Film - What If? Indiana Jones and the Reboot from Hell
I first threw this idea about in 2010 and since then the world has changed. My writing partner at the start of this project has drifted away but Rick Austin was a huge support when I started so still gets a mention, and Lucasfilm has been gobbled up by the behemoth that is Disney. I also had a ranty conversation on Twitter with acclaimed author Alec McQuay and our very own Pisky Correspondent Romeo Kennedy which has led to a slight change in my casting choices.
The Indiana Jones films are my favourites from Lucas, an unpopular decision I know, and, from Disney, I love the National Treasure films, which are basically Nic Cage being a modern-day Indy. The problem is that I don't want the two mixed. I also don't want Harrison Ford back as Indy, something in the past he said he would be up for, so I set about dreaming up an Indy reboot. I had a head full of ideas and spoke to my beardy colleague at the time, Rick Austin, who had been thinking the same things. So we put our IQ's together (3+7=92?) and cast and storyboarded a new adventure in the Indiana Jones series.
Our reboot is going to be written and directed by Joss Whedon, who is VERY hot in Hollywood right now and already inspired by Indy when making FireFly and, from my conversation with Alec and Romeo, we agree he brings the humanity to action films sadly lacking at the moment. It will be executive produced by Steven Spielberg. Well, I say "Exec Produced" but really we are going to tie him to a chair and make him see how to make Indy film properly as punishment for Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull.
Our tale begins here...
In 410AD, after the fall of the Roman Empire, peace reigned in Britain and Merlin decided that the time was right to lock away his magic and retire to a secret location to watch over the Holy Grail. The magic was locked forever more in Camelot, The Round Table, by King Arthur.
Legend has it that "The Key" was Excalibur, the fabled sword of King Arthur and, by pulling the sword from the stone, Arthur had not proved his worth to be King but had, in fact, locked the magic away. All the Knights of the Round Table went their separate ways on different Crusades with no record of who had "The Key".
Clues to the whereabouts of "The Key" were found in Merlin's lost poems by a pilgrim in The Far East and handed to Genghis Khan in 1170. Throughout Khan's violent Empire-building, "The Key" was never found.
During the 1933 revolt in Cuba, Sergeant Fulgencio Batista (Cheech Marin) discovered a gold cross at the island's highest point, Pico Turquino. Due to a hatred of the United States, Batista wouldn't just hand over the artefact but decided to auction it to the highest bidder to fund his army.
Marshall College run by Dr. Marcus Brody (Michael Caine) thought they had secured the cross, said to be a protective ornament given to Lancelot by Arthur, but were outbid at the last moment by Chinese Mafioso, Lao Che (Chow Yun Fat), who is searching for Merlin's key to gain the power that eluded his distant relation Genghis Khan and use it for his own gain.
Brody asks Indiana Jones (Jeremy Renner - so deserving of his own franchise and the crux of our discussion on Twitter) to help and not let such an important find fall into the hands of the Chinese. Indy travels to Cuba to find he had been beaten by Lao's Head of Projects, Qiang (Maggie Q).
Trouble, chaos and fighting occur as Indy and Qiang chase across the globe searching for "The Key". Cuba leads to Shanghai, which takes Indy to the Mongolian capital Ulan Bator and a shrine to Genghis Khan where he discovers Merlin's poems.
Here he also meets the daughter of a great friend and so begins the fraught relationship with Marion Ravenwood (Maggie Gyllenhaal) The clues send him to the Ukraine before the final showdown at Camelot, a mystical collection of stones known in Middle Ages folklore as The Round Table, known to us now as Stonehenge.
There will be classic traps for Indy to escape from, the map with the red line returns for the journey sequences, and John Williams will be force fed steroids to accompany our work of genius with an even better score than the one he did for Raiders.
Image - IMDb.
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