Chapter 5
Indiana
Jones and the Saucer Men from Mars... and
a look into the future for Indy
4!!
I. Introduction
At the time of its release Indiana
Jones and the Last Crusade was described
by Spielberg, Lucas and Ford as being the last
Indy film. Spielberg had already once left the
series, after Temple
of Doom, to make more 'adult' films, but
returned to fulfill his promise to Lucas that
he would helm three Indy films. Lucas simply felt
that he had no great Indy stories left to tell,
and was concentrating instead on building up his
Lucasfilm empire
and raising his children. Ford was looking for
more challenges as an actor.
One of the reasons that Lucas felt
the Indy films were finished is that each one
requires an object of some kind for Indy to chase
- the Ark, the Sankara stones, the Holy Grail.
But after Indy had found the Holy Grail, and that
other great archaeological relic - Henry Jones
Senior - what was left that would top these? The
answer came to him in the early Nineties, when
he was once more beginning to think about continuing
the Star Wars
saga. Lucas loves to delve into his own past and
mythologize it. The Star
Wars prequels would tell the story of a
young boy called Anakin, who grows up to do great
things, and just like Lucas, was a boyhood racer
- though Lucas raced cars rather than pods. If
Lucas could continue the Star
Wars saga by borrowing from his own past,
perhaps he could do the same with the Indiana
Jones series?
The idea and setting for the projected
Indy 4 comes directly from Lucas's own childhood.
The principal setting for this film is Fifties
America, where Lucas grew up, while the purpose
of the film is to encounter aliens in this setting
- just as alien movies of the 1950's showed Men
from Mars landing in Hicksville USA. Indy 4 would
pay homage to the alien invasion films of the
Fifties, which Lucas had loved as much as Flash
Gordon and the adventure serials that had
inspired Indy in the first place. And it would
show the world he had grown up in, small-town
America, complete with drive-ins, a fear of Communism,
and the shadow of the H-bomb. The artifact that
Indy seeks is similarly destructive, an alien
bomb ticking away, though as we will see, it has
links with ancient earthly civilizations, requiring
Indy's expertise.
The draft of Indiana
Jones and the Saucer Men from Mars that
I have is described as a 'revised draft' and dated
February 20, 1995. The date is significant; at
the time The X-Files
television series had become massively popular.
Lucas was tapping into the public's fascination
with the Roswell crash, aliens, and supposed Government
cover-ups. The date is significant for another
reason. Lucas began work on the script for the
Star Wars prequels
on November 1st, 1994, although he had probably
working on the basic storyline and events for
some time before that. A new art department for
the prequels had been established at Skywalker
ranch, and designs were being produced concurrently
with the script. Might Indiana
Jones and the Saucer Men from Mars be a
rehearsal for the prequels by Lucas, a kind of
test for himself? After all, he had not been involved
directly in scripting and story work for a film
for at least five years before this (Last
Crusade). If the revised draft is February
1995, a first draft may have been produced months
before, and the story probably first took shape
before the November 1994 start date for the Prequels.
The story is by Lucas and Jeb Stuart,
who also bears the credit for the screenplay.
Stuart is an experienced action film scribe, responsible
for Die Hard and
The Fugitive among
others. His script collects all the basic ideas
- a Roswell-like alien crash, Russian spies, action
sequences - and turns them into a fast-paced exciting
action movie that pays homage to the previous
Indy films on almost every page. But would it
have made a great Indy 4? Possibly not. If the
Indiana Jones films were a long-running franchise
like the James Bond films, then yes, it would
have made an excellent entry in the series. But
for the last ever Indy film, and one that utilizes
the talents of Ford, Spielberg and Connery (yes,
Indy's dad is back!), well, it's not quite right
- it's just not quite special enough. But judge
for yourself! A word of warning, though. Although
it's extremely unlikely that this script will
become the real Indy 4, elements of it, action
sequences, characters and settings, may certainly
find their way into it. All the previous Indy
films borrowed from failed scripts - Temple
of Doom borrowed sequences junked from
Raiders of the Lost Ark,
while Last Crusade
did the same, borrowing scenes from Chris Columbus's
failed Monkey King
script (for information about those, read the
previous installments of this article!). So spoiler-haters
beware - your enjoyment of Indy 4 may be compromised
by what you are about to read.
II. The Saucer
Men Script
The script begins with those magical
words 'From the Paramount mountain WE DISSOLVE.
. .to an identical mountain towering over a subtropical
jungle'. We are in Borneo, 1949. Indy is on an
archaeological expedition, on board a small steamer
boat, drifting down a crocodile infested river,
when he is attacked by pirates. The pirates, led
by the suave Baldassare, are after a treasure
map and a golden idol Indy has in his possession.
A fight ensues, and the pirates get a fake map,
but Indy and his native companion, Kabul, get
away. Although it seems business as usual, Indy
says he's getting too old for this kind of thing,
and talks about retiring from field work. We also
learn that Marcus Brody has died.
Indy was supposed to accompany a
Princeton archaeologist, Dr. Elaine McGregor,
on an expedition downriver to find a lost temple,
but decides to tell her he's retired. However,
when he goes to find her at a river wharf, and
sees her ('early thirties and beautiful') he changes
his mind... and falls completely in love. And
so does she, despite being already engaged. We
flash forward six weeks. Indy and Elaine are still
in love, but in a jam - Baldassare and his gang
have captured them and Kabul and left them tied
up over a mound of army ants, who can 'strip an
elephant to the bone in two hours'. They trick
Baldassare into taking Elaine with him, then Indy
and Kabul escape (in a great scene), rescue Elaine,
and send Baldassare and his men over a vast waterfall,
'half a mile wide and a thousand feet high'! After
which - read this twice - Indy proposes to Elaine.
We cut to Indy and Elaine's wedding
day, back in the States (Elaine has dumped her
boyfriend). Henry Jones Senior is disapproving
of the speed of the wedding, but more than a little
impressed by Indy's bride-to-be. The chapel provides
some great visual comedy - Elaine's respectable
family and guests are contrasted with Indy's 'more
worldly group of friends'... including Willie
Scott, Marion, Sallah and Short Round. However,
just before the ceremony starts a man drives up
in a dark sedan car, talks animatedly with Elaine,
and they drive off together. Indy climbs into
the wedding car, still with cans on the back,
and a chase begins through Princeton campus, but
Elaine and the mystery man get away.
That night Indy hits a bar to drown
his sorrows, with Willie and Marion, who reminisce
about the past, and don't exactly make him feel
better. Indy sneaks into Elaine's office on campus,
and finds a photograph of her and the mystery
man, Bolander, in a military uniform - and their
marriage certificate! It turns out both were in
Army intelligence, and there is something else,
a telegram, which says that 'a recent discovery
requires her immediate attention'. . .at the White
Sands rocket base in New Mexico. Indy heads down
there on a DC-3 (with the now traditional map/plane
montage!).
Indy shows up at 'Al's Atomic Diner',
where the waitress knows Bolander by sight, and
tells him to follow a line of army trucks up to
the testing ground. Also at the diner are two
cowboys, who follow Indy. Indy is denied entry
to the rocket base, but gets in on horseback,
and follows the convoy to a blackened, burned
crash mark on the ground, a mile long. He is spotted
and chased, and knocked out. He wakes in an interrogation
tent, to be greeted by Bob Bolander, the man from
the wedding. . . and apparently Elaine's husband.
There is also a General there. Indy is asked what
he's seen, and told he can't see Elaine; he tries
to escape, but just then she walks in, and convinces
them to let Indy go. Elaine is a linguist, and
works for army intelligence.
We find out that during the war
Indy was actually 'Colonel Jones', and worked
for OSS (the forerunner to the CIA). Elaine tells
Bolander and the General that she needs Indy to
work with her, and despite Bolander's objections
the General agrees. We (and Indy) find out that
the mile-long crash mark belongs to wreckage which
the Army believes to be from an alien spaceship.
Indy is skeptical at first, but changes his mind
when he is shown a small stone cylinder, covered
in pictographs, cuneiforms and hieroglyphics...
alien symbols which also resemble the writing
of ancient cultures, Egyptian, Mayan, Sanskrit.
All the writings refer to power, and when the
cylinder is brought next to a radio and a light
bulb, the radio bursts into music, while the light
bulb and the cylinder glow with the intensity
of the sun - even though the cylinder remains
cold.
No one knows what the cylinder is,
but Indy and Elaine race to decipher the markings.
Meanwhile we cut to the New Mexico desert, where
we see the two cowboys that we first saw in the
Atomic Diner. They shoot two MP's at a roadblock;
the cowboys are really two Russian spies, Veska
and Cheslav. Cheslav, the older of the two is
'a charming, Russian James Bond', who we find
out has tangled with Indy before. Back at the
military encampment Indy and Elaine have made
progress. The cylinder was found in the hands
of one of the dead aliens, four miles from the
crash site; Indy and Elaine have worked out that
the alien was heading for Mt. Keemo, a distant
mountain long associated with ancient Indian religions,
where in 1525 the Spanish noted 'strange lights
around the summit'. The cylinder's markings are
mostly numbers, co ordinates of latitude and longitude,
that correspond to the mountain and others like
it around the world, all areas of supposed contact
with extraterrestrial life. So the alien was trying
to get to the mountain with the cylinder. . .and
the writings warn of dark consequences if it is
not returned, 'visits of fire-breathing serpents,
monsters, dragons' and a tremendous power unleashed.
The General is half convinced, but another scientist,
Dr. Bernard, remains skeptical. Indy goes out
of his tent to watch the dawn breaking, and sees
an intense light in the distance - an atom bomb
is being tested. Bolander appears, they talk briefly
about the bomb; Indy is not a fan of the A-bomb,
but Bolander's a true believer - 'the atom is
our friend' he says.
Disgusted, Indy goes back into the
tent but finds Elaine and the alien device in
the hands of Veska and Cheslav, who plan to take
it back to Moscow! There is a fight, but the Russians
escape with the cylinder and Elaine, and set off
explosions in the camp. Indy chases them to the
missile base, and into a concrete bunker. He ends
up locked in deadly combat with Veska on top of
a rocket sled... which is about to be fired. The
rocket sled is catapulted at 200 miles an hour
down a five-mile track, with Indy and Veska clinging
to the metal chassis (and still fighting), inches
from the flaming rocket exhausts. Indy wins the
fight, Veska gets fried, and Indy manages to sabotage
the engine of the rocket sled. But now he is in
the middle of the desert, alone and exhausted,
when an ambulance and car approaches... with Russian
drivers. They knock Indy out and put him in the
trunk of the car. But these Russian spies aren't
as efficient as Cheslav - they get lost and wind
up in a strange town called 'Boomsburg', which
doesn't appear to be on their map. The spies get
out to find a phone, and Indy, who has sprung
the lock on the trunk, gets out too. He goes into
a house which is full of dummies, only to find
that the whole town is a fake - a mock-up designed
for a A-bomb test! At which point Indy says, you
got it, "I've got a bad feeling about this..."
A civil defense siren starts to
wail and the two Russian spies make a break for
it, so Indy - get this - finds a two foot concrete
hollow in the floor of a house and pulls a lead-lined
refrigerator over him...! The spies meanwhile,
have driven the wrong way, into the blast zone
instead of out of it (the town is just outside).
The bomb goes off and the two spies are incinerated,
but Indy is saved by his refrigerator! (Although
'Boomsburg' is destroyed). A decontamination team
turns up, scrubs him clean, and, well, it's a
ridiculous moment that mars an otherwise good
script. Back at the base Indy finds out that the
numbers they deciphered on the alien cylinder
have been fed into a computer; apart from the
coordinates there are others that represent a
descending scale. In other words, a countdown
- the cylinder is a bomb! But then Bolander drops
a bombshell of his own - Indy is placed under
arrest on suspicion of espionage and taken to
a hanger. He escapes, and sneaks around, to see
one of the military scientists, Dr. Bernard, speaking
in Russian, and supervising the loading of crates
of spaceship debris onto trucks. Indy follows
Dr. Bernard out of the military base to an airstrip
in the desert, where he sees Cheslav and Elaine.
A Russian Tupolev flying fortress lands and Indy
sneaks aboard, after disguising himself as one
of the Russian soldiers who have come in on the
plane. The crates are loaded up and the plane
takes off, with Bernard, Elaine and Indy aboard,
but leaving Cheslav behind; Indy gives him a wave
as the plane taxis past.
On board Bernard shows Elaine the
alien cylinder. Two rings have changed color,
showing that the countdown is in progress. Bernard
believes that it's secrets can be unlocked by
the Russians, who will rule the earth for centuries
using its power. Indy meanwhile has been captured
by the other Russian soldiers, and Bernard orders
him to be thrown out of the bomb bay doors. But
just as they're about to do so, something flashes
past the plane and disappears into the clouds.
It is a flying saucer, and it returns and holds
the plane in a kind of tractor beam; they want
the cylinder back! Just then two US air force
jets arrive, and take on the flying saucer, scoring
a hit with their missiles. The saucer releases
the plane from its tractor beam, and destroys
the two jets. On the Flying Fortress a battle
has broken out - Bernard wants to try and shoot
down the plane with a bazooka. Indy struggles
with a Russian guard, the weapon goes off, blasts
through the cockpit, and hits the saucer, damaging
it. The plane too begins to crash. Elaine grabs
the cylinder, but is sucked out of the plane.
Indy grabs a parachute and jumps after her, catching
her, and they are saved as the plane crashes to
earth. The saucer, clearly damaged, returns and
scans the wreckage for the cylinder, then flies
off.
It is now dusk. Indy and Elaine
head for a tiny town. Indy leaves Elaine in an
old Indian trinket shop and goes to look for a
'phone. The whole place is eerie and deserted.
Suddenly the saucer returns, and we get what might
be this film's 'phobia scene'; we've had snakes,
bugs, rats, in the Indy films, and now aliens.
An enormous spidery alien enters, reaching towards
Elaine with seven-foot long arms. Elaine runs,
but another appears behind her. So far, so scary,
but the thing that would really have freaked the
audiences out is when it begins to speak and says:
'Mookaarahhh...' Yikes. A stray dog attacks the
alien and Elaine seizes her chance to escape.
Her and Indy dive into an old pickup and drive
like blazes. They hide out in a drive-in that's
showing - you guessed it - a cheesy Sci-fi alien
movie. Elaine watches the film with informed interest
while Indy calls the base, then goes back to the
pickup... and to blend in with every other couple
they begin to make out. While the cinema screen
shows an alien armada landing the real flying
saucer floats over the cars, finds the cylinder
with its scanner, and silently picks up the truck
with a tractor beam. Indy and Elaine, of course,
are too busy to notice. They finally realize what
has happened when they are far out in the desert
sky.
The saucer gently puts the truck
down and lands, and a small bug-like creature
emerges. Elaine explains that the ones back at
the trinket shop were different, kind of like
soldiers. The creature sees the cylinder and utters
the same word that the other alien used: 'Mukara'.
Elaine realizes that it is frightened of the device,
and suddenly realizes that the word 'Mukara' means
'dangerous' in Sanskrit. She begins talking to
them (!) and they (Elaine and Indy) offer to give
them the device back, but the aliens don't want
it! They're scared! A second later explosions
rock the area, and Indy and Elaine look up to
see the hills surrounding them and the space craft
are ringed with military vehicles. They open fire,
hitting the spacecraft, which tries to take off
but explodes into a mountainside in a fireball.
The army come down and Bolander orders Indy and
Elaine to be arrested. Indy tells a concerned
General that the army have made a big mistake
- the small space craft was an unarmed ship. Meanwhile
the rings on the cylinder are continuing to light
up - time is running out.
Bolander, of course, doesn't want
to know. Indy and Elaine are loaded into a troop
truck, and we (and Indy) see that one of the army
sergeants present... is Cheslav, in another jeep.
All around, the clouds are boiling, lightning
is flashing, and something else - a saucer is
following them. Indy and Elaine manage to overpower
the guards in the truck then Indy climbs into
the cab ('Don't worry, I've done this before',
he says...) Or rather, he attempts to climb into
it, but slips, and it's up to Elaine. She grabs
a gun and points it at the driver through the
window behind the cab. Elaine and Indy take over
the truck.
The General orders an attack on
a small saucer sitting upon a ridge, and the whole
of the army open fire on it. It seems to be damaged,
but then we see that the saucer is really the
top of a much larger saucer hidden beneath the
desert, which rises up and destroys the whole
army in a massive sandstorm. Bolander makes a
run for it with the cylinder in a jeep, Indy and
Elaine follow him in the troop truck, and the
General is buried along with his forces. Indy
leaps into Bolander's jeep, slugs him, and they
reach the summit of Mt. Keemo at dawn. A stone
cairn tells them they have found the right place.
Three saucers come up the side of the mountain,
and Indy places the cylinder on the rock cairn.
Suddenly a voice shouts at him to stop! It is
Cheslav, holding Elaine at gunpoint! But instead
Indy steps away from the stone pile, which begins
to glow. Now Bolander reappears, and knocks Cheslav
down, then grabs the cylinder. For a moment, he
is exultant... maniacal... screaming 'Bow down
rulers of the universe for I have the power!'
The saucers fade momentarily as if their energy
is being sapped, then glow brighter. White light
erupts from the device, and Bolander points it
at Cheslav, who is zapped and melts instantly
before our eyes. Then he aims it at the saucers,
but it has no effect, and instead Bolander himself
is split in two by a beam of energy, and 'crumples
in a melting mass'. The device is held suspended,
as the ground glows white, then suddenly there
is a sound like an incredible thunderclap and
the saucers disappear. The mountain is whipped
by furious winds, then silence. Indy and Elaine
are alone.
In the final scene we are back at
the Princeton church. Indy's dad is disbelieving
of the flying saucers ("Doesn't this world
hold enough mysteries that you don't have to go
out and make some new ones?"). The marriage
takes place and Sallah, Willie, Marion and the
others throw rice. Indy and Elaine climb into
their wedding car, and Short Round turns around
in the driver's seat. He asks him, "Where
to, Dr. Jones?" and Indy replies, you guessed
it, "The airport Shorty, and step on it."
The End!
Indiana
Jones and the Saucer Men from Mars is a
great, fun read, especially for adventure starved
Indy fans. Whether it would have made a good film
is another question. While it's full of action,
there's nothing in it on an emotional level to
compare with Indy's search for his father in Last
Crusade, and the rekindling of their relationship.
The love affair with Elaine is convincing but
shallow. Their relationship begins on one level
- true love - and stays there. True, Indy knows
less about her than he thinks, but finds this
out as information. He doesn't learn about her
character from her behavior. The action sequences
are well-written and the film itself is tightly
plotted, and it's fun to see an Indy script focusing
on a great modern legend instead of an ancient
one - the flying saucer scares of the Forties
and Fifties, and the rumors of US Government cover-ups.
But there's just not enough there outside the
action to interest a director and actor of the
stature of Spielberg and Ford. It is easy to see
why Lucas came up with the idea; he gets to revisit
his own childhood in Fifties America. But for
Spielberg, making the film would have been a retrograde
step, taking him back to territory he had explored
amply in E.T.
and Close Encounters,
while Ford would have found little to challenge
him in the role as written. And Henry Jones Seniors
cameo appearance, while well-written, would have
been a criminal misuse of Sean Connery's time.
III. Indiana
Jones 4?
So where is Indy 4 going to go?
Saucer Men almost
certainly won't be it. There have been many rumors
floating around on the Net, but precious few hard
facts. Short of breaking into the safe in George
Lucas's office, none of us is going to know anything
until - and if - it starts shooting. However,
based on the production process for the previous
Indy movies, it's certainly possible to make a
few educated guesses, first about the content
and then the plot of the movie.
All the Indy scripts since Raiders
of the Lost Ark have reused ideas from
previous scripts and previous drafts. The mine
car chase in Temple of
Doom was originally in Raiders, while the
speedboat chase and tank sequences in Last
Crusade were originally borrowed from Chris
Columbus's failed Indy 3 script (see the earlier
installments of Raiders
of the Lost Drafts for details!!). That
script also featured a fight on a riverboat in
the jungle with pirates, and a similar scene finds
its way into the opening of Saucer
Men. I wouldn't be surprised if it crops
up again in Indy 4. As for the villains, many
have speculated that they could be Russians; Cheslav
in the Saucer Men
script is an excellent character, and I wouldn't
be surprised to see him again. One thing's for
sure, the villains will be Europeans, Americans
or Russians; after Temple
of Doom was accused of racism and stereotyping,
we aren't going to see any non-white peoples as
bad guys. For the same reason, I would be surprised
to see native people's of any kind playing a big
role, unless they're completely friendly and not
foolish and villainous in any way, but that would
make Indy's job much easier and hence reduce dramatic
tension (Saucer Men
gets around this by showing a native people's
that have a capacity for both stupidity and villainy...
Americans!). The idea of Indy finally getting
married is a good one, if unimaginatively handled
in Saucer Men,
and I think it's likely to be revisited in the
final Indy script.
The next Indy film is not going
to get made if the only challenges it provides
are to ILM. Last
Crusade only got made because the idea
of showing the relationship between Indy and his
father was one that captured Spielberg's imagination,
and Ford's. Spielberg was able to consider father-son
relationships within the context of an action
movie, including his own with his father. The
obvious next step would be to show Indy in a relationship
with his own child. Examining such a relationship
would be interesting for Spielberg, who himself
has children, and perhaps for the legions of Indy
fans who first saw Raiders
as children - and would be taking their own children
to see Indy 4!
The fan-script Sons of
Darkness imagined that Marion Ravenwood
had had a son by Indy, called Abner. While this
script was a fake (a pretty good fake, in some
respects, except for its depiction of Joseph Stalin
as a lovable old grouch) it's interesting that
Lucasfilm slapped
an injunction on it when it first hit the net.
True, LFL is pretty
zealous about defending any possible copyright
infringement, but perhaps the idea of an Indy
Junior had them worried as being close to an idea
that was already being knocked around. More recently
there have been rumors that Natalie Portman has
asked, or been asked to play Indy's daughter.
If Indy was to have a kid, who would be the mother?
Obviously, it would have to be Marion or Willie.
Now the fan choice would definitely be Marion,
but Karen Allen would be unlikely to return, having
fallen out with Spielberg after Raiders.
While the fans would hate it, Kate Capshaw is
the most likely to return, not least because she's
Spielberg's wife. There have also been some rumors
suggesting her involvement. And finally, the rumors
of M. Night Shyamalan's co-option onto the project
(which probably amount to no more than a preliminary
meeting of some kind, a getting-to-know-you session
with Spielberg) might indicate some kind of relationship
between Indy and a child, given Shyamalan's obvious
facility for scripting adult-child relationships.
He's also a HUGE Raiders
of the Lost Ark fan.
So far, so good - we know nothing,
but we've been able to make a few educated guesses.
What about the plot, the quest, the magical object
that Indy pursues - what will he be looking for
in Indy 4? There are two contradictory statements
on this. Spielberg has been known to remark that
the next Indy film will concern a search for the
Biblical Garden of Eden, and a possible title
has been touted: Indiana
Jones and the Garden of Life. As George
Lucas said after Last
Crusade, coming up with a big important
artifact for Indy to chase is difficult after
the Holy Grail (and Dad). Saucer
Men attempts to deal with this by having
an extra-terrestrial artifact for Indy to go after.
The Garden of Eden would be a suitably important
focus for the film's plot. I think this is one
of the top two contenders for the next film's
central concept.
Jimgrim
novel cover. |
|
And the other one? I have a theory,
and it goes right back to Indy's origins. Way
back in the first chapter of this article I suggested
that Indy was strongly inspired by a 1920's pulp
action hero, Jimgrim,
hero of about a dozen novels by the cult author
Talbot Mundy. Lucas was introduced to them by
his friend Phil Kaufman, who helped to come up
with the original storyline for Raiders.
The Indy films share many things in common with
'Jimgrim', such as the settings (the Middle East,
The city of Petra, Cairo, Alexandretta, Nepal,
India), and the sense of ancient civilizations
and threats being reawakened in the present; they
also borrow wholesale from the novels. Sallah,
Short Round, and Marion all bear a strong resemblance
to characters from the Jimgrim
stories, while Temple
of Doom borrows VERY heavily from a novel
called The Nine Unknown.
Having used so much Jimgrim
material already, I wouldn't be surprised if Lucas
borrowed the premise of Indy 4 from the last Jimgrim
novel (titled 'Jimgrim'), the only one he hasn't
touched yet. It concerns the lost city of Atlantis...
We have all heard the rumors about
Atlantis being the storyline for Indy 4, and dismissed
them as being somehow mixed up with the Infernal
Machine game. But the very existence of
so many rumors might suggest something concrete
behind them. In any case, if Lucas follows the
pattern of 'borrowing' heavily from Jimgrim and
Talbot Mundy, then Atlantis is a definite possibility.
That last Jimgrim novel is about a madman called
Dorje, who has discovered the remains of the fabled
civilization buried deep within the Gobi desert
(a buried city is one of the last great adventure
settings that the Indy films have not utilized
yet, and besides, Lucas loves the idea of an underground
city - something similar was lined up, but dropped,
for Return of the Jedi
and The Phantom Menace,
and pre-production art exists). In the buried
city Dorje finds Atlantean secrets preserved in
scrolls in synthetic gold tablets, written in
a language closely resembling Chinese - and holding
the secrets of fabulous, destructive weapons...
Now this is a great scenario for
an Indy film, and one that could also utilize
elements of the Saucer
Men screenplay quite easily. After all,
Atlantis has often been connected with extraterrestrial
life in various legends and theories. Parts of
the Saucer Men
script are pretty good, especially the first 45
pages or so, and feature some killer action sequences,
notable Indy's fight with a Russian spy atop a
rocket sled. The arrival of the Flying Fortress
plane provides a means by which the action could
move from the New Mexico desert to almost anywhere.
And a buried city deep under the Gobi desert would
be classic Indy territory. Who knows? Indy's daughter,
Atlantis, Flying Saucers... All this is guesswork
on my part, but at least it's informed guesswork,
based on a study of how the previous Indy films
were developed.
One's thing for sure, a bad script would be worse
than none. On the other hand, Lucas, Spielberg
and Ford have the opportunity not just to end
the saga on a rousing finale, but to do something
really special with the character of an older,
wiser, remorseful Indy (thinking of all the mistakes
he's made, the people he's hurt...). They could
provide modern American cinema's greatest hero
with the kind of coda that an ageing Clint Eastwood
gave his gunfighter character in Unforgiven, and
turn an action legend into an American myth.
That's all folks - hope I get to
write the sixth chapter of this article in a few
years time, looking at the early drafts of Indy
4, the real Indy 4. Adios, amigos!
Bibliography
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