Indiana Jones and the City of the Gods
Who would have thought I’d be READING Indy IV? Since I erased Crystal Skull from my mind, this seems to be my sole Indy IV experience. I’m on page 85 and so far there are staggering differences. Who has read it? What do you think? Let’s get the boulder rolling.
OpenCritic
I’ve not read it yet. But I will. Comments to come.
I loved City of the Gods. I liked the movie just fine, but I think this is a far greater level of craftsmanship in the writing. It seems like a lot of these action sequences were funnier and more creative, and the Marion / Indy dynamic was far, far more true Raiders.
Reading this made some of the hackneyed transitions in Crystal Skull make more sense to me, because I could see where David Koepp was forced to do awkward surgery.
I don’t know what they didn’t like about this draft– and this draft certainly isn’t perfect– but I’m a little stunned that they didn’t keep more of it. Indy getting drunk in the museum was particularly inspired, as was the final resolution of his relationship with Marion.
:shrug:
I’d give the movie a B-, and give this script an A-.
From Jason Bylan:
I actually started reading it a few days ago. All I needed to see was the first line to know it was graphic matching into anything other than a mole hill.
I’m about 1/3rd way (he’s going to South America) and thusforth has no mention of a Shia LeBouef character or Marion. It’s interesting in that it indeed is following the key story (presumably laid out by Lucas– Russians in a warehouse, Nuclear bomb scene, hyptotising Skull, a scene involving the statue of a dead Marcus Brody) but doing them as a totally, or near-totally, different movie. I did love the clock scene (oddly, almost a year ago at Central Park I stood by the Children’s Zoo clock and thought that area– not necessarily the clock itself– but that Natural History area would be a great location for the college Indy teaches at) and the engine thing was cool. So yeah, so far it is better but then again there are things I liked in the real one that are missing (the gunpowder showing the way in the warehouse, the motorcycle chase skidding under the tables in the college). I’ll definitely finish it soon.
I will say though on record Darapont ripped off my idea of having a scene in a museum!!!!
Jason
Indy gettting drunk in the museum and stealing the fertility idol was the scene that made me think of a young Hugh Sterbakov waking up in a sweat of sudden inspiration and then giggling as he typed the scene in the middle of the night.
What I preferred about this script is that it was far less cartoony than the filmed script. Even though Indy survives the atomic blast in a fridge, we don’t see it tumble over and over in a way that would clearly have killed him. We get to respect a statue of Marcus instead of having the statue’s head fall on the Russian’s car. Marion is a real character. We don’t see the Ark. Yuri was more believable than Cate Blanchett’s character. Far less corny dialogue (though I can’t believe they had Yuri say ‘Adventure has a name’ twice, much less once.) Why did Lucas cram the filmed version full of ‘50s speech (“I like Ike!”) and unbelievable moments. In this script, the russians SNEAK into the army base undetected. Far more believable than the filmed scene where a dozen russians take over the whole base. It’s clear that in the early ‘80s Lucas stopped thinking like a film student and started thinking like a producer of blockbusters. I miss the old George.