In 2008 George Lucas and Steven Spielberg unleashed Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull on the world with, to put it mildly, mixed results. Often lost in the vehement diatribes about the ills of nuked fridges and CGI monkeys, is how long it took to develop the fourth film in the first place, mostly because of George Lucas. Several people took a hack at the script including M. Night Shylaman, but the one most people often buzzed about was director Frank Darabont's (The Shawshank Redemption, The Green Mile) entitled Indiana Jones and the City of the Gods. Darabont delivered a script in October 2003 that he worked on for over a year, a script that Ford and Spielberg loved and that dovetailed nicely into the release of the Indiana Jones DVDs. Unfortunately Lucas didn't like the script and shot it down.
Author David Hughes just came out with a new book called Tales from Development Hell and touched on Darabont's script. At this point I'd like you the reader to head to this website: http://www.filmschoolrejects.com/features/tales-from-development-hell-frank-darabonts-indiana-jones-and-the-city-of-the-gods.php?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+FilmSchoolRejects+%28Film+School+Rejects%29&utm_content=Google+Reader and read the actual description. It's only about a page so it won't take too long. Once you've done that come back to my blog and I'll give you my thoughts.
Done? Ready? Ok.
After reading this information my emotions are decidedly mixed. For one I think there are many elements of Darabont's script that I like--the plutonium aspect, the heightened Cold War issues, Indy's Dad and Salah being in the film, as well as the friend who betrays him being a Russian. The Marion Ravenwood character feels a little more like Marion Ravenwood too. Additionally, even though there is still an alien angle to the movie, it seems a little easier to swallow then Skull with all the psychic rigmarole.
Having said that, I'm sad to see that Darabont was the one that came up with the "Nuke the 'fridge" idea. I'm sorry that I ever thought George Lucas came up with that concept. (I don't forgive him for keeping it in the last movie however.) The fact that Darabont actually confronted Lucas and told him that he was a stubborn SOB makes up for the scene a little though. Even more infuriating however is that Lucas flat out rejected this script and then pulled a lot of the same concepts, and in some instances specific scenes, right out of Darabont's script and put them into Skull. If I'm Darabont I'm spitting nails because essentially Skull is a bastardization of his original screenplay.
Leaving the "nuke the fridge" aspect aside it seems to me that not only did Darabont have a better title for the fourth Indy film but a much superior script as well. I'd like to think that in some alternative universe this film was actually made but sadly in this one it was not be.*
*I'm hoping in that universe that Hayden Christiansen was never cast as Anakin Skywalker, Jar Jar Binks died in the first reel of Episode I, and that Saddam Hussein never came to power.
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