Last Crusade (Indy Week #1 of 5)

The Ark of the Covenant and The Holy Grail: Indy Who You Trying to Fool?

Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade

Genre: Action-Adventurev (with a strong touch of Nazi Chick Romance)

Premise: Indiana Jones sets out in search of his father, who has been kidnapped by the Nazis, and ends up on a quest for the Holy Grail.
About: (Disclaimer: I’ve been trying to decide for scripts that are feature movies, how much I should discuss what actually happened to the film. I’ve decided it’s sort of pointless because this script is more about the actual “writing of”. So, from now on, the “about” will just have details about the development process.) The script for Last Crusade went through several alterations, which eventually spawned some of the scripts I’ll be reviewing later in the week. At first, Diane Thomas (Romancing the Stone) wrote a “haunted house” film which was dropped. (I don’t have a script for this, but would absolutely love one if anybody has it.) Chris Columbus (Gremlins, Goonies, Adventures in Babysitting) then wrote an idea based around The Monkey King (which I remember from Nickelodeon’s Legends of The Hidden Temple). His script was crazy high in terms of productions costs and racist (we’ll get to this later). Menno Meyjes (The Color Purple, Empire of the Sun) came up with a very magic realist script (I don’t have it, but would love it) with Indy searching for his father and the Holy Grail so now there was a definite story. Spielberg suggested making Indiana a Boy Scout as he was one as a child. Jeffrey Boam was hired for the next draft and hyped up the characters. There were a few more touch-ups by Tom Stoppard (mostly dialogue rewrites) who worked under the name Barry Watson. Stoppard also came up with the “Panama Hat” character, who is a bad guy Indy meets as a kid and alter cops the man’s dressing style.

Writers: To recap: Diane Thomas (who died in a car accident in 1985 while working on Speilberg’s Always and Indy) replaced by Chris Columbus (Goonies, Adventures in Babysitting, Gremlins) was replaced by Menno Meyjes (Empire of the Sun, Color Purple) was replaced by Jeffrey Boam (Straight Time, Dead Zone, Lost Boys, Funny Farm) who was written by Tom Stoppard (who in addition to a ton of major theater work also wrote Brazil, Empire of the Sun, and Shakespeare in Love).

This film suckers you into loving it within the first ten pages. During a local boy scout trip, Indiana Jones ends up on a circus train chasing after the Cross of Coronado. It’s totally that old Spielberg trick of quickly taking something mundane and turning it into an extraordinary, jaw dropping experience. And, we inadvertently prepare ourselves for another Indy adventure. Plus, the character is developed: we learn how he got his name, what his home life was like, and how he eventually got the idea for his character. Plus for the first time (keep this in mind for later, because we’ll go revert back) the opening is not that tired, pot boiler, boulder roll, shoot out at a dance club, Area 51 escape sort of introduction. In fact, this is the only time in this entire script where we feel Indiana Jones is going somewhere new, and busting out of its old established structure.
There are definite repeats, and I remember being confused about this as a kid. Both times the Nazis are after him. In the first film, Indy is chasing The Ark of the Covenenant (it holds the Ten Commands) and now he’s chasing after The Holy Grail. Has Indy gone Christian? Is he a born again? I mean, all the legendary items you can pick and there have to be two pieces that are directly out of Christian mythology?

The thrust of this story is Indy’s relationship to his dad: at first castigated by his father, then following his dad’s work, then working on one of his father’s projects, then hooking up with his father’s old squeeze, then finding his father, then completing his father’s quest. But Indy’s dad is never really his dad. He’s more of a partner in crime. It’s that old adventure notion that whoever is on Indy’s quest stops being anything except a partner in adventure and somebody who can eventually survive until the end of the journey. While we’re on this, Indy’s main squeeze Isla in this film lacks the sarcastic banter of Kate Capshaw or the feistiness of Marion Ravenwood, instead she’s this bland sort of flavorless bitch who ends up double crossing him. She isn’t that memorable. And I think her character was written as an after thought. (She’s not much better in the film. But they didn’t really get a terrific actress from what I recall to punch it up).

This film recycles all the plot elements, comes up with some set pieces (a tank chase Columbus will use in his script, a catacombs thing we’ll also see better used in a later script, and a few other pieces). So, needless to say, the middle part of this script is nothing more than a tired retread of the Indy structure (a catacombs scene, an airplane scene, a chase with a tank) that we’ve seen in every other film. There isn’t anything edgy like in Temple of Doom. And Indy’s relationship to his father isn’t enough to carry the story. So the film ends up this tired, schlock. That is, except for the end.

The ending is awesome. Because I love the challenges Indy must faith (the leap of faith, the name of God, picking the true cup) and the interaction with the Knight Templar. This, and the circus train, are the only part of this film that are legitimately fascinating and keep me riveted to the page. It’s because for once, the action and the threats are tied in symbolically to what Indy is looking for which is ultimately tied into the idea of unification with the father. This stuff works wonder. And, if only the film had more of it, The Last Crusade could have ended up another wonderful Speilberg piece.

Scooby Doo (Complete Crap)
Atilla (Poor, Few Redeeming Qualities)
Wedding Crashers (Mediocre)
[X] - Hot Rod (Good)
Definitely Maybe (Pretty Darn Good)

Isla Prospects: Indy’s love interested is also named Isla. She’s also foreign. She’s also sleek. If Isla was about 15 years younger, she could have knocked this role out of the park. I’d love to have see her square of with Harrison Ford.

What I Learned: It is really hard to hook a reader into a film. (Perhaps even harder than hooking a viewer). One way to do it is show the character when they’re younger. As a result, the reader then plays this game of trying to compare and contrast the two characters and figure out just how much the person was influenced by the events that occurred in their youth. Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade performs this trick and it works like a charm. Brought me into the script eager to read and find out where the story was going. So if you can’t find a way to start your script, think about a sequence revealing how the character became the person they are.