Man, Frank Darabont is kicking back, feeling smug and thinking, “I told you fuckers.” Now that “Indiana Jones And The Kingdom Of The Ridiculous Space Aliens” has been released and the world has seen how sub-par, absurd and retarded most of it was, the “Shawshank Redemption” director, who was originally commissioned to write Indiana Jones 4 in 2002, has leaked the original script. Err… umm… well, someone leaked the script (gee, we wonder who?).
Some people have quickly parsed the script and said the biggest omission of the film is that Shia LaBeouf’s toughguy annoying side-kick punk isn’t in the film (we’re also glad to know we weren’t the only ones who thought the Tarzan-like jungle scene in ‘Indy 4’ was totally inane and hilariously outlandish). Also, Sean Connery as Indiana’s dad was also in the Darabont script, but he dropped out regardless.
Darabont called working on the script a “waste of a year.” Spielberg loved it, but George Lucas read it, and felt it was too good, too un-preposterous and didn’t include enough laughable aliens and so there’s no love lost between the two of them (Darabont has been vocally bitter about it). In April 2007:
“Indy” showed me how badly things can go. I spent a year of very determined effort on something I was very excited about, working very closely with Steven Spielberg and coming up with a result that I and he felt was terrific. He wanted to direct it as his next movie, and then suddenly the whole thing goes down in flames because George Lucas doesn’t like the script.
And Darabont told Lucas exactly what he thought about him poo-pooing the idea. “I told him he was crazy. I said, ‘You have a fantastic script. I think you’re insane, George.’ You can say things like that to George, and he doesn’t even blink. He’s one of the most stubborn men I know.”
Even though some elements of his script were present in ‘Crystal Skulls,’ Darabont didn’t receive a writing credit which further fueled his anger at Lucas. “Honestly our storytelling sensibilities have diverged to the point where that would be a pointless exercise,” Darabont said of the possiblity of ever working with Lucas again (an early insider read the Darabont-free version of Indy 4 and told the director that much of his original concept was in the film, which probably only served to piss him off more when months later he was told he wasn’t receiving credit; at one point he expected their to be a fight over credit, but either way, he lost.).
Is this Darabont’s final revenge? Is it payback from someone else on his behalf? Or is it just some concerned citizen who got his mitts on the script and wants to defend quality and combat mediocrity in all its Lucas-like forms?