ethanedwards said:
Anyone else have any info, rumors or guesses as to when the Crystal Skull became the Mcguffen for KOTCS?
Udvarnoky said:
I thought that was the big breakthrough that got Ford and Spielberg behind the project in a way that they hadn't before, because the skull rooted the movie in traditional archeology stuff, rather than being a no-holds-bar alien spaceship movie, which it sounds like Lucas originally wanted.
This is my impression as well.
Lucas has always said he got the idea for Indy 4 while Harrison Ford was filming a cameo for the Young Indy Chronicles in late 1992 (or early 1993?). Ford's segments were set in the year 1950, and he had to film them with the beard he'd grown for
The Fugitive. For years, I wondered what Lucas meant by his comments, and it wasn't until the "Complete Making Of" book that he elaborated on them.
It was the sight of this visibly older Indiana Jones that intrigued Lucas. He realized that by moving the character to a 1950's setting, it would open the door to exploring new genre territory. Specifically, the B movies that he and Spielberg had loved just as much as the serials of the 1930s. One of the main films Lucas had hoped to homage was
Earth Vs. The Flying Saucers*.
(*This is why the 1995 Saucermen script featured ufos so extensively, and took place almost entirely in the desert. It was the biggest problem Spielberg and Ford had with the script. Spielberg felt he had done too many ufo films, while Ford didn't think giant saucer battles fit what had come before. The release of
Independence Day soon afterwards rendered the whole issue moot.)
It was also around this time that Lucas became intrigued by the crystal skull, and was planning to feature it in an upcoming episode. But Ford's cameo was part of season two, while the skull would've been included later in season three. So I don't believe the skull was Lucas' plan all along. The timing is slightly off, and he probably wouldn't have used the Macguffin in the tv series first.
But the real evidence is the Saucermen script itself. Its Macguffin is a generic alien device that essentially serves the same purpose as the skull in KOTCS. Namely, Indy and the Russians are in a race to return it to a certain location by the film's end. If Lucas had been planning to use the skull this early, it would've certainly been included in the script.
It wasn't until the late 1990s/early 2000s that Indy 4 appeared to be moving forward again. This is when Lucas says he went back and reworked an earlier idea, and simply removed the parts that had caused a problem. I interpret this as him going back to the alien B movie idea, and taking the focus off of giant saucer battles.
The crystal skull was obviously used to link the two genres together (sci-fi; ancient civilizations) in a way that everyone could agree upon. Frank Darabont started working on this crystal skull/alien storyline around 2002/2003. His script was later rewritten and transformed into KOTCS.