Head on over to The Digital Bits to check out their comprehensive review of all four theatrical films that make up the new Indiana Jones 4-Movie Collection 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray set. The UHD set was released this week by Paramount and Lucasfilm in two different versions – the standard retail packaging edition and the Best Buy exclusive Steelbook edition.
In the summer of 1977, partly as a way to relax and partly to escape the chaos surrounding the theatrical release of Star Wars, filmmakers George Lucas and Steven Spielberg took a vacation with their families to Hawaii. Each man was on top of the world, having directed a certified blockbuster film, and it must have seemed as though the sky was the limit. Given their friendship, some kind of creative collaboration between the pair seemed obvious. When Spielberg noted that he’d always wanted to direct a James Bond film, Lucas revealed another idea he’d had that—like Star Wars—was based on the old Saturday matinee serials, this one concerning a globe-trotting archeologist who searched for ancient artifacts possessing supernatural power. Spielberg loved this concept, agreed to partner up on it, and brought Lawrence Kasdan in to help work on the story. Over the next three days, the trio sat in a room and worked out the entire plot of the film. When Kasdan set off to write the screenplay, adding a touch of Preston Sturges wit to the characters and dialogue, Spielberg turned to Harrison Ford, fresh off his turn as Han Solo in Star Wars, as an obvious choice for the title role. The film that resulted debuted in theaters on June 12, 1981… and became an instant hit, earning over $330 million worldwide. The rest, as they say, is cinema history. Three sequels followed, each directed by Spielberg and produced by Lucas, with a fifth on the way next year (it just began filming at the time of this writing) produced by Spielberg and Lucas and directed by James Mangold (of Cop Land, Logan, Ford v Ferrari fame).
Paramount and Lucasfilm have released these films a number of times on home video now, most recently on DVD (in 2003) and Blu-ray (Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull was the first to arrive on the format in 2008, followed by original trilogy in 2012). And now, at long last, all of these films have been re-scanned and remastered in native 4K for release in a new Indiana Jones: 4-Movie Collection on Ultra HD.
So let’s take a look at each of the films and discs in this set one by one…
