Tales From Development Hell: Indiana Jones IV.

[David Flin]

Comment here on this article by @RyanF on the ophidiophobic archaeologist.

 

[M_Kresal]

By an interesting bit of synchronicity, @RyanF's thoughts on Crystal Skull being better received if it had been made sooner lines up with a conversation I had with co-workers about the film and Dial of Destiny at the day job recently. The seeds for Skull were being laid as far back as the Fate of Atlantis game in 1992 and with the focus on aliens (wherever they're from) and aspects of UFO lore, it feels very much like a product of the 1990s, even if the film wasn't made until the noughties. It was a film out of time in many ways.

 

[Alex Richards]

1997 would definitely fit the feel they were going for better, and could offer a chance for film 5 (and the absolute end of the contract) to pull off the passing the torch elements better.

 

[AH Layard]

Enjoyed the article. I’ll admit I haven’t seen DoD yet but I’m still instinctively unsure about the UFO concept. The religious relics involved the supernatural but had moral overtones of Indy thinking about more than himself. No doubt that Crystal Skull handled it terribly though.

I would have loved a Fate of Atlantis film in the 1990s, it’s one of the greatest stories I’ve seen in a video game:

Spoiler

Especially Sophia’s background as an archaeologist turned psychic with unresolved history with Indy. Her like Plato viewing Atlantis as a classical utopia only to realise when they arrive that it’s reminiscent of Dante’s hell.* The Nazis attempting to use the Atlantean ‘god machine’ but turning into deformities (the Cretan Minotaur revealed to be a former example).

*The allusions here are done well: Atlantis as a city of concentric circles accessed through a creepy Styx like raft ride, the demonic possession of Sophia through the necklace, Indy sarcastically noting ‘Well here’s your shining city’, the art style copied from Dore’s illustrations of the Inferno, Dies Irae merged with the soundtrack in the final scene.

 

[Geordie]

I hadn't realised just how tortuous Indy 4's route to the screen was. Lots of roads not taken here.

 

[RyanF]

By an interesting bit of synchronicity, @RyanF's thoughts on Crystal Skull being better received if it had been made sooner lines up with a conversation I had with co-workers about the film and Dial of Destiny at the day job recently. The seeds for Skull were being laid as far back as the Fate of Atlantis game in 1992 and with the focus on aliens (wherever they're from) and aspects of UFO lore, it feels very much like a product of the 1990s, even if the film wasn't made until the noughties. It was a film out of time in many ways.

Enjoyed the article. I’ll admit I haven’t seen DoD yet but I’m still instinctively unsure about the UFO concept. The religious relics involved the supernatural but had moral overtones of Indy thinking about more than himself. No doubt that Crystal Skull handled it terribly though.

I would have loved a Fate of Atlantis film in the 1990s, it’s one of the greatest stories I’ve seen in a video game:

Spoiler

Especially Sophia’s background as an archaeologist turned psychic with unresolved history with Indy. Her like Plato viewing Atlantis as a classical utopia only to realise when they arrive that it’s reminiscent of Dante’s hell.* The Nazis attempting to use the Atlantean ‘god machine’ but turning into deformities (the Cretan Minotaur revealed to be a former example).

*The allusions here are done well: Atlantis as a city of concentric circles accessed through a creepy Styx like raft ride, the demonic possession of Sophia through the necklace, Indy sarcastically noting ‘Well here’s your shining city’, the art style copied from Dore’s illustrations of the Inferno, Dies Irae merged with the soundtrack in the final scene.

When I originally conceived of this article I expected to be writing a lot about Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis becoming the fourth film, but to my surprise discovered this was never on the cards at all. I thought the development in the 1990s did look to Atlantis as a model, but it turned out I might have been getting my wires crossed to the cancelled video game sequels to Atlantis, one of which (Indiana Jones and the Iron Phoenix) was adapted by Dark Horse as a comic.

1997 would definitely fit the feel they were going for better, and could offer a chance for film 5 (and the absolute end of the contract) to pull off the passing the torch elements better.

There's something about the aliens that might have been received better had the film come out in the 1990s at the height of the popularity of The X-Files and Ufology in general. It would have seemed less incongruous if they were everywhere in pop culture anyway at the time.

I hadn't realised just how tortuous Indy 4's route to the screen was. Lots of roads not taken here.

Though oddly there's a lot more roads not taken for Last Crusade, which had at least two fully formed ideas before settling on the holy grail and Indy's dad. Yet production was on the whole smoother compared with Crystal Skull struggling with the same core idea for over a decade.

There are two articles to be done on Indy 3, one on Spielberg/Diane Thomas's haunted mansion idea and one on Lucas/Chris Columbus's Monkey King.

 

[OwenM]

Was rereading this (very good, if @RyanF ever sees my comment) article and it occurred to me I am slightly surprised to see no @Thande defense of the fridge in the comments

 

[Thande]

Was rereading this (very good, if @RyanF ever sees my comment) article and it occurred to me I am slightly surprised to see no @Thande defense of the fridge in the comments

I think it may have come out when I was away.

My view is that it's certainly not any more far-fetched than a lot of other things in the franchise, at the very least.