered. "He says that they all have the same problem. And she says, 'What's that?' And he says, 'They weren't you.' That's Larry's line. And it's the best line in the movie, because Larry probably should have written that movie."

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Kennedy said that *Indy 4* was extremely challenging for several of its key players. "*Crystal Skull* was a tough production for Janusz," she said. "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 about it."

She continued, "They ended up all of them doing what George wanted to do, which was probably the right thing. But Harrison and Steven were not 100 percent on board. That's why the movie, out of the four that Steven made, is the weakest."

The producer added that Ford's disappointment in *Crystal Skull* led to his insistence on making a fifth film, 2023's *Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny*. "That's why Harrison was so deeply committed to *Destiny*," she said. "He didn't want that to be the end."

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