It's Finally Here

It is May 22, 2008. Today Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is released to the general public. Meaning me.

Good God. I'm tweaked.

C'mon Kath. You know what a cautious fellow I am.

And that's precisely the problem here.

The lure of one of my childhood heroes coming back to the screen for the first time since I was fresh out of high school. Of course I'm going to go and see it. I have to go and see it. I can't avoid it. This is the equivalent of the husband missing the Star Wars prequels. I know it's probably going to suck, diminishing the entire series in the meantime, but I can't freakin' help myself. I MUST go and be reaquainted with Indy. Even though I know it will probably disappoint me terribly.

Sigh.

I have a bit of a confession to make: I actually wrote an Indiana Jones screenplay. Back in 1997. Well before they ever started talking about a sequel. It was one of my first forays into writing, and while I actually had no clue as to how to put a screenplay together (and still really don't, despite reading many books on the subject), I recently found it again, and I have to admit, it wasn't that bad. Except for the fact that a. I couldn't come up with a decent artifact and b. it lacks an ending. I set it in the summer of 1953 and the plot was centered around the young Shah of Iran. If you're not familiar with that point in time, it was pivotal in modern Iranian history, as Mohammed Mussadeq led the Iranian Majlis or parliament, to nationalize the Iranian oil industry. This shut down the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, which did not please, to say the least, the Tory party of Winston Churchill and future Prime Minister, Anthony Eden. They enlisted the help of the Einsenhower Administration, and the Brothers Dulles, to do something about that pesky Mussadeq, who was proving incredibly popular in Iran, thus weakening the Shah. Alan Dulles sent in Kermit Roosevelt, grandson of Teddy, to foment a military coup, to keep the Shah on the throne (because that was iffy at that point in time) and to marginalize (and that's a nice way of putting it) Mussadeq. Ultimately, Roosevelt was successful and, in the process, actually managed, to reassure the Shah that the Western powers were behind him, to get the British Government to have Big Ben strike the hour erroneously. (Yes, that's where the Bond people got that from. It actually happened.) The BBC World Service still, to this very day, begins every hour of programming with the chiming bells of Big Ben. When the bells rang one more time than was necessary, the Shah was assured of their intentions to keep him on the throne.

But I digress. While, ultimately, the Shah was kept in place, at that point it was iffy in the extreme.

Indy, at the time, was not-so comfortably ensconced in his professorial duties, and had pretty much put his derring-do's behind him. Until, one day, at a conference in New York, he was confronted by a young history professor, the daughter of diplomats, who'd spent the years of WWII as a teenage OSS courier in Teheran, where her father was stationed. An envelope of photos---some of Indy, some of Marion---has anonymously been mailed to her. She doesn't know why, but by coincidence, she recognizes Indy at the conference and confronts him with the photos, wondering what the hell is going on.

And we're off.

The young woman, Kate, of course, was Indy and Marion's child. She had been put up for adoption by Abner, Marion's father, and Henry Sr., who had cleaned up Indy's mess, of which, Indy was unaware. (The whole thing started off with a young grad student Indy and Marion hooking up, Abner finding out about it and being, understandably, PISSED OFF about his daughter's deflowering. After an entertaining chase scene through 1920's Chicago, Abner caught up with young Indy, the metaphorical shotgun was wielded, and while he was initially willing to go along with the marriage scheme, because he truly was in love with Marion, Indy ultimately couldn't go through with the plan and bolted.) I came up with this cockamamie idea after watching and rewatching the Nepalese bar scene in Raiders, and wondering, ultimately, what the story was. So, because I never got an explanation, I made one up.

Fast forward through CIA intervention, Marion's being held hostage, Indy finally realizing he's procreated, promises of the return of the Ark to Indy wielded in exchange for help in finding an artifact the Shah desperately believes he needs to stay in power, the Russians being not so cool about this, Indy learning that modern airplanes (well, modern in 1953) have hydraulics and when they're shot to bits, it's kind of hard to control a plane, a trip to Persepolis to retrieve an artifact Darius the Great (I think. I don't really remember.)had brought back from Ancient Greece with him...and you have a morass of a screenplay that never really got anywhere. I tried not to throw the kitchen sink in there, but I couldn't quite help myself. I eventually gave up and consigned it to the scrapheap of failed ideas, of which I have plenty.

So, as you might imagine, I'm somewhat invested in viewing the new Indy. I want to know if my ideas were better. I wanted Indy to be extremely uncomfortable with the idea of having a daughter (who, of course, inherited Marion's hollow leg). I wanted Senior to be thrilled that he's finally allowed contact with his grandkid. I wanted Indy and Marion to hook back up, and for good. These were the ultimate goals of the film I envisioned, but I also wanted it to be the next goddamn Raiders. I didn't want it to suck. But it did. Badly. The original setting, and ideas might have been fairly decent, I needed help with the execution. I needed Lawrence Kasdan, and it was obvious I wasn't going to get him. I had all sorts of fantasies about how I would give the screenplay to an acquaintance who had moved to the Hamptons for a job, and he would, somehow, slip it to Spielberg. I was pathetic, and ultimately, it was pathetic. Besides, at that point in time Lucas was wrapped up in re-releasing the altered versions of Episodes IV, V, VI. Spielberg had, seemingly, moved on to bigger and better filmmaking, with Saving Private Ryan in his immediate future. And, most importantly, Harrison Ford had repeatedly said he had no intention of EVER revisiting Indiana Jones. It was unlikely, even if I had a. finished it and b. dramatically polished it up, that it would ever get made, so what was I wasting my time on? Hence, I gave up. Maybe I shouldn't have.

So, this thing HAD BETTER NOT SUCK. I am entirely worried that there are entirely too many reviews which list all its faults, but whose authors qualify their criticism with their overwhelming happiness that Indy is back. While I'm as happy as the next person that Indy is back (and that Marion is back, too.), I want his return to not have a sucky story attached to it. I do not want another Temple of Doom. I would prefer another Raiders, but that's unlikely, so I'll settle for something along the lines of Last Crusade. Something that leaves me with warm, fuzzy feelings for my favorite anti-hero.

But what the fuck am I saying? That makes me just as bad as the critics. How low have I, and others like me, let the bar drop when we say we just want Indy to come out alive. Fer chrissakes, I'm disgusted with myself for letting my expectations fall so low.

Alas, however, I shall hand over my nine dollars sometime over this long weekend, and I intend to vent my spleen if it, indeed, sucks.

Posted by Kathy at May 22, 2008 10:40 AM | TrackBack