You get to pick the topic for the next Indiana Jones movie and since we have flawless CGI and a NASA budget we get to make it in any era the character makes sense.
For starters, Wiki’s plot summary of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade begins:
“In 1912, a teenage Indiana Jones discovers a group of robbers finding a crucifix owned by Coronado while exploring caves with his Boy Scout troop in Utah.”
So that’s his birth year, roughly, let’s say for this thread he lives to a comfortable old age.
So this is the bit you get to fill in:
What year?
Where does he go?
What other real or imagined characters are involved?
What’s the MacGuffin?
What happens in it to make it an Indiana Jones movie, but also set it apart from the others?
The SAG strike is in another thread, here we live in an alternate universe where that is over and Production companies and Actors are happy and making movies.
1920’s Warlord Period China. The MacGuffin is The Heirloom Seal of the Realm. Indiana is a recent college grad and has some archeology work in China involving the seal. I haven’t thought about the characters yet, but there are loads ranging from the sadistic ex Emperor and now Japanese stooge Puyi to an early Mao and the Communist movement. We have British Opium, Kung Fu, loads of ethnic groups, smuggling and for that bit of Americana every Indiana movie needs we have our later stages of Imperialism in the region.
Set in the '50s in the Congolese rainforest amid the horrors of Belgian colonialism. Involves (at first) the Golden Idol Indy lost to Belloq from Raiders of the Lost Ark – Indy is in the Indonesian islands working on a tip that, after his death, Belloq’s estate was dispersed to various distant heirs, and the Idol went to a hedonistic French aunt that lives in a beach palace. Indy has to use his charms on the French aunt, ending up in her bed, and while she sleeps he sneaks off to her locked study and finds the Idol. He’s about to leave with it when he finds ancient texts and a map describing an ancient, hidden city in the central African rainforest.
With the help of Marcus Brody, Indy arranges a bribe to a corrupt but genial Belgian-Congolese bureaucrat, whose beautiful and rebellious daughter surprises Indy, his grumpy but brave Congolese guide, and their entourage of bearers, mules, and armed guards as they set out into the rainforest. A variety of adventures and hijinks ensue, involving a near-rebellion among the bearers, a huge and vicious crocodile, and of course, many snakes (including a 40 foot long python). But at the same time, a wealthy (and racist) South African explorer is on Indy’s trail, intent on stealing the map and credit for whatever discoveries they make. A side plot involves exposing Belgian cruelty towards the Congolese at a jungle rubber farming camp.
They eventually find the “Forgotten City”, an astoundingly beautiful ornate temple complex, complete with a sparsely populated but still present “advanced” ancient native society. The showdown with the villainous South African (and his henchmen) involves the usage of apparently hallucinogenic native plants, such that the “Forgotten City” and its residents disappear at the end, leaving Indy and his surviving retinue unsure if the City ever really existed. All that remains is a new Golden Idol, oddly similar to the original Peruvian one.
Indiana Jones and the Key of Portunus
It’s 1962, and Indy is trying to unlock an ancient vault beneath the Capitoline Hill in Rome. Following a trail of breadcrumbs left by alchemists, mystics, and explorers of yore, he arrives in Modesto, California. After various misadventures with his sidekick, Wolfman Jack, involving hotrods, sock hops, and underage hitchhikers, Indy finds the key in the possession of an evil reincarnated siren named Melanie who works as a roller skating carhop at Mel’s Drive-In.
I thought it was neat that the first movie centered around the search for an object from the Old Testament, so something essential to Judaism, while the third one centered around a New Testament object so something essential to Christianity. So I wanted to make the next movie about something essential to Islam. (Probably this would be far too controversial to ever happen, though it would make for an Abrahamic faith trilogy.) The only thing I can think of is the Black Stone at the Kaaba, so perhaps someone is searching for the rest of the meteorite.
Or, if you want to get away from a MacGuffin storyline, how about there’s a conspiracy to destroy the Dome of the Rock so that the Third Temple could be built. Imagine the conspirators are fanatical Jews and Christians who believe that this is a necessary step to the Resurrection. (Another of the necessary steps is for the Ark of the Covenant to be returned to Jerusalem so it’s convenient that Indiana Jones located it earlier.)
Of course the destruction of the Dome of the Rock would so inflame people that there would be a massive war, i.e., the Apocalypse. The whole movie could be about how Indiana Jones has to stop the conspiracy, and his experiences with the Ark and the Holy Grail gives him enough street cred with the fanatics that he’s able to infiltrate their group.
It turns out that the legendary fountain wasn’t in St. Augustine or Bimini, but elsewhere in Mexico or Central America, and Indy has to follow the clues from Conquistadors, Aztecs inscriptions and Mayan texts, which end up sending him somewhere totally unexpected (so that it’s interesting, and so this doesn’t look so much like Crystal Skull)
Why? Because he’s getting old, and they need to youthen him up for future movies.
There’s one other advantage. As I’ve remarked before, the first three Indiana Jones movies all took elements from the Carl Barks’ Uncle Scrooge story "The Prize of Pizarro** (Uncle Scrooge #26, June 1959 – you can read it here – http://www.vancouver-rhodes.com/comics/PrizeOfPizarro.pdf )
The giant rolling stone ball, the scythe that cuts your head off (unless you’re on your knees – or a duck), the flood of water chasing Our Heroes down a tunnel, which they escape by getting to the end of the tunnel sand jumping to the side, and several other items. They also borrowed from other Barks stories, like “The Ghost of the Grotto” (apparently centuries-old knight in armor in an underground cave guarding a treasure).
But the last two Indy movies didn’t take anything from this, or any other Carl Barks comic. I think that’s the real reason they didn’t do so well.
If they want to succeed, they need to start stealing from Uncle Scrooge again. And Scrooge did search for the Fountain of Youth – (“That’s no Fable” Uncle Scrooge #32, December 1961)
These suggestions are all really really good- please keep them coming!
I’d like to see Indy take on something closer to home. Maybe he’s tracking down a MacGuffin that leads him into the “Illuminati” gathering in the Bohemian Grove. The group is revealed to be slowly leaking ridiculous conspiracy theories into the wild (Flat Earth, etc. - I’m not sure what would have been around in the 50s) to cover up some banal excuse for the group’s existence.
Indy travels through various places from Chinese mythology: the Red River, the Moving Sands, Mount Penglai, Jade Mountain. He fights off Chinese warlords and tongs, some of whom turn out to be fronts for Shaolin or Wudang monks, the Eight Immortals, or Anqi Sheng. The Maguffin is the Peaches of Immortality.
I hope this thread blossoms because, quite frankly, I can’t imagine another chapter because of his age. It’ll be interesting to see what people say. Were one to made, however, he might be the mentor to some young, promising, but inexperienced and rash newcomer. I could see that angle working.
Considering the original meaning of Moonraker, you might be able to do a story about archaeology, though you would have to shoehorn in a supernatural element.
As mentioned, other actors already played the character as a child in the television series, and River Phoenix played him as a child in the third movie. I fully expect Disney to find ways to extend the value of the franchise even if it requires casting another actor in the role.
Indiana Jones and the Chocolate Factory Indiana Jones and the Valley of the Beasts Indiana Jones Meets the Rocketeer Indiana Jones and something involving Norse mythology, but I don’t know what at the moment. The helm of Odin? Indian Jones and the Typographical Error
Indiana Jones and the Unmade Film whose Budget Went Mysteriously Missing
