This story is focused and well-paced where crystal skull is clunky, incoherent, and anti-climatic. This script takes risks and does push the Indy series a little, but for the most part, gets away with it. The giant snake scene can go along with the Oxley vine swinging scene, but most of what is here, while over-the-top, would have worked much better than the turd we ended up with. The nuclear bomb refrigerator scene would have been written out also if it were up to me. Indy has plenty of over-the-top action without adding crap like that. I would have devised some more realistic thrills instead. Some element of believability needs to be present.

The movie we ended up with was pretty much garbage from front to back. The Darabont script would have been a decent conclusion to the series. Lucus must have wanted to add Indy’s son in order to continue the series. Who knows. Lucas can blow me.

great read. george lucas, please stop touching franchises.

My thoughts.

The script has many of Darabont’s hallmarks…it’s got a lot of oomph…it’s far less contrived/convoluted than what ended up being ‘Indy IV’ on the screen…

…but there are waaaaaaaay too many sloppy mistakes for me to believe this, this oh-so-NOT-an-early-draft, is authentic.

On the other hand, if it’s not, then whoever DID write it deserves a huge tip of the hat, because it’s a rollicking screenplay.

And yes, better than what we got from Spielberg and Lucas.

It was more gory, much like the heart ripping scene from TOD. Plus there is real danger at the end. They are not our friends. In fact they may have been abandoned for a reason.

It’s too bad; this is what should’ve been made. We would all be joking about that nonsense script with Indy having a son named Mutt! What were they thinking?

Wow, that was the most reasoned expression of the Indy IV weaknesses I’ve heard. I still quite enjoyed it myself, but I totally get what you’re saying and can plainly see we could have gotten a better Indy film. Especially considering the wait.

However, the character of Indiana Jones rings a bit truer here — he’s angrier, more violent and curses like a PG eighties film. To be fair, though the age issue is addressed by Darabont far less and had this script been shot in 2004 as planned Ford would have looked downright silly playing a bachelor adventurer that didn’t seem to have matured at all in the past 15 years. Still, couple that with some additional action and visual set pieces that thankfully move beyond the repetitious speedy chases found in the final Indy 4 (a duel in the skies between two planes, a moonlit rooftop struggle) and some jungle snakes, ants, and dragonflies mutated to prehistoric Ray Harryhausen inspired size and you end up with a little more serial-style, B-movie adventure than what ended up on the screen.

Two other things bear mention: although the Soviet villains here are similarly shaded in greys much too close to the moral ambiguity seen in Crystall Skull’s Spalko and company (a far cry from the black and white good guy/bad guy theme on display in the original trilogy) the script pulls off something the final film sorely lacked in that a true romance is present. It helps considerably that Marion is more of her old self, but without the screentime baggage presented by the Mutt character, more time is spent on believably re-igniting the Jones-Ravenwood fire and as a result, the ensuing (and still unnecessary) happily ever after ending was at the very least begrudgingly earned.

Finally, and most importantly, while the Crystal Skull remains less-threatening and less-interesting than the previous relics Indy searched for, the aliens revealed here are more of a blood-thirsty threat and add some much needed danger to the third act. In fact, in addition to Indy taking a more active role in the exploration of the final temple (rather than playing interpreter to Oxley) there is a wonderful temptation scene at the end that nicely mirrors the temptations the relics present in the earlier films (in Raiders, he’s tempted to blow up the Ark and Marion is tempter to look once it’s opened — in Temple, he is tempted by his own dark side and his thirst for fortune and glory — and in Crusade he’s tempted to save the grail even after trying the same feat killed Ilsa). With no personal temptation present in Crystal Skull, there’s no real danger for Indy, just a rush to escape the temple through the CGI madness.

So in the end, is it better than Crystal Skull? Well, the improved ending helps considerably and the dialogue overall is sharper, with the story and characters being handled better to boot. While Crystal Skull gets the edge as far as villains go (Spalko is more interesting than what amounts to Ray Winstone with a Russian accent as the big baddie in Darabont’s draft) I have to say I prefer obviously evil aliens to ones that accidentally exploded people’s heads with knowledge.

So yes, it’s better. A little. I just wish in Indy’s final outing he had gone looking for something other than crystal alien skulls.