Yeah he should go after something from the Future this time!
Indiana Jones 5 "news"?
- Thread starter Flying Spaghetti Monster
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And Darabont fleshed it out much better. For one thing, the matter of Indy running afoul of HUAC was an actual plot point with some meat to it rather than something that was touched on and then cast aside. Overall, the story was much more coherent than the mess we ended up with.
It definitely had room for improvement. For one thing, Indy was too much of a superman in some sequences. But it could've been rewritten without throwing the whole thing out. At its core, it held together in a way that Koepp's script simply doesn't.
I thought that was great. Comedy comes from the unexpected. We all expect Indy to be afraid of snakes, so it would've been a funny moment to see him faced with a snake and go, "Oh, I overcame that years ago." Only to be swallowed whole by a huge snake and come out with his fears returning. And it makes sense. The man's decades older. I like the idea that he grew as a person and worked to overcome his fears. It would've been a lot less caricatured and cliched than what we got.
It shouldn't have been filmed with that script. But that script could've been refined and improved, fixing its problems and keeping its strengths, rather than thrown out altogether and replaced with something much, much weaker. The Koepp version has some entertaining set pieces, but nothing really unifying them into a coherent whole.
Excellent point.
Uhm.. where was this sentiment when they made Indy IV?
Sorry.. after seeing the 4th movie i'm lukewarm at best. Keep George away from the script and you may have a chance.
Unlike many, I loved Indiiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (fridge and all) and I look forward to seeing a fifth film if it's made. My only hope is that John Rhys-Davies returns as Sallah.
But not impossible. People overcome phobias all the time. And it still would've made a much cleverer, fresher joke than what we got instead. Like I said, comedy comes from the unexpected. Reversing a familiar schtick is a lot funnier than just reiterating it for the umpteenth time (although far too many comedy writers fail to recognize that).
Really? I dunno. I see what you are saying, but Indy's fear of snakes is such a defining characteristic. I'd rank it up there with the whip.
I'll grant you that. My point was more along the lines of even after a second or third draft, script probably would largely be the same in the sense of storyline and set pieces and I bet that it would have received the same divided reaction KotCS did.
Mola Ram would be proud.
The Holocaust was a bigger tragedy than trench warfare, to be sure. But, in Indy's case, there is a difference. Indy didn't experience the Holocaust the way he did trench warfare. He wasn't rounded up and thrown into a concentration camp. It is likely he saw the aftermath or the effects of the Holocaust, but would that be enough to cause his fear of snakes to go away. I don't believe it would.
Phobias are deeply rooted in the human psyche. They just won't evaporate if you see something so terrible in comparison that it makes your phobia look trivial.
It seemed to me that he conquered his fear of snakes in Raiders, or at least began to. Reversing that gimmick, as Christopher said, would have been humorous, like reversing the "shooting the swordsman" gag was in Temple (or, since that was a prequel, was Raiders the reversal? 
).
Anyway, where can I find this alternate script?
).Anyway, where can I find this alternate script?
Exactly -- which is why it's clever to take it and do a subversive twist on it, rather than just regurgitate it unchanged. The Darabont script didn't ignore Indy's fear of snakes or retcon it out of his life story altogether; it acknowledged it as something that, yes, is a defining characteristic of our image of Indiana Jones and found a fresh, clever way of using it. Also, by the end of the extended gag, Indy's fear of snakes had evidently returned.
Only a third-draft script? Man, if they're only up to the third draft, they're still months at least away from starting to film the thing. In moviemaking, scripts typically go through dozens of drafts, and even the final draft is only an approximation of what ends up on screen, since the director and actors can change lines during shooting, restructure the story or dub in new lines in editing, etc.
The Darabont script did have flaws. The opening was too slow, too much "walking to the plot" and not enough of the in medias res action we expect. There were too many villains and no single antagonist who rose above the pack. The action was sometimes over-the-top and it was too self-referential and self-indulgent. The alien element came too much out of the blue, which audiences might've responded to even more negatively than what we got. But all those could've been fixed -- and the Mutt character Lucas wanted could've been woven in -- without throwing out the elements that worked well: the greater integration of the HUAC subplot, the stronger role for Marion, the lack of the idiotic magic magnetism and the Roswell alien from the opening, a generally more coherent plotline overall, and a stronger climax where more is explained and Indy actually gets to do something heroic and decisive rather than just standing around watching a bunch of ill-justified special effects. Yes, the Darabont script needed a lot of work, but Lucas threw the baby out with the bathwater.
No, probably not. But it is possible for people to learn to overcome their phobias. You're talking about it as though it's a psychological impossibility, and that's simply untrue. Lots of people manage to overcome phobias on their own, and many more do so with the help of psychotherapy and other treatments. Psychotherapy was certainly around during Indiana Jones' lifetime; the 9-year-old Indy even met Sigmund Freud in a Young Indiana Jones episode.
And phobias aren't that "deeply rooted in the human psyche." They're learned responses to traumatic events, and they can be unlearned. We know that Indy's fear of snakes was not severe until he was 12 or 13 years old and fell into a snake pit on a circus train during his first attempt to recover the Cross of Coronado. That was relatively late in his development, and thus not as profoundly rooted as you imagine.
You mean like the last one.
Surely, you were talking about the last once, since it was seven thousand pounds of awesome.
Just to throw something out there for discussion's sake: We really don't know when Indy's fear of snakes began. According to Young Indy, his fear of snakes was present during the Corey Carrier episodes.
Actually, we do know when it began.
Or have you not seen Last Crusade?
Or have you not seen Last Crusade?
I have, but it was established that he had his fear of snakes as early as 9 or 10. That being said, the prologue sequence in TLC clearly didn't help matters, and no doubt, intensified the fear.
it seemed that he wasn't afraid, at first in that prologue.
"It's only a snake"
"It's only a snake"
There is a bit of an inconsistency, but the Indiana Jones Wiki reconciles it by saying:
Also, his unconcern toward snakes at the start of the Last Crusade teaser suggests that his childhood hatred hadn't been deep-rooted and he'd managed to overcome it somewhat by age 12/13 -- only for the train-car incident to renew and intensify it.
Either way, though, phobias are definitely surmountable.
Also, his unconcern toward snakes at the start of the Last Crusade teaser suggests that his childhood hatred hadn't been deep-rooted and he'd managed to overcome it somewhat by age 12/13 -- only for the train-car incident to renew and intensify it.
Either way, though, phobias are definitely surmountable.
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