Title: How Steven Spielberg Turned Rejection into the Indiana Jones Franchise
Content:
The Rejection:
After accepting that meeting Mr. Bond wasn’t going to happen, Steven Spielberg took an alternative method to telling his own adventure series — with a brand-new hero, swapping an Aston Martin and a Walther PPK for a fedora and a whip. In an interview with the Daily Mail, he explained that when it came to his battle for Bond, “I’ve never asked again. Instead, I made the Indiana Jones series.”
The Indiana Jones Legacy:
It turned out all right as well. Swapping spies for snakes (“Why did it have to be snakes?”), the entire Indiana Jones timeline is riddled with homages to 007 — from Indy wearing the same dinner suit combo as Sean Connery did in “Goldfinger” to having the man himself play Dr. Henry Jones, the father of our hat-wearing-hero, in “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.” The film is considered a close runner-up to “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” which is deemed the absolute best Indiana Jones movie, according to fans.
A Tribute to Bond:
Years later, it was revealed that Spielberg couldn’t help himself. During Connery’s AFI Life Achievement Award ceremony, Spielberg explained that he picked Connery for Indy’s pop for a reason. “When George Lucas and I created the Indiana Jones series, it’s no secret that Bond movies were somewhere on our minds,” he confessed. “So when we had to cast Indiana Jones’ dad, I thought, who could possibly be more adventurous and daring and dangerous and charming and more wily and wonderful than Indiana Jones? Well, James Bond, of course.”