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The INDY 4 ADVENTURE at FilmEdge.net searches for the secrets of the crystal skull...

What follows is an exercise of informed investigation, a review of what we actually know about INDIANA JONES AND THE KINGDOM OF THE CRYSTAL SKULL and what that info means to one of the most anticipated films of the decade.  I'm putting the disclaimer right up front: much of what follows is speculation but based on as many facts as are available now.  I welcome your discussion and opinions on the INDY 4 ADVENTURE Blog, but for those careless bloggers out there: misquote these guesses as 'facts' at your own peril, not mine.  Until we actually see the film next Memorial Day — just like Indy himself said — I'm making this up as I go along!

If you're endeavoring to stay spoiler-free about INDY 4 and even discussing possible story points might interfere with that goal, you can stop reading here. Who knows, we might actually stumble upon a genuine story 'truth' without knowing it directly ...yet. Fair warning, now let's get cracking!
WHY INDY 4 WON'T BE 'CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE JONES KIND'
Part One
December 9, 2007

 With rumors running rampant and varying widely, I wanted to review the evidence we actually have about INDIANA JONES AND THE KINGDOM OF THE CRYSTAL SKULL to hypothesize about what the new film might and might not contain. I'm going to engage in some speculation here, but based on actual quotes and available information and trying my best to avoid unsubstantiated rumor and fan-made fantasies.

In the past couple weeks, many websites and blogs have gone berserk about the rumor of Indy supposedly meeting up with intergalactic visitors. I've read reports and theories ranging from Indy finding dead alien bodies in his quest for the new maguffin, to wild notions that director Steven Spielberg will resurrect the actual E.T. costumes from CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND for this film in a cross-franchise tie-in.

Well, don't play the five notes at Devil's Tower just yet, fans! Let's dial back the fantastic and unfounded for a moment and start with what we know about the production and the history of the story's timeframe.

The 'Close Encounters of Indiana Jones' rumors first evolved out of legitimately reported stories like this one from IGN in June, relating how an area near Deming Municipal Airport in New Mexico had apparently been repainted and dressed to look like Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada. Unfortunately many careless bloggers and fans cherry-picked IGN's rational speculation and distorted its content into 'spoilers' claiming Indy would break into Area 51 and reveal the secrets of captured space aliens in the new film!

A more useful discussion of these clues starts by stripping away fact from fiction with a short lesson on the actual history of the place: while Nellis AFB is in the same state as the infamous, mysterious Area 51 base, no actual direct contact between the two has been established beyond wishful thinking. Hardly a dark government secret, Nellis AFB was a busy gunnery base during World War II, with actors Ronald Reagan and Burgess Meredith even producing the propaganda film 'Rear Gunner' on the site. By the end of the war, over 48,000 B-17 and B-29 gunners were trained at Nellis in a high-volume military training program.

In the 1950s Nellis AFB became a training base for Korean War pilots, and later for advanced jet pilots into the next decade. Whatever part, large or small, which Nellis AFB might play in INDY 4, the site probably just serves its most logical function in the story: as a Cold War military air base installation.

This fits in solidly with INDY 4's 1957 time frame and supposed confrontation between Dr. Jones and Russian army/agents who may be converging to collect the Crystal Skulls and perhaps harness some crucial power they contain — just like the Ark's plot importance in RAIDERS and the Grail's in LAST CRUSADE. Sounds reasonable and familiar, doesn't it?

Indy doesn't need Cantina aliens from STAR WARS when he has the Cold War to fight! Substitute Russkies for Nazis and you recreate the INDY film series' successful formula for dramatic conflict and action.

More clues to the reality of INDY 4 came this week as producer Frank Marshall's recent cast "revelations" confirm a couple of subtle points which support conflict with the Soviets replacing Indy's former contention with World War II Nazis. Most prominently, Marshall confirmed that Cate Blanchett's still-unnamed character is indeed Indy's villainous foil. Should the long-standing rumors and reports hold true, she could end up as the Russian contestant in the quest.

UPDATE 12/9: Receipt of a late-night news report on USA Today's latest interview with producer Frank Marshall confirms that Cate Blanchett plays Agent Spalko, a operative from the Soviet Union.  This certainly fits perfectly into my Cold War scenario at the foundations of INDY 4, and might even imply that Spalko could be a KGB agent rather than a Soviet Army officer as speculated upon in the past.  Link to my I4A Blog entry on the USA Today article to read more analysis of the latest revelations.

Secondly, Marshall confirmed that Ray Winstone's character, an archaeologist "friend and competitor" of Indy's, is named Mac. Given that Winstone hails from East London and the name Mac often implies someone of Scots Gaelic heritage, it's a good bet that Mac is Britain's entry in the international fray.

With Indiana Jones in place as our iconic American hero, this trio of characters completes the Cold War cast list: just as Stalin, Churchill and Truman met at Potsdam in 1945 to set the post-war scenario in motion, perhaps Blanchett, Winstone and Ford will clash in a strategic archeology race to obtain the Crystal Skulls and control their yet-unknown powers, with the world's freedom and future hanging in the balance?

Yet the Cold War is a complex, decades-long battle of ideologies, so why did the filmmakers pick 1957 specifically for the storytelling era of INDY 4? There's no point to include visitors from another galaxy when apparent danger was already buzzing our Earthly skies: Sputnik.

The Russians launched their infamous satellite in early October 1957, greatly raising the stakes of the Cold War and officially igniting the Space Race between the US and USSR. With Sputnik's threatening implications amid an escalating nuclear arms race and political tensions, Indy would have plenty of motivation to find and decipher the secrets of the KINGDOM OF THE CRYSTAL SKULL before the Russians can, whatever dark and supernatural mysteries lurk there.

Add to this director Steven Spielberg's recent comments on the 30th Anniversary Ultimate Edition of CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND, in which he admits he's much less a believer in the UFO phenomenon today that he was while making his famous alien contact film in 1977.  Doesn't it seem increasingly unlikely that Spielberg would script an encore for his CE3K extraterrestrials in INDY 4 when even he finds his own alien adventure less plausible than he once did?

Stay tuned for Part II of INDY 4 ADVENTURE's speculative study of the facts as-we-know-them so far, with quotes from creator and executive producer George Lucas who stresses how INDY 4 will offer the most realistic myth and mystery since RAIDERS' Ark of the Covenant.  More fact-based hypothesizing to follow as we attempt to divine the murky visions of what exactly THE KINGDOM OF THE CRYSTAL SKULL might mean in the next adventure of Indiana Jones.

Meanwhile, meet and join other Indy fans discussing the possibilities of next year's most anticipated film and add your own theories at the INDY 4 ADVENTURE Blog!
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INDIANA JONES AND THE KINGDOM OF THE CRYSTAL SKULL opens May 22, 2008
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