Hey, everyone. ”Moriarty” here.

I think it’s pretty hard to deny that INDIANA JONES fever has set in for a lot of film fans, and they’re hungry for any information or new imagery that they can get. I got a letter the other day from a guy who asked me why I hate INDY 4 already, which sort of took me aback. I don’t hate INDY 4. Far from it. I want INDY 4 to be amazing and fun and remind me why the character became so iconic in the first place. I just didn’t care for the first trailer all that much. I thought it was sort of sloppy as a first-look.

I’ll be very curious to see what set pieces and ideas end up in this new film, because the last 20 years have seen a lot of writers trying to crack this fourth adventure, and bits of pieces of many of those earlier efforts are going to show up in the film. The reader who sent me this e-mail alludes to one of those, and for those of you who haven’t tracked down earlier drafts that are bouncing around the internet, there’s a sequence from Jeb Stuart’s INDIANA JONES & THE SAUCER MEN OF MARS that featured Indy accidentally stumbling into a nuclear testing site, one of the ones that was set up to look like a small town, just before a test takes place. That same sequence, rewritten and punched up, showed up in Frank Darabont’s INDIANA JONES & THE CITY OF THE GODS. I’m not sure if it’s in the final film or not, but this spy seems to think the Monopoly board has given away at least one of the film’s secrets:

Hi, Harry;

Here's something that you probably saw already, but if not... Some new Indiana Jones IV information and imagery has leaked, courtesy of the upcoming Indiana Jones IV tie-in board game, and that imagery has been posted on Throw Me The Idol.

Apart from some new interesting tidbits, it also seems to confirm certain earlier suspicions about the movie, e.g. the use of the line "It's not the mileage, it's the years" (argh!) and the presence of the mock-town nuclear test site ("Doom Town") from the (thankfully) abandoned "Indiana Jones and Saucer Men from Mars" script. There's yet another look at the titular skull, too, thanks to the miniature Crystal (or rather Metal) Skull that's one of the tokens in the game.

Take care!

Jaromir Krol