Indy's Battle To Get Back
Nineteen years after Indiana Jones last cracked the whip in The Last Crusade, speculation has remained feverish that one of the most successful box office heroes is about to make his victorious return. Older and maybe a little wiser, the fedora-wearing archaeologist blasts back onto the big screen in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. But why has he taken such a long time coming?He first made his mark preventing fiendish Nazis getting their mits on the Ark of the Covenant.
Then he was in India saving winsome nippers from a bloodthirsty cult. Last time out he was locking horns with the Third Reich again and stymying their efforts to grab the Holy Grail.
Since then it's been a long eighteen years. Almost two decades, which have seen the likes of The Mummy (OK), Sahara (not too bad) and National Treasure (unspeakable) attempt to steal Indy's thunder. Fat chance.
What's he been up to? Has he hung up his whip, swapped his leather jacket for a tweed blazer and settled down in the staff room of New England's Marshall College?
Actually no. Indiana Jones had been facing his most formidable foe to date - movie development hell.
During the late 1970s, film-makers George Lucas and Spielberg had struck a deal with Paramount pictures for five Indiana Jones. However, after The Last Crusade, Lucas declared that they'd run out of plots and until they found one everyone liked it was stalemate.
"In 1989 I thought the curtain was lowering on the series, which is why I had all the characters literally ride off into the sunset at the end," said Spielberg.
Ford - who was 47 for The Last Crusade - wasn't getting any younger so Lucas's initial idea was to make Indy 4 in the same vein as a 1950s B-movie. However, Ford and Spielberg weren't interested.
Undeterred, Lucas thought he'd discovered the plotline they all needed with the legend of the crystal skulls - quartz bonces that were reputed to give off radian psychic energy.
So keen was Lucas that the skulls featured in a cancelled third season of The Young Indiana Chronicles and also turned up in the accompanying Indiana novels and even a Tokyo theme park.
However, it was Steven Spielberg's son who forced his dad's hand when - in 2000 - he asked him when the next Indiana film would be made.
Spielberg Snr, Lucas and Harrison Ford got together and decided to make it happen.
The same year, M. Night Shyamalan, whose track record included The Sixth Sense and Unbreakable, said he was in talks with Spielberg...but the project was abandoned before a word was written because it became "too tricky".
Apparently, he found writing for a franchise he loved too intimidating and also claimed Ford, Spielberg and Lucas weren't sufficiently focussed.
After he backed out, Stephen Gaghan (Traffic) and Tom Stoppard (Shakespeare in Love) were approached and then Frank Darabont, director of The Shawshank Redemption, put pen to paper in 2002.
Unfortunately, his choice of Nazis as the villains for the third time didn't sit well with Spielberg, (he had just directed Schindler's List) and Lucas was keen on the Russians as baddies, particularly after he heard Stalin had a thing for crystal skulls.
Things seemed to get off the ground when Rush Hour writer Jeff Nathanson completed a new script only for Ford to declare that if the movie was not in production by 2008 then they should scrap the idea altogether.
Nevertheless, Spielberg pressed ahead with script doctor David Koepp distilling ideas from previous scripts, including Shia LaBeouf's character Mutt, the return of Karen Allen as Indy's ex Marion Ravenwood, and structuring the action around the crystal skull.
Indy was back in business.
