Credit: LucasfilmA legendary filmmaker took it upon himself to re-edit an entire Indiana Jones film, and the results are pretty bizarre, to say the least.
On the eve of the fifth and final Indiana Jones movie being released in theaters, it is a good time to note that while Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, and Harrison Ford are jointly responsible for the creation of one of cinema’s most iconic heroes, they are not the only ones to have dabbled with the character.
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Specifically, legendary filmmaker Steven Soderbergh edited the entirety of Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) and pretty much created an almost entirely new experience; while the results are not at all what one is used to when watching Harrison Ford as Indiana Jones, it is difficult to say that it is not still oddly compelling.
Soderbergh Edited Indiana Jones as a Teaching Tool
In a blog post (from all the way back in 2014), Steven Soderbergh released his own version of Raiders of the Lost Ark to draw attention to the “staging” of the film, a theatrical term he defines as “how all the various elements of a given scene or piece are aligned, arranged, and coordinated.”
Basically, Steven Soderbergh took the work of Steven Spielberg and stripped it of its familiar elements, so a viewer could focus on the actual craftsmanship of filmmaking, instead of just the thrilling adventures of Indiana Jones. So how is it different?
Soderbergh’s ‘Raiders’ Is… Different
For starters, Steven Soderbergh’s version of Raiders of the Lost Ark is entirely monochrome, stripping away the vibrant colors we are used to seeing in Indiana Jones. Then he completely took out the sound; that includes dialogue, sound effects, everything. It’s basically a black-and-white silent movie.
Then, in the coup de grace, Soderbergh removed the iconic score by John Williams and replaced it with…the score from David Fincher’s The Social Network (2010), which was composed by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross and has a very different tone, to put it mildly.
‘Raiders of the Lost Ark’ Still Works
Steven Soderbergh is known as a highly experimental filmmaker, who has made movies as widely varied as the Ocean’s 11 series, the Channing Tatum Magic Mike movies, the non-linear Schizopolis (1996), and the Academy Award-winning Erin Brockovich (2000). By radically altering Indiana Jones in this way, it is clear that he is attempting to draw attention to the quality of its fundamental construction, which is a pretty high compliment.
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At the very least, even his version of Raiders of the Lost Ark is arguably better than Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008), but then, most things are.
