Frank Darabont’s Indy 4 script is online. It’s pretty much confirmed to be the real deal, and even if it isn’t, its a great, heartbreaking read. Great, because there’s a scene when Dr. Jones gets drunk and tries to loot his university’s museum. Heartbreaking, because this is the quality movie I think everyone expected to see a few months ago. No one should have to qualify their enjoyment of The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. It should have been a movie that blew your brains out, and from what I’ve read so far, Indiana Jones and the City of the Gods would have done that and more.
I recommend you read it yourself, but to sum it up, it’s still based on a “Story by George Lucas.” That story is still largely the same. There are Russians, there is a crystal skull, Marion’s back, there are presumably CG aliens at the end. Some of the beats are the same, including the nuking of the fridge. But there is no Mutt, who, funnily enough, was the one enjoyable thing in the actual film. This script. . . I mean, Darabont nailed it. It’s got a such a perfect tone to it. The Russian, the villains, feel iconic. It’s full of classic jokes and gags, including bunch of references to franchise’s past and an evolution of the long running snake bit.
Just make out already, you two.
Evolution. . . that’s what I really got a sense of in this script. The character development in Crystal Skull is so artificial. Indy just gets slapped with a kid and marries the mom because, well, that’s what George Lucas wanted to happen. In Darabont’s version, there is this very natural growth in Indy’s character. His age is very present in the film, but not with cheap jokes or throwaway musings about the good old days. The country, and the world, has moved on from the simple days of punching out Hitler’s goons and fighting the good fight. The setting and the climate of the 1950s has such a bigger presence here. It starkly clashes with the world of the original trilogy, and there is a question of whether or not Indiana Jones has a place in it.
It is remarkable how close the two versions are in terms of plot elements but so different in terms of completely sucking or being possibly the great Indiana Jones story yet. I cannot understand how a person could look at Darabont’s draft, dismiss it, then look at David Koepp’s draft, and see a single part of it as preferable to Darabont’s. I almost feel like this is a sentiment people are too flippant about these days, and it has just become a joke now, but seriously. . . is George Lucas a crazy person?
