You knew it had to show up online eventually, and tonight it did. Frank Darabont’s Indiana Jones 4 script, the one George Lucas threw in the trash after it had already been approved by Steven Spielberg and Harrison Ford, is all over the internet. No I can’t tell you where it is, because anywhere I point to will invariably be shut down within seconds. Lucasfilm or Fox or both and their cadre of attorneys are all over this one.
I can tell you this much, having read just the first few pages: Frank Darabont deserves a writing credit. The opening credits sequence of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is a direct ripoff of the one here, in some cases shot by shot. In other places, the final script by David Koepp simply rips off locations. For instance the Atomic Café from the final film is here, except it’s not some weird prop placed for bombing, it’s an actual café where Indy has lunch. The biggest difference I’m noticing so far, is that Darabont’s script isn’t silly and kid friendly. There are no gophers. Darabont’s is also a lot more thoughtful, and you can tell from Indy's first lines of dialogue. It’s like Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, if it were written solely for adults. I’m willing to bet that when I get further in, those hilarious monkeys will be noticeably absent.
We’ll see how it goes as I keep reading. Maybe Darabont’s script suddenly falls apart at the end, and the Koepp/Lucas effort will best it. But I doubt it. George Lucas’s propensity for torpedoing the story of anything he’s involved in is near legendary by now. We’ll always wonder about the Indiana Jones 4 that might have been… if Spielberg and Ford had somehow managed to push Lucas out of the filmmaking process.
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To be fair, having now read the entire Darabont script, it's not necessarily better than Koepp's version.
Either version could have been revised and made into a movie better than the one we got (which I like) but I think Koepp's version as is works better. Darabont has Indy not afraid of snakes only to then have him eaten(!) by a giant one. Darabont has Indy doing the vine-swinging (twice) and a monkey pooping on his chest. Darabont has a lizard sunning itself instead of a prairie dog (so that's a wash). Darabont has Indy get drunk and steal the idol (from Raiders) back from a museum. Darabont has them falling down four (4 - not 3) waterfalls in a truck not even designed to serve as a boat and surviving. Darabont has the UFO ending. Darabont has them driving off a cliff and landing in a tree which snaps backward and kills the pursuing baddies. Darabont has the surviving a nuclear bomb in the fridge scene too. In fact I would say that Darabont deserved some kind of credit on the movie as a lot of his script is in the movie even though he doesn't have Mutt and doesn't have Spalko (instead he has far too many faceless villains).
I agree with Junorhane, I don't know what Koepp's version looked like before the film was completed but Frank Darabont's was far from being the Indy fan savior. Kingdom, as mediocre as it may be was still streamlined into a slick movie experience. Darabont's although doing more justice to the characters is a little bit of a mess. Still, it seems to me that both versions suffer from Lucas' story treatment. Not a fun time to be the man in the beard.
A lot of people are going to pan Lucas without having even read Darabont's script and that's just a sign of having an agenda and being ignorant. I've read City of Gods a couple of times now and while it has some moments I would have loved to see incorporated into the final film (the human sacrifice elements, the more mysterious/horrific treatment the skull was given), it's filled with cringeworthy dialogue ("Adventure still has a name!"), embarassing plot twists and mediocre set pieces. Had this movie been made, every last person here who's quick to blame Lucas for KOTCS's pitfalls would have been hurling their drinks at the screen watching a whiskey-drunk Indy trying to switch a sand bag for the idol in the museum.
It's tough for some people to swallow, but here's the truth: Lucas's contribution to Indy 4's story was this -
The MacGuffin is to be a crystal skull possessing psychic power. The reveal should be that the skull is extraterrestrial in origin attributing the success of early mega-civilizations (i.e. Egyptian and Mayan) to alien contact.
Lucas also contributed the idea for the rocket sled scene, which is not only found in Darabont's script, but in earlier drafts. Obviously, he added ideas here and there and contributed on set (especially when it came to capturing the look and feel of the 1950s) but that was the meat and potatoes of Lucas's role. Hell, the plot wasn't even confined to Russians playing the role of the villain - Tom Stoppard's take on the material pitted Indy against Nazis again!
Personally, I can understand people who were frustrated with gophers, monkeys and poor plotting late in KOTCS; I'm one of those people for heck's sake. However, the story/MacGuffin Lucas chose for Indy 4 was more than good enough to make a great flick. I'd even argue that it was the best MacGuffin since Raiders; 99% of you still don't know what the hell the Sankara stones are, and the Holy Grail was far from an original concept. Hence, the problem with Crystal Skull wasn't the contribution Lucas made, it was the execution of the material. Koepp's script had a solid first half but poor second. Ditto for Spielberg's direction. By the camp scene, the film went into autopilot and there was more than enough talent behind and in front of the camera to breath some life into the project - they just didn't.
I completely agree with Corey. A lot of 400 pound nerds are convinced Lucas is currently raping their childhood memories and are very quick to jump and bash either Indy IV or Lucas himself. Get over yourselves! You're adults! stop behaving like spoiled brats.
About Darabont's script? I read it. And I hope that when Lucas threw it in the trash he pulled a Kareem Abdul-Jabbar hook shot and nailed that sucker in the trash. It wasn't craptacular, but not as good as what we got on film. So I find it surprising that some ppl are trying to paint that script as something that would've rivaled Raiders of the Lost Ark or been just as good as that film's script. Hell no. Not even close.
Another thing... the McGuffin. The real Holy Grail was never a cup or chalice as was seen in Last Crusade. The Sankara Stones are very loosely base on some cryptic passage in an old Indian text. They all had in common one thing: these were religious objects or things of that nature. Well, so was the Crystal Skulls in the context employed in the film. The skulls were venerated and considered pretty much part of the religion of the Pre-Columbian Mesoamerican peoples seen in Indy IV. In reality, that is not true to reality. But then again, what else is new in all the Indy films? They always "enhance" the truth or add stuff that simply serves as plot devices to move the story one way or another.
And let's be realistic here... the only Indy movie that was pure goodness from beginning to end was Raiders.
Now I love the sequels (in reality, spin-off films) but Temple of Doom was a freakin comedy. Some jokes worked but some fell flat and some were tasteless (the whole way they got Indian culture wrong). And Last Crusade was pretty slow and boring until Sean Connery made it's entrance. Hell, he saved that film. The McGuffin in Last Crusade was so weak that it wasn't really relevant to the plot. They could've been looking for the dead corpse of Jimmy Hoffa and it would've been the same thing. Both films didn't come close to the goodness that was Raiders. And they were basically spin-off films. Same goes with the Crystal Skull.
But because some nerds saw those films as KIDS, they hold the films with great admiration. And nothing can compare to them. They wanted Indy IV to be tailored made for them. Not for the kids which are a big chunk of the people who made the original films such hits.
Get over it ya nerds. I thought you had enough of having the vapors when Lucas made you go berserk in 1999 with the Phantom Menace. I see now that you guys like to be real drama queens.
Having also read the script, all I can say is that I felt that Darabont's script was truer to some of the characters, notably Marion, than what we saw in Crystal Skull. I didn't hate Skull, but I felt that the experience was lessened considerably by its pandering to the kiddies as well as the oh-so-obvious attempt to create an Indiana Jones successor. (After all, the franchise must go on!)
In the case of the Darabont script, there are definitely some elements that would have needed to be changed.
• Yes, the "Adventure Has a Name" was groan-worthy, and would likely have been dumped.
• While the monkey feces was odd, the visual of a monkey clinging to Harrison's chest as they both scream was funny and at least preferable to what we got in Skull.
• Some of the set pieces hearkened back to prior films, such as the plane duel that shared similarities to Crusade.
• The snake sequence, and that dealing with larger-than-life insects, was intriguing, but I'm not 100% sure how it would have played on film. I DID like the fact that Indy had gotten over his fear of snakes, though, since it allowed the character to show some form of growth.
• Darabont's script could justly be criticized for relying too much on in-jokes by repeatedly referencing lines from prior movies.
• I agree that the scene with the Idol from Raiders was unnecessary and that the battle with the Thin Man was, too.
• Marion was, head and shoulders, better than we got in Crystal. She was the Marion fans of Raiders remembered, not the googlie-eyed do-nothing arm candy in Crystal.
• The double-agent nature of Indy's pal was certainly more straightforward in the Darabont treatment. You knew he was a double agent, and took on an almost Belloq-esque antagonist role. In Crystal, the similar character was played more loosely, the double-agent double cross was more twisty, and the character ended up as something less than memorable.
We could go on all day. NEITHER script was perfect, but also comparing what must have been a draft of Darabont's script to the final Skull script seems, to me, a mistake. Darabont's would almost certainly have gone through numerous revisions, too. What's makes you wonder, though, is why Darabont has been denied screen credit for what appears to be, to a great extent, his work. The beginning, the end, and some of the set pieces in the middle are all in his screenplay. However, what we may never know, is whose ideas they were to begin with.
(P.S. Oh, and I have to love Edgar (above me) who turned a script critique into a wild-eyed, red-faced, vein-in-forehead-throbbing attack on "400lb nerds(!!!)" instead of sticking to the source material. Though your antipathy for Harry Knowles proteges is obvious, and you ramble considerably, I hope that at least it was cathartic for you.)
Now, lets have a reality check. While both screenplay have quite similar passages and differ on multiple points, the main critic, remains the story. Both Spielberg and Lucas have a real tendency to introduce the "alien" in a story that has nothing to do with it. And as history will confirm my allegation: both of them built their carreers on the back of aliens.
From a personal point of view: Indiana Jones was one story that people was down to earth. while somethimes over the top and always entertaining, people stepping in the theaters knew that last thing Indy will face is an extraterestrial. But Lucas and Spielberg couldn't spoil a perfectly built franchise. No they had to throw all away and leave the general tendcy to let pleople believe in a story with a clear historic/religious/cultural background. A story generally know by all (at least western) civilizations. Yes in the Raiders of the lost Ark we saw a link to Judaism, while in Temple of the Doom the link to hindoeism/ indian culture was present (not a good representation may I add but realy entertaining and making us crave to explore more). The last Crusaders again reminded us about the sacrifice of Crist. All of these stories, inspired us and let us believe, we as humanity had a common history and we have to open our history books and learn more from it.
But in the Christal Skull, I ask you to all of you, what you as a person have realised personally. That there were aliens who came thousand years before us and shared their knowledge with us. This surprising view is defendable, if you elaborate it. But no! In the Christal Skull, we just want to find out what the skull stands for, bring it back as soon as possible. And once we have found out: the bad guys die, the good guys live and the aliens go away, not explaining why they came here in the first place.
While some seens are realy entertaining (beginning, fridge, motor chase) The biggest part of the movie is just, how can I say it without offending?, realy bad. For all the Indiana Jones fans, make yourself a pleasure and wait until it comes out on DVD. Believe me when you will see it on your flat screen television, you will remember me and thank me for not spending 9 buck and making Lucas or Spielberg any prouder about their emptyshelled film.
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You knew it had to show up online eventually, and tonight it did. Frank Darabont’s Indiana Jones 4 script, the one George Lucas threw in the trash after it had already been approved by Steven Spielberg and Harrison Ford, is all over the internet. No I can’t tell you where it is, because anywhere I point to will invariably be shut down within seconds. Lucasfilm or Fox or both and their cadre of attorneys are all over this one.
June 12th, 2008 at 14:13
Look for it on torrent sites, they are all over the place. Currently reading it as we speak