Tales From Development Hell (18 page)

“George called about a month ago and said, ‘Would you be interested in doing this, we’re looking for a writer,’” Darabont told
Cinescape
in June, “and I said, ‘Yeah, George, I’m there.’ It’s the only gig I’ve taken sight unseen.” As for the story, he went on, “I have no idea at this point what the movie is about. I’m putting my faith in Steven and George — I will be their writing vessel.” The same month, Ford took a more cautious stance in an interview with the same magazine. “It’s official that we have an ambition to make the film,” he said, “but unless we get a script that we’re all happy with, I don’t think it’s sure that will happen. So, I’m very happy about the fact that we’ve all committed to a certain idea, and we’re developing it and hoping it will be fruitful.” Spielberg had soon confirmed to
Dreamwatch
magazine that Darabont had commenced work on the screenplay, based on a “wonderful” story by Lucas, who told
the official
Star Wars
website,
starwars.com
, how excited he was to revisit a character he created a generation ago. “Steven, Harrison and I have wanted to do this for some time, and this feels like the right moment.”

2003 heralded further Indy IV news, as Spielberg confirmed that Sean Connery — who was then busy playing Allan Quatermain, one of the inspirations for Indiana Jones, in Stephen Norrington’s
The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen
— would return as Henry Jones Sr. “Indy’s pop will be back for a few scenes,” he said, “and it’s set in the early 1950s. Harrison is going to be sixty-two years old when the film [begins production], so we had to push the years into the 1950s. I’d like to get Karen Allen back for one soundbite,” he added, referring to the actress who played Marion Ravenwood in
Raiders of the Lost Ark;
yet plans to bring back Kate Capshaw appeared to have been derailed by Darabont. “He called me and said, ‘I’m not sure we can work her into the script, too,’” Spielberg said.

Darabont had other ideas about the direction the script should take. “I absolutely don’t want to do things like having him say, ‘I’m getting too old for this shit,’” he told the
Alameda Times-Star
Online. “I don’t want to be slipping and sliding in clichès. The character is no longer in the 1930s. He has to age honestly. He’s got to be in the 1950s.” Describing the process of working on the script as “a total blast,” he added: “Let’s face it, what’s not to like about Indiana Jones? I saw the first movie in 1981, five years before I started my writing career. Who knew I would grow up to write the sequel?”

Darabont’s script, entitled
Indiana Jones and the City of the Gods,
opens in 1952 with the hot rods racing in the Nevada desert, and Indy’s betrayal by an old friend — here, a Russian named Yuri Makovsky, rather than a Brit named Mac, who is on the trail of plutonium, rather than mummified alien remains. Instead of being captured by Russians infiltrating a U.S. military base at Area 51, Indy sneaks into the base (a scene reminiscent of the 1998 PlayStation game
Tomb Raider III: Adventures of Lara Croft),
where he discovers the “huge cavern filled with...well, everything. It’s a maze of gantries, catwalks, experimental arcana, machinery, and mountains of crates marked ‘Top Secret.’”

The next several scenes closely mimic those from the final film: a Jeep chase through the cavernous hangar, narrowly avoiding the blasts of flame from experimental jet engines, Indy and Yuri propelled across the desert on a rocket sled. Indy is captured by the Russians, thrown in the trunk of a car, driven to a fake town constructed as part of an A-Bomb test, where he survives the blast by hiding in a lead-lined refrigerator. After a radiation scrub and debriefing, Indy is accused of selling secrets to the Russians, put on
a leave of absence from the university where he has tenure, gets drunk and bewails his lot to the statue of Marcus Brody, before visiting a display case containing, among other artefacts, the Cross of Coronado from
Last Crusade
and the fertility goddess from
Raiders.

Here, he is attacked by a ‘Thin Man’ whom Darabont describes as “Death in a homburg hat. Dressed all in black. Rat-thin face with a long scar bisecting a milky dead eye.” The Thin Man shoots the FBI agent tailing Indy, and when he falls to his death during the ensuing fistfight with Indy, leaves behind the key to a left luggage locker at Grand Central Station — and a lot of questions. Later, as Indy packs a suitcase, he is scolded by his father, not only for getting drunk, but for running away. “It appears there’s a reason you’re named after the dog,” he quips, a reference to the origin of the ‘Indiana’ nickname.

The left luggage locker leads Indy to a disheveled hotel room, and a bowling ball bag containing a (human) crystal skull. “Perfectly formed, life-sized, smoother than glass, kicking light like a giant diamond orb,” it is the ‘Skull of Destiny.’ Moments later, a gangster named Reggie Nalder, mistaking him for Yuri, hands Indy a passport, some cash — and a plane ticket to Peru. As Reggie pays the price for his incompetence, Indy makes his way to a Peruvian backwater named Madre de Dios, where he is surprised to find his (Yuri’s) contact is none other than Marion Ravenwood, who he hasn’t seen for twelve years — and who greets him with a punch in the mouth. “I told you if I ever saw your face again I’d pop you one!” she says, before demanding that he hands over the crystal skull.

Marion convinces Indy to accompany her — and her husband, handsome Hungarian explorer Baron Peter Belasko — on an expedition to La Ciudad de Los Dioses, the fabled ‘Lost City of the Gods, which Professor Vernon Oxley, an old friend of Indy’s father, was trying to find when he disappeared without a trace three years earlier. According to Marion, one of Oxley’s retainers survived, crawling out of the jungle having found the crystal skull — but lost his mind. Together, they figure out the legend: “There are thirteen skulls in all, fashioned by the gods as they lay dying,” Indy explains. “When all the skulls are brought together again, the gods will be reborn and reward mankind with all the knowledge of the universe.”

Flying over the famous Nazca lines, which Oxley believed to be a map showing the way to the lost city, Indy and Marion are shot at by a biplane bearing Yuri, leading to a barnstorming aerial dogfight, a good old-fashioned ‘wing walk’ by Marion, and a crash-landing in the Amazon rain forest. Yuri continues to stalk the team as they survive such hazards as poisonous frogs, mutated bugs, the local despot’s armed goons, Yuri’s Zhukov commandos, rapids, waterfalls, a giant snake that swallows Indy, hat and all — and Marion’s husband, who, it transpires, is working for the Russians, who seek to harness the skulls’ psychic powers to use as a weapon in the Cold War.

Arriving at the fabled City, they discover huge water wheels, fifty feet in diameter, being spun by the rapids, acting as gigantic turbines in a ten thousand year old electrical generating station! Deep in the bowels of the ancient machine, Indy & Co stumble on the chamber which collects the relics of lost civilizations, and the throne room with thirteen (rather than just one) headless crystal skeletons. When Indy replaces one of the skulls, the creatures speaks through Oxley: “We are the ones who fell from the heavens,” the alien voice explains. “We are the Nephalim. We are the Rubezahl. We are the lights in the sky.” With echoes of von Däniken,
StarGate
and
2001: A Space Odyssey,
the voice goes on to explain that they nurtured, enhanced and advanced the human race thousands of years ago, and were worshipped as gods. Now restored to their former glory, the aliens take off in a huge flying saucer — which then crash lands, exploding with the force of a nuclear blast, destroying the Lost City of the Gods forever. Indy winds up marrying the newly divorced Marion, at a ceremony attended by Professor Oxley, Henry Jones Sr, Sallah, and President Eisenhower himself.
¹

While Lucas, Spielberg and Ford considered Darabont’s draft, delivered on 4 October 2003, the appetite for a fourth Indiana Jones was further whetted by the DVD debut of the original trilogy, previously available only on video and laserdisc. While fans reveled in the copious bonus features on the new DVDs, Spielberg and Ford both reacted enthusiastically to Darabont’s script. Lucas, however, did not. “It was a tremendous disappointment and a waste of a year,” Darabont later told MTV. “I spent a year of very determined effort on something I was very excited about, working very closely with Steven Spielberg and coming up with a result that I, and he, felt was terrific. He wanted to direct it as his next movie, and then suddenly the whole thing goes down in flames because George Lucas doesn’t like the script.” A despairing Darabont confronted Lucas directly. “I told him he was crazy. I said, ‘You have a fantastic script. I think you’re insane, George.’ You can say things like that to George, and he doesn’t even blink. He’s one of the most stubborn men I know.”

With Darabont out of the picture, Spielberg suggested bringing in screenwriter Jeff Nathanson, who had worked uncredited on the Spielberg-produced smash hit
Twister,
and scripted two of the director’s films,
Catch Me If You Can
and
The Terminal.
“He put some really good ideas together, and gave us some guidance and direction, especially on the story.” Sidestepping the writers who had come and gone in between, Spielberg added: “What I did later on was I went to what I call my ‘closer’, David Koepp, who has written a number of films [for me], starting with
Jurassic Park
and
The Lost World,
including
War of the Worlds.
And then he wrote the script that became the movie.” Elements apparently introduced in Koepp’s draft included Indy’s son,
²
Irina Spalko, ‘Mac’, the attack by poisonous ants, sword fights, and the DUKW/’duck’ chase. “I spent about a year on it, first doing drafts with Steven and then doing drafts with Steven and George,” Koepp said later. “It was a lot of fun. The first thing is that you realize this is a beloved character, probably one of the most [beloved] in film history, and a lot of people are going to be angry no matter what you do.”

He was right. Directed by Steven Spielberg and produced by George Lucas from a story by Lucas and a script credited solely to David Koepp,
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
was released on 22 May 2008 to widespread, but not quite universal, critical derision — so much, in fact, that the phrase “nuking the fridge” temporarily supplanted the
Happy Days
-inspired “jumping the shark” as a pop culture term for the decline of a once-proud and much-loved property into absurdity. Actor Shia LaBoeuf, who played Indy’s son Mutt, joined the ranks of declaimers. “I feel like I dropped the ball on the legacy that people loved and cherished,” he said in 2010, adding that Harrison Ford agreed. “We had major discussions. He wasn’t happy with it either.”

If so, Ford had no one to blame but himself. After all, he was the one who had been cracking the whip. “I was the hold out, the one who said, ‘I’m done with this series, it was great, let’s walk away,’” said Spielberg. “I have to give the credit to Harrison for starting the ball rolling. He got very proactive with both George and [me] and said, ‘I want to play Indy one more time.’ So he started this. Blame him.”

______________

1
Speaking of weddings, Darabont throws in a neat in-joke, as Marion asks Indy what ever became of nightclub singer Willie Scott, played in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom by Kate Capshaw. “Last I heard, she fell in love and married some bigshot director,” Indy responds, a reference to Capshaw’s marriage to Spielberg.

2
According to Lucas, Indy’s son was originally conceived as a daughter. “Steven didn’t like that idea so David revisited the idea again as a son, and this time Steven said ‘Okay.’ In the beginning, it was approached that he was kind of a nerd,” Lucas added, “a strait-laced kid who wore suits. And then later on we decided that isn’t really the way it should work. The way it should work is that he is sort of the wild kid, which is the way Indy was to his father.”

“The story of the Crusades is the murderous attack of the Christians on the Arabs and the Jews. Do you think that’s a politically interesting situation?”

— director Paul Verhoeven, circa 2002

T
he era of the Crusades was one of the richest, bloodiest and most controversial in history. Small wonder, then, that Hollywood has found it almost as suitable for frequent visitation as the Roman era. The road to the Crusades began on 27 November 1095 in Clermont, France, where a polemical proclamation by Pope Urban II, describing in lurid detail Turkish attacks upon the Christian Byzantine Empire, set in motion what was to become the First Crusade. Soldiers, clergy and commoners alike travelled to the East to wage war on Muslims, and although payment would be scarce and conditions were likely to be harsh, Pope Urban offered a ‘Papal Indulgence’, which promised anyone taking part in the enterprise the immediate remission of all sins. By the middle of the following year, tens of thousands of Christians were on their way to Byzantium, attacking Muslims (whom they viewed as ignorant heathens) and Jews (judged ‘Christ-killers’) with equal relish.

Although thousands of civilians joined the Crusaders, the ‘official’ armies were comprised of three groups: one led by Godfrey of Bouillon, Hugh, Count of Vermandois and Robert, Duke of Normandy; another led by Raymond IV of St Gilles; and a third under the command of the Norman warlord Bohemond. The armies’ spiritual leader was Bishop Adhémar of Le Puy, a close confidant
of Pope Urban II. Joining forces in Byzantium in early 1097, they set about recapturing the city of Nicaea from the Turks, before dividing into two groups
en route
to Antioch, after which they staved off a Muslim ambush and put the Turks to flight, almost starved to death in Anatolia and, in October 1097, lay siege to Antioch — a seemingly impregnable city which was so large it was impossible to surround. The siege dragged on through the winter and into 1098, and the Crusaders, deep in hostile territory, quickly ran short of food. Many died of starvation and disease (including Bishop Adhémar), and many more went home, but ultimately the Crusaders were victorious. Under the command of Raymond of St Gilles, early in 1099 they set out for Jerusalem, by that time a heavily fortified garrison of Arab and Nubian troops, where another siege took place. In order to break the siege, forces led by Godfrey of Bouillon and Robert of Normandy breached the city wall in the dead of night — and rampaged through the streets, slaughtering everyone in their path...