The Lone Raider
Well-known member
Supposing that Spielberg and the others wanted to use a MacGuffin with which mainstream audiences were more familiar, the first ideas that come to my mind would be Atlantis, the Staff of Moses, and Stonehenge, just to name a few. That being said, all of those, and many more, have already been covered in the books and video games...with varying degrees of success.
This leads me to wonder what kind of artifacts/MacGuffins are left, given that the Expanded Adventures have - to my knowledge, anyways - covered everything that there is to cover, including relics and lost cities that aren't quite as popular or well-known to the mainstream.
Now, the Copper Scroll might be interesting; however, I don't see how it can be utilized effectively except as a map of sorts to the real MacGuffin, which would likely be a relic of the First or Second Temple. The Ark can't be used, of course, but the Staff of Moses would be an excellent MacGuffin, especially in a Cold War setting, wherein it could be esteemed "an apparatus that puts nuclear weaponry to shame," by the US and USSR. When I was in high school, I actually attempted to write my own fan version of Indiana Jones V with this exact premise. But "The Staff of Kings" video game automatically creates problems for this concept if it were to be implemented into the actual script.
While I and many other Indiana Jones fans may appreciate the expanded continuity, I would think that the vast majority of movie-goers aren't even aware that books like "Indiana Jones and the Dinosaur Eggs" exist. And if they are aware, then they probably don't care. They're there for the movies.
So...how much do the Expanded Adventures really matter, which is to say how much should they be taken into account, when creating a good Indiana Jones V script? Will it be very problematic if the writers decide to use the Staff of Moses or Atlantis, for example?
This leads me to wonder what kind of artifacts/MacGuffins are left, given that the Expanded Adventures have - to my knowledge, anyways - covered everything that there is to cover, including relics and lost cities that aren't quite as popular or well-known to the mainstream.
Now, the Copper Scroll might be interesting; however, I don't see how it can be utilized effectively except as a map of sorts to the real MacGuffin, which would likely be a relic of the First or Second Temple. The Ark can't be used, of course, but the Staff of Moses would be an excellent MacGuffin, especially in a Cold War setting, wherein it could be esteemed "an apparatus that puts nuclear weaponry to shame," by the US and USSR. When I was in high school, I actually attempted to write my own fan version of Indiana Jones V with this exact premise. But "The Staff of Kings" video game automatically creates problems for this concept if it were to be implemented into the actual script.
While I and many other Indiana Jones fans may appreciate the expanded continuity, I would think that the vast majority of movie-goers aren't even aware that books like "Indiana Jones and the Dinosaur Eggs" exist. And if they are aware, then they probably don't care. They're there for the movies.
So...how much do the Expanded Adventures really matter, which is to say how much should they be taken into account, when creating a good Indiana Jones V script? Will it be very problematic if the writers decide to use the Staff of Moses or Atlantis, for example?
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