Leftovers from previous drafts for Indy V

Moedred

Administrator
Staff member
Attila the Professor said:
the version of it in City of the Gods was probably the best rendition yet
Where Indy, Marion, President Escalante, Doktor Felix von Grauen, Osgood Turner, Baron Peter Belasko, and Yuri Makovsky are tied to 50-gallon fuel drums? It's great dialogue under pressure, but hardly a unique sequence. Monkey King has 2 more burning fuses on the pirate ship (cannon and dynamite) but they were nothing new either.
 

Toht's Arm

Active member
Moedred said:
The burning fuse / gunpowder scene from Monkey King and Last Crusade has finally found a home in the Tintin movie, during a sword fight between Sir Francis Haddock and Red Rackham. So is it retired and unavailable for Indy 5, or still on the table?

Well, it's in Herge's The Secret of the Unicorn, so technically it wasn't a case of being nicked from the Indy pool of ideas...but I guess having the same scene in two films so close to each other would be strange.

Then again, having a carbon copy of the Kali sacrifice scene from ToD pop up ONE YEAR LATER in Young Sherlock Holmes* apparently didn't bother Spielberg, so who knows...

*I saw both those films on video as a child and my memories of them are always blurred.
 

Attila the Professor

Moderator
Staff member
Moedred said:
Where Indy, Marion, President Escalante, Doktor Felix von Grauen, Osgood Turner, Baron Peter Belasko, and Yuri Makovsky are tied to 50-gallon fuel drums? It's great dialogue under pressure, but hardly a unique sequence. Monkey King has 2 more burning fuses on the pirate ship (cannon and dynamite) but they were nothing new either.

It was one of the better instances in that script of putting the massive ensemble to some interesting use. While I generally liked the rogue's gallery approach Darabont there, sometimes it wasn't put to good use, and this sequence managed to find something new to do with a booby trap-esque element.
 

Col. Detritch

New member
Agreed. I love City of the Gods. As time goes by the more and more I enjoy it. If some of the scenes from it were to appear in Indy V, that would be golden. And not just set-pieces and sequences but small elements as well. For example:
  • Yuri's Hypodermic Needle (Cold War, drugged by the villain sorta stuff)
  • Museum Chase
  • American Gangsters (The 50s New York/Hitchcockian Scenario)
  • Marion's Sexy Entrance - doesn't have to be for Marion but Darabont's setting and execution of that reveal is electric
  • El Presidente (The character himself and his dinner/execution scene)
  • Osgood Turner - What can I say, I liked him and with more elaboration he works for the time period and with Indy's character. Also creates balance with the extremes of Communism displayed (not that I'm a commie, but it is nice thematically)
  • Extended Bi-plane Duel
  • The Camp Standoff
  • Alone and tied to explosives with the villains scenario
  • More grotesque occurrences (the onscreen reveal of a severed head being my example)
  • Indy's Choice (Chose the ultimate treasure or something more - In LC we got a life or death choice based on intelligence and faith and in Indy V it should be a character choice determining true happiness. I think it's a great way to end the series is to have Indy himself - along with the villains - face the ultimate decision his adventures have been based on with fortune and glory in his grasp)

Sprinkle a little of that on my Indy sequel any day. :hat:
 

MinnesotaJones

New member
I like...
- The haunted castle scenario
- The valley of dinosaurs (I like this one but it would never happen) :(
- Rooftop fight with the assassin
- The biplane fight (Far-fetched? It's a film.):rolleyes: :)
- Indy being attacked by gorillas (Maybe...)
- The museum scene

I don't like...
- An evil character with a robotic arm
- A motorcycle chase over the Great Wall of China (Seen Tomb Raider?)
- Indy being swallowed by a giant snake ( Let me guess they all think he is dead and OH he cuts himslef out of the snake, a little cliched)

That's about it. Good thread idea. :hat:
 

Udvarnoky

Well-known member
I still haven't heard a better premise for Indy V than bringing back the haunted castle concept. It's a good fit for Indy, it would cause way less controversy than aliens, it hangs nicely on a pulp fiction hook as Lucas insists (Hammer horror), it doesn't clash with the time period (Hammer was certainly active in the 50s/60s), it promises a return to the spookiness of the first two films, it gets us out of North America, and it doesn't call to mind action sequences that would seem preposterous for a guy in his 70s.

The Fountain of Youth and the Bermuda Triangle are too recently covered by Pirates of the Caribbean and don't sufficiently liberate us from North America after the previous film, Atlantis wouldn't feel fresh enough coming off of a fourth installment that was already about a lost city, and Excalibur would be the second Arthurian legend covered by the series.

The only real concern would be that it might make the movie too claustrophobic, but Temple is a good template here, as it succeeded in delivering some striking location work before pulling us underground. You would just need to front-load the exotic locales.
 
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Toht's Arm

Active member
Yeah, I think I agree. We also haven't seen a proper haunted castle movie in a while, no?

Plus maybe Disney would like the idea of sprucing up their haunted mansion to tie in with the film...
 

Henry Jones VII

Active member
I also like the haunted castle idea, and setting the story in England or Scotland, they could even explore Henry Jones Sr's background to make Indy connect with his relatives.
 

Attila the Professor

Moderator
Staff member
Henry Jones VII said:
I also like the haunted castle idea, and setting the story in England or Scotland, they could even explore Henry Jones Sr's background to make Indy connect with his relatives.

Though Europe is fairly well-trod territory at this point, even including a sequence of 15-20 minutes at a castle. I'm particularly skeptical about how much England or Scotland would feel like an appropriate place to set most of an Indiana Jones adventure.

However, there are other castles; Japan came up in a more Monkey King-focused thread (as did a lot of talk about Africa, for that matter).
 

Raiders90

Well-known member
Script elements you'd like to see recycled in Indy V?

What are elements from any past script you'd love to see make the cut in Indy V?

For me:
-Dogfight (City of Gods script)
-Bad guy with mechanical arm (idea for Toht in Raiders)
 

dr.jones1986

Active member
Raiders112390 said:
What are elements from any past script you'd love to see make the cut in Indy V?

For me:
-Dogfight (City of Gods script)
-Bad guy with mechanical arm (idea for Toht in Raiders)

I have always felt the cut of Toht's mechanical arm was a great decision. It would have been to unbelievable for a movie set in the 30's. The German flying wing was on the right side of believable for me, the mechanical arm would have pushed Raiders too far in the direction of science fiction. For me it would work fine in Star Wars but not an Indiana Jones film.
 

TheFirebird1

Active member
Raiders112390 said:
What are elements from any past script you'd love to see make the cut in Indy V?

For me:
-Dogfight (City of Gods script)
-Bad guy with mechanical arm (idea for Toht in Raiders)
I'd rather they write an original script, to be completely honest, but they can recycle locations from certain scripts, like sub-Saharan Africa (Monkey King) and Southeast Asia (Saucermen from Mars). And to agree with dr.jones1986, the baddie with a mechanical arm is far-fetched to say the least. One of the Indy novels (Mystery of Mount Sinai) featured a character based off this idea, Helmut von Mephisto, and it was the most stupid things I've ever read. It started sounding like Star Wars at a certain point.
 
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Raiders90

Well-known member
TheFirebird1 said:
I'd rather they write an original script, to be completely honest, but they can recycle locations from certain scripts, like sub-Saharan Africa (Monkey King) and Southeast Asia (Saucermen from Mars). And to agree with dr.jones1986, the baddie with a mechanical arm is far-fetched to say the least. One of the Indy novels (Mystery of Mount Sinai) featured a character based off this idea, Helmut von Mephisto, and it was the most stupid things I've ever read. It started sounding like Star Wars at a certain point.

Thing is every Indy script borrows from unused drafts. Great chunks of TOD come from stuff left out of a Raiders. I believe there are sequences from LC that come from other unused drafts.

I think, if Harrison's segment is set in the 60s, a villain with a mechanical arm would be a great homage to the freakazoids James Bond faced. It would just have to be done right and not cartoonish. Make it like, frightening. Like Toht's burned hand.
 

TheFirebird1

Active member
Raiders112390 said:
Thing is every Indy script borrows from unused drafts. Great chunks of TOD come from stuff left out of a Raiders. I believe there are sequences from LC that come from other unused drafts.

I think, if Harrison's segment is set in the 60s, a villain with a mechanical arm would be a great homage to the freakazoids James Bond faced. It would just have to be done right and not cartoonish. Make it like, frightening. Like Toht's burned hand.
Thing is, at this point there's only been presumably one unused draft for Indy 5 (Koepp's, and that one is probably going to be Indy 5 anyways, assuming that Kasdan is only making minor cosmetic changes), and besides, a lot of the elements from the drafts have already been used. I'll stick to my guns and say that the new script should be original, but a Soviet with a mechanical arm (as long as it didn't shoot lightning out of it like that stupid Rinzler novel) would be epic, especially in some lush Caribbean setting.
Edit: How about something like the Winter Soldier's arm, but a little more mechanical looking and stripped down?
latest
 
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seasider

Active member
Back when they were trying to write Indy 4, one of the ideas that Spielberg pitched to Lucas to get him off his aliens idea was to have Indy in South America dueling Nazis who had escaped there after World War II. Lucas of course nixed the idea. As far as we know, there was never an actual script written for that premise but I always thought it was an idea worth revisiting.

Obviously, there would have to be a lot of historical taken with the story but it would accomplish a couple of things:

1. Nazis-If we've learned anything about the Indy movies, the Nazis make the best baddies. It's like the Batman and The Joker, they deserve each other. Having Indy have to deal with them again in a Latin American setting sounds intriguing.

2. It gives Spielberg a chance to get creative with villains and set pieces. We have only learned recently the lengths the Nazis went in Argentina with what they built there.

One problem I see is that we've already seen Indy in South America in 2 movies. Do we really want to see him back there again? It's possible that South American Archaeology was Indy's area of expertise when he was getting his degree.
 

Attila the Professor

Moderator
Staff member
seasider said:
Back when they were trying to write Indy 4, one of the ideas that Spielberg pitched to Lucas to get him off his aliens idea was to have Indy in South America dueling Nazis who had escaped there after World War II. Lucas of course nixed the idea. As far as we know, there was never an actual script written for that premise but I always thought it was an idea worth revisiting.

I didn't previously think revisiting the Nazis was worth doing, but I think there's merit there now.

seasider said:
Obviously, there would have to be a lot of historical taken with the story but it would accomplish a couple of things:
[...]
One problem I see is that we've already seen Indy in South America in 2 movies. Do we really want to see him back there again? It's possible that South American Archaeology was Indy's area of expertise when he was getting his degree.

I definitely don't want to see Indy spending much time in the Americas again, North or South, but it's the sort of thing that perhaps they could cheat, the way they've habitually blended legends of different provenance before, with varying degrees of success and truth-stretching: Egyptian and Judaic; a Kali cult plus Aztec sacrifice and voodoo; early Christian and the Crusades; and pre-Colombian, El Dorado, and aliens. Fate of Atlantis fudged the alleged location of Atlantis with a tenfold error, placing it in the Mediterranean rather than the Atlantic because it made for a better story.

So, maybe the rumors about Nazis in South America are a misdirect, just enough to draw attention from where they really are? But that would have the film playing with twentieth century facts in a pretty broad way that feels, to me, dicey. Are the Nazis hiding out in South Africa? Australia? Siberia? A minor string of islands somewhere in Indonesia or Oceania?
 
Attila the Professor said:
Are the Nazis hiding out in South Africa? Australia? Siberia? A minor string of islands somewhere in Indonesia or Oceania?

Or Japan, teaming up with old allies from the war. It's a stretch but would allow homage to You Only Live Twice.
 

dr.jones1986

Active member
Attila the Professor said:
I didn't previously think revisiting the Nazis was worth doing, but I think there's merit there now.



I definitely don't want to see Indy spending much time in the Americas again, North or South, but it's the sort of thing that perhaps they could cheat, the way they've habitually blended legends of different provenance before, with varying degrees of success and truth-stretching: Egyptian and Judaic; a Kali cult plus Aztec sacrifice and voodoo; early Christian and the Crusades; and pre-Colombian, El Dorado, and aliens. Fate of Atlantis fudged the alleged location of Atlantis with a tenfold error, placing it in the Mediterranean rather than the Atlantic because it made for a better story.

So, maybe the rumors about Nazis in South America are a misdirect, just enough to draw attention from where they really are? But that would have the film playing with twentieth century facts in a pretty broad way that feels, to me, dicey. Are the Nazis hiding out in South Africa? Australia? Siberia? A minor string of islands somewhere in Indonesia or Oceania?

What made you change your mind as far as finding merit there now?

I agree they made great villains in Raiders and Crusade but I feel using them during the Cold War when there were so many other deplorable regimes that were actually in power at that time doesn't make sense. Disney would never use communist China even though they would make sense during the 60's because of Disney's dependence on the Chinese market.
 
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