Genre: Action-Adventure-Comedy
Premise: After his Area 51 adventure, Indiana Jones goes to Peru to track down Marion Ravenwood and her husband, who are on the trail of a lost city. Oh yeah, Sallah and Henry Jones are still alive. There isn’t a swarm of Nazi's like in Crystal Skull. Eventually the film becomes a chase to the lost city. And the alien is a heck of a lot meaner. But besides that, you've basically got the Crystal Skull. So that means: the car chase near the cliffs, the killer red ants, the alien vortex and people who become possessed. Everything in that film is here. There's just no Indy sidekick, and Marion is with her husband.
Premise: After his Area 51 adventure, Indiana Jones goes to Peru to track down Marion Ravenwood and her husband, who are on the trail of a lost city. Oh yeah, Sallah and Henry Jones are still alive. There isn’t a swarm of Nazi's like in Crystal Skull. Eventually the film becomes a chase to the lost city. And the alien is a heck of a lot meaner. But besides that, you've basically got the Crystal Skull. So that means: the car chase near the cliffs, the killer red ants, the alien vortex and people who become possessed. Everything in that film is here. There's just no Indy sidekick, and Marion is with her husband.
About: This script is remarkably to close to what ended up in the finished film. Really close. And what’s perhaps even more surprising is that the draft I read was written several years before the film’s actual release and David Koepp is the only one with credit on the final script. (I’d definitely fight that if I was Darabont). Lucas ultimately rejected Darabont's draft. (I think probably because it didn't suck hard enough).
Writers: Asides from the prerequisite Lucas credit, the writer is Frank Darabont who at this point had written tons of B-movie scripts including The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles, The Blob, Nightmare on Elm Street 3, and The Fly 2. (He also did The Green Mile, probably his most loved script. As an asides, he has been discussing doing Richard Bahman/Stephen King’s The Long Walk about a deadly marathon. Due to his reputation on the The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile, Darabont was hired by Speilberg in the late 90’s/early 2000’s. The script is very close to what ended up in the Crystal Skull, but Darabont recalled it as a “tremendous disappointment and a waste of a year”.
I saw the film several months ago, but it’s jarring how close City of Gods is to Crystal Skull. It’s even more jarring that Darabont wasn’t given credit on the final version. Perhaps the largest difference is the heavy dose of maudlin sentimentality that Lucas added in by creating Indy’s son. But the overall arch is the same thing here. Escewhing Kasdan's heavy emphasis on archaeology, the amount of trouble from Doom, and no real quest like in Last Crusade, this version still manages to feel kind of close to an Indiana Jones adventure. Ultimately, with a relic we aren't attached to (Crystal Skulls), a hokey mythology, and an Indiana Jones who isn't nearly as dangerous as he used to be, this script feels ultimately unfulfilling.
The two major failings of this script are A) The low-level of tension. I think this Marion thing is supposed to be hard for Indy, but I never really got an impression of that. And I know there's a chase to the city with potentially disastrous consequences but one never really gets an idea of what happens if the team fails. So this thing sort of rides along on fumes. And B) I don't care about the relic. It's pretend. It's made up. It's silly. Aliens, I guess, could work, but not in the situation that they've been described. Why couldn't be something even more original? Why? Also Marion very unconvincingly dumps her husband at the end for Indy. I actually felt bad for the guy. I know it's supposed to be a storybook ending, but this just didn't work.
I mean, really people how hard is it to come up with an Indiana Jones adventure? This is not that difficult. We start off with an unrelated opening where Indy retrieves a holy object despite traps from a pretty cool hideout. Then, we cut to America, where Indy is teaching and all kinds of crap is falling down around him, he's called to adventure, Indy goes on several misadventures on the way to the relic, catches up with some old friends and ultimately ends up at a fortress of traps, which at the end holds relic, which I defined what characteristics it should contain yesterday. Oh, and some bad guys are on his tail. Saucer Men and Monkey King didn't seem to get this formula at all. And City of Gods comes close, but ultimately trips over its own two feet. I'd say this is slightly better than Crystal Skull, though, because the script isn't nearly as maudlin. But Last Crusade, City of Gods is not. It's a noble attempt, with no major failings, but ultimately just doesn't get the formula of this series.
Scooby Doo (Complete Crap)
[X] - Atilla (Poor, Few Redeeming Qualities)
Wedding Crashers (Mediocre)
Hot Rod (Good)
Definitely Maybe (Pretty Darn Good)
Isla Prospects: None. Marion is past middle aged at this point so the age gap is all wrong to even consider her. But physical differences aside, Marion is a little too domesticated and plain for Isla.
What I Learned: Monkey King had a lot of big budget stunts, as does City of Gods. I'm not really sure Monkey King would have been all that more expensive, even though it was slightly goofy in places. An edited down version of Monkey King would have kicked the snot out of City of Gods/Crystal Skull, but at the time (mid 1980's) the film was too expensive. This goes to show there's been a world opened up by modern film-making that enables more visual and stunts, often at the price of a story's quality.
Script Link: This is also widely available on Google.
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