Monday, May 12, 2008

Real-Life Skull Worship Inspires New Indiana Jones Movie

I've been looking forward to the new Indiana Jones movie. I did not know that it is based on real beliefs of the Mayans.

There is a legend that the ancient Maya possessed 13 crystal skulls which, when united, hold the power of saving the Earth--a tale so strange and fantastic that it inspired the latest Indiana Jones movie.

Experts dismiss the hundreds of existing crystal skulls as fakes that were probably made by colorful antiquities traders in the 19th century. But Mayan priests worship the skulls, even today, and real-life skull hunters still search for them.

The true story of the skulls stretches over continents and hundreds of years, and may be even more extraordinary than the tale portrayed in this fourth installment of the Harrison Ford franchise.

It's unclear what version of the tale will appear in "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skulls," which opens in U.S. theaters on May 22. The plot apparently revolves around a race against the Soviets to find the skulls.

Distributor Paramount Pictures refused requests for interviews or information on the film, the first Indiana Jones movie since "The Last Crusade" came out in 1989.

cross-posted on A Catholic View

story here

2 comments:

Julie D. said...

Here is the real scoop about those crazy crystal skulls from one of my favorite podcasters, Skeptoid ... read the whole thing right here. Yep, you don't need to read it to know they are all fakes and those skulls were never Mayan ... but read it anyway. He's very entertaining. :-)

D. G. D. Davidson said...

I know a crystal skull plays an important part in some of the Max McCoy Indiana Jones novels. I wonder if they're drawing from McCoy for this or if they decided on this artifact independently.