As you may have heard by now, a new Indiana Jones movie was officially announced earlier this week, and despite some long-standing rumors, Harrison Ford is once again set to star as the title character. While the franchise’s fourth film, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, generally left a bad taste in everyone’s mouths, the notion of revisiting the franchise again has started people talking, and spawned some pretty great ideas about where the story could potentially go.
It’s common knowledge that, prior to Crystal Skull, there was an earlier version of the script titled enIndiana Jones and the City of the Gods, which was written by writer/director Frank Darabont. An accomplished screenwriter and director, whose projects include The Shawshank Redemption, The Green Mile and TV adaptation of The Walking Dead. He was also a writer on The Young Adventures Of Indiana Jones TV series, and he had a familiarity with the character and with George Lucas, Indy’s co-creator and producer of the show and the films. Ultimately, however, this didn’t do him much good.
Talk of a fourth installment had been around since the 1990s. Lucas wanted it to be a b-movie homage involving aliens and flying saucers. Spielberg didn’t, so they ended up compromising: Lucas kept the aliens, but lost the flying saucer. With that hashed out, all they needed was a writer to deliver a script.
Jump forward to 2002, when Lucas and Spielberg hired Darabont, who would turn in his first draft in May of 2003, building on an earlier script from the mid-’90s called Indiana Jones and the Saucer Men From Mars by Die Hard co-writer Jeb Stuart. One of Darabont’s early drafts allegedly contained the character of Indy’s teenage daughter, an idea vetoed by Spielberg, who didn’t like the idea of Indy being a father. (He would change his mind, as evidenced by the existence of Mutt Lange (Shia Labeouf) in Crystal Skull.)
After further revisions to the script, Darabont turned in a new draft in November of 2003 before being let go from the project. Another few years would go buy until Darabont talked about his unhappiness with the outcome to MTV News in 2007, going into detail about his frustrating experience:
It was very disappointing and a waste of a year. It showed me how badly things can go. I spent a year of very determined effort on something I was very excited about, working very closely with Steven Spielberg and coming up with a result that I and he felt was terrific. He wanted to direct it as his next movie, and then suddenly the whole thing goes down in flames because George Lucas doesn’t like the script.
The way Darabont told it, both Spielberg and Ford were in favor of making the movie he had written, but George Lucas would have none of it. When Darabont confronted Lucas:
I told him he was crazy. I said, ‘You have a fantastic script. I think you’re insane, George.’ You can say things like that to George, and he doesn’t even blink. He’s one of the most stubborn men I know.
With Darabont out of the picture, the script was re-worked by Lucas, who then changed the title to Indiana Jones and the Phantom City of the Gods — because apparently some people never learn from their mistakes. It was revised again by writer Jeff Nathanson (Catch Me If You Can), this time called Indiana Jones and the Atomic Ants. After Nathanson, David Koepp, who is going to pen the upcoming fifth installment, was brought in. Koepp, a prolific screenwriter, said that his personal directive in the project was simply ‘don’t screw up.’ Before long, he delivered a draft called Indiana Jones and the Destroyer of Worlds, which was more or less the version that made it to the screen under a different title.
After the resounding eyeroll audiences gave the fourth movie, die-hard Indy fans clamored to read Darabont’s rejected draft. In that same MTV interview, Darabont was asked about the chances fans might have to read his version, and he minced no words about his feelings toward Lucas.
At this point, I don’t give much of a damn what George thinks, but I wouldn’t want to harm my friendship with Steven.
While doing press for the movie The Mist, another Stephen King adaptation he directed, Darabont explained that it was the partnership between Spielberg and Lucas that prevented his script from being made.
Eventually, fans got their wish when a script leaked online in 2008, with many believing it to be the actual draft written by Darabont himself. In terms of the overall story, it’s close to the movie that ended up in theaters, though there were some noticeable differences. First, there was no Mutt Lange, and while Marion Ravenwood (Karen Allen) also returned in Darabont’s draft, she’s written there as much closer to the scrappy, rough-and-tumble character that stole our collective hearts in Raiders of the Lost Ark, even punching Indy in the face when the two first reconnect.
It wasn’t totally devoid of camp. At one point, Darabont worked in a meta reference to Kate Capshaw’s real-life marriage to Spielberg that would’ve likely taken a few people right out of the moment. The “nuke the fridge” scene is still in place, although it’s given a bit more context. And Indy gives a speech about how that kind of power shouldn’t be available to humankind. Because Lucas is Lucas, it also has aliens, (well, an alien). Overall, Darabont’s script is still a little hokey, but the overwhelming disappointment behind Crystal Skull has led some fans to believe that his version may have made for the better movie. Even though it still would have ultimately been about aliens.
