indiana jones and the kingdom of the crystal skull - frank darabont’s original draft
*spoilers*
It’s been a terribly-kept secret that Frank Darabont, the man behind the excellent Shawshank Redemption and half-decent Green Mile, wrote a draft of the film that became Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. The film’s long gestation period was attributed to getting the script right, and it’s popularly bemoaned that Steven Spielberg let George Lucas throw out Darabont’s work. Which is weird when you consider that Lucas, who is unquestionably a conceptual genius with a gift for awesome ideas, simply cannot write.
But are we being fair? I tracked down Darabont’s draft (via torrent, good luck finding it though) to compare it with the finished film.
Some elements are the same: the opening set-piece in the warehouse, complete with magnetism nonsense, truck chase and rocket sled; the interrogation and subsequent commie-bashing; the business with the skull being hypnotic. To my surprise, the alien sequence is also there, and is actually toned down in the final film. Perhaps too much; it’s not clear what’s happening to Spalko in the film, where the draft script gives everybody a clear-cut comeuppance.
Unforgivably, Indy doesn’t even leave the States until page 44 — that’s three quarters of an hour into the film. He’s held up by some spy-type stuff that just doesn’t play quite right in an Indy film. Darabont ups the commie subplot by having Indy falsely accused of murder, which again tastes wrong to me: I think it’s a bit of a lazy device to have your hero explicitly “on the run”, and the finished film does well to tone this aspect down. One of the things I liked about the film was the way it played the insidiousness of the red scare against Indy, showing how illogical, arbitrary and unsubstantiated that kind of whispered smear campaign rally was.
Plenty is different: Indy is no longer scared of snakes. And there’s no Mutt. I have to admit I quite liked Mutt, in that he was quite resourceful — it’s him who busts them out of the Russian camp, and I like the last haircombing before being shot. Surprisingly, Darabont wrote the Tarzan bit: here, Indy pursues the feral Oxley on a series of vines.
The red ants sequence is there, but the chase doesn’t include the fencing. There’s a couple of nice lines here that are very Indy:
CRUNCH! The truck lands in a tree, slamming to a stop in the branches. The engine dies. Marion gives Indy a withering look.
MARION
Only you could park us in a tree.
INDY
Only you could drive me out of mine.
Indy starts cranking the key, but the engine’s flooded.
HAMA
I think they want us to surrender.
MARION
Don’t worry. We’ll blow up before that happens.
Suddenly, the ENGINE ROARS TO LIFE…
INDY
German engineering.
There’s no Spalko, which leaves us with a hole where the main villain should be. Instead there’s a selection of baddies, who dip in and out, so the sense of peril isn’t consistent. Ray Winstone’s mockney sidekick Mac, with the ludicrously see-sawing loyalties, is swapped for a more straightforward Russian baddie, called Yuri. In South America we meet dictator Escalante, turncoat archaeologist von Grauen, hapless American diplomat Osgood Turner, and mercenary Porfi. Darabont also gives us the very cool ‘Thin Man’, who is an “extremely thin and sinister individual dressed all in black”.
The Thin Man shuld have had an expanded part. Darabont tells us “He looks like Death in a homburg hat. Make no mistake — there’s enormous power coiled in his wraith-like frame. His rat-thin face displays an old, livid scar that runs forehead to chin, bisecting a milky dead eye“. Sounds a bit like Toht, right? I imagined him having as being some kind of exotic killer with a dastardly foreign accent, if he speaks at all. But strangely, this sinister individual turns out to be just a American gangster, saying things like “C’mon, pally. Let’s not drag this out.” After a fight sequence in Indy’s museum the Thin Man becomes positively verbose, exclaiming: “Pull me up, I tell ya I’ll spill everything! I’ll rat out the Russkies! I’ll clear ya, I swear I will! Just pull me up! For the love’a Mike, pull me up! ” Just doesn’t sit right. Anyway he’s dead by page 39.
Unfortunately, they all feel like secondary villains: Yuri, Porfi and the Thin Man are clearly henchman, von Grauen is one-dimensional and Turner isn’t really a villain at all. Meanwhile Escalante feels disconnected from the story. The characters pass through his world, so he takes an interest, but he isn’t engaged with the action.
The closest thing to a main villain is Baron Peter Belasco, but he doesn’t come into the story until an hour in. Compare this with Belloq or Walter Donovan, who actually kicks off the plot in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. I would have like to see some foreshadowing, perhaps Indy professing a professional distaste for Belasco’s celebrity archaeology in the museum sequences.
Overpopulation is still an issue. Colourful secondary characters are essential, but in the film we had Oxley, Marion, Mutt, Mac and Indy travelling together, which was too many. The draft script is even worse: by the end of the film we find Indy and Marion tied up and sharing a tender moment — except there’s six other characters tied up with them, plus Oxley and three tuppeny villains wandering around.
Marion comes into the film earlier, and has way more to do, including a campily old-fashioned dogfight sequence. She’s also married the other archaeologist, Belasco, who serves a similar role to Belloq (”You and I are very much alike… It would take only a nudge to make you like me”), mirroring Indy:
PETER
Can you honestly say you haven’t felt its hypnotic power? Can you truly say you wouldn’t give everything to know what ancient secrets lie within?
INDY
Would you?
PETER
Indiana, we are men of science. We would gladly clasp hands and jump into hell if that were the price of knowledge. Tell me I’m wrong.
Indy can’t bring himself to deny it. He glances uncomfortably at Marion, who gives him a wry look.
MARION
I knew you two would hit it off.
Later, Marion gets the great line:
MARION
This isn’t like leaving the cap off the toothpaste, Peter! You’re a goddamn Russian spy!
Oxley’s role is also fuller, and way more macabre. He serves as a dark reminder of the dangers of actually finding what they seek, rather than just gibbering comedy relief.
There’s a fair bit of nerdy harking back to previous films. After losing his job, Indy gets drunk, wanders into the museum, and decides to reclaim the antiquities he recovered. This leads to a reprise of the idol/bag of sand moment from Raiders of the Lost Ark. We learn Willie Scott is now married to a Hollywood director… The script ends with Sallah and Henry Jones at Marion and Indy’s wedding, with the potential nerdgasm of Sean Connery drunkenly crooning Fly Me to the Moon.
It is definitely sillier than I expected. As well as the wing-walking plane sequence and vine-swinging, Indy gets eaten by a giant snake. Swallowed whole and completely eaten. Needless to say, his fear is well and truly back after that experience.
So is Darabont’s script better than the final film? Obviously, we’ll never know how much is Darabont, or Lucas or Spielberg or David Koepp. The draft certainly has more momentum once Indy leaves the States, but it takes too long to do so. Unlike the final film, there’s less exposition and more action. Secondary characters get more to do, but it’s overpopulated and lacks a primary villain. Just makes me wonder why it took so long to produce something so average.