Indiana Jones Writer Says The Franchise Made A Major Mistake
A writer that worked on the last Indiana Jones film recently admitted that bringing in one element was the biggest mistake the franchise has made.
Let’s have a moment of pure honesty. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull was bad. The film seemed to miss the point on what made the franchise so special. Granted it had been nearly 20 years since we last saw Harrison Ford take up the hat and whip, so the magic was hard to recapture. But mostly, it was because both George Lucas and Steven Spielberg needed to bring in aliens for whatever reason. In fact, not everyone had wanted that element to even be in the script, including writer David Koepp. He recently revealed that he had attempted to get Lucas and Spielberg to change the alien-like creatures. According to Koepp, “I was never happy with the idea [of including alien-like creatures in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.”
Who would be happy about that? It always felt like it was shoehorned in. We all know that Indiana Jones had always dealt with things of a supernatural nature. The Ark of the Covenant for instance, but showing aliens just took away the action and adventure of the entire story. It felt almost cheap to go that route. Koepp added, “in a larger sense aside from little things people might not have liked — that were too silly or whatever — the larger one was that [fans said] ‘We don’t feel like aliens should’ve been in an Indiana Jones movie.’ Fair enough, in retrospect, you’re probably right [laughs].” The alien aspect was certainly something that everyone felt was unnecessary.
Even though Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull suffered from having to go all science-fiction on everyone, the critics still managed to award the film a 78% “certified fresh” rating on Rotten Tomatoes. The poor audience score of 53% tells a much different story. Everything about the film just seemed like the cheap route to take, and it wasn’t just the aliens. Shia LaBeouf jumping in as the son of Indy and Marion also just felt like it didn’t need to be in the film. We understand that it was meant to appear to be the “final” film for the character but settling on aliens and a son was just not the right way to send off one of the best characters in cinema history.
Thankfully, that was not the last ride of Indiana Jones. Indiana Jones 5 is heading for a release in 2023, and we are more than excited to see where the franchise is going to end. To be honest, Harrison Ford and the franchise deserve to be sent off in the right manner. Critics may have been more convinced that the last film worked, but that could have been just giving respect to Ford, who deserves that respect. Fans were not too happy about many of the decisions that were made in the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.
Harrison Ford did show up at Star Wars Celebration in May of this year. Of course, he was there because he is Han Solo. However, he did surprise fans by showing off the first image of Indiana Jones 5. It seemed like a bittersweet moment for everyone, as we got to see the man in the iconic outfit. Ford is now 80 years old, and he isn’t quite slowing down, but we know there are rumors that this is his final film. Should it be true that he is meant to retire, then Indy should be given one final film that sums up the decades of arguably one of the greatest franchises ever made. We have hope that James Mangold will do the character justice this time.
