Oooh Oooh I have one! Well, I have the plot they should have used instead of that last shitshow, because when they announced the title I mistakenly thought they knew something about writing and might have learned from the disaster that was Temple of Doom, and spent a chunk of my first term of graduate school researching Mesoamerican crystal skulls instead of reading Herodotus.

So, there are crystal skulls of supposed Mesoamerican origin that started showing up in collections in Europe around the middle of the 19th century.

ALL of these are fake. There are about a dozen circulating in different museums and collections, and they all show the marks of modern tools, and one particular dealer, Eugène Boban, is known to be involved in passing a couple of these to museums.

But Mesoamericans did make use of skull imagery, including skull racks. These skulls are mounted by boring holes in the ear-to-ear. These kinds of skulls also show up in bead form, like this necklace. So we can say Mesoamericans made replications of skulls, if not the life-sized crystal ones circulating in European museums.

There are also miniature skulls pierced not ear-to-ear, but top-to-bottom, so they don't fall into the tradition of tzompantli. In fact, these are post-contact Christian artifacts; bases for crucifixes (I can't find an example now, but I swear I read an article about them back in 2008; I'll look again after work). Now that makes a certain amount of sense; the skull features in iconography of the Crucifixion: the skull at the base of the cross is the skull of Adam, visually connecting the saving sacrifice of Christ with Adam and Original Sin, and hence all humanity.

So it makes perfect sense that Catholics, coming into contact with a culture that really likes skulls, would promote the unifying skull imagery in their own Mesoamerican art.

This whole thing could have been about finding the actual skull of Adam, somehow transported to the Americas (perhaps via templars, as the grail is in some myths). We could have had the Judeo-Christian mythological connection, and Nazis hunting Judeo-Christian relics, as in the good Indiana Jones movies, and no fucking aliens.

So, Spielberg, next time you get it into your head to make an Indiana Jones movie, PM me. I'll get you a plot instead of whatever cocktail-napkin gibberish your script writer gave you. Bloody idiots, the lot of you.

A couple of possibilities present themselves...

1. We return to the Young Indiana Jones days during his service in the First World War -- only this time, instead of the trenches, he ends up in German East Africa on the trail of Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck. Things take a turn for the expected, however, when Indy discovers that the German general's reasons for being in the jungle aren't all that they seem...

2. Indy is dispatched to find Col. Percy Fawcett and his missing expedition to the Lost City of Z in Brazil. Indy finds him alright -- but he also finds that Fawcett and his men have good reasons for staying "missing"...

3. During the Second World War, Indy is kidnapped by the Soviets and forced to help them locate the tomb of Tamerlane, who fully expect that claiming his bones will bring victory to whomever holds them. Of course, once the tomb is opened, it turns out that the terms of the prophesy are a little bit different...

4. An aged Henry Jones Jr. attends a conference at Oxford and delivers a 90-minute keynote address on "The Persistent Unexpectedness of History." The film is shot in a single take.

How about a Jones prequel, set in the 20's- Which pairs Indy with his nemesis Rene Belloc. Rene is at this point is still an idealist, although still a colder foil to the younger, headstrong Jones.

The audience's fear that Rene could betray Indy at any moment will add extra dramatic stakes, though personally I'd subvert that expectation (and save it for the $equel$).

In terms of the quest I'm less sure (Basque Spain->Doggerland/Atlantis?) I just like the idea of starting with a Raiders-style mini-caper that ends with Belloc helping him to his feet instead of taking the idol.

Before Indiana Jones breaks it off with Marion Ravenwood, Jones joins Harold Oxley in Peru during Oxley's quest for a crystal skull. While in Peru, they hear about a German U-boat making port. Only part of the U-boat crew remain after an incident in the Pacific. The crew is fearful and shaken, they don't want to talk about what happened. Jones and Oxley find one of the sailors in a bar and press him for information. He breaks down telling them a horrifying tale. Their radio operator had come across a strange signal the week before. They traced the signal to an island in the Pacific that was not marked on any of their maps. The island was littered with strange ruins. Ruins with odd and strange shapes, architecture that was unknown to mankind. The sailor wouldn't say what happened to them on the island, only that no one should ever sit foot there again. Jones and Oxley are intrigued and Oxley believes that it would be worth checking out in case the crystal skull is there. They bribe a fisherman to take them out to where this island is and so starts Indiana Jones and the Ruins of R'lyeh.

Indiana Jones tends to follow the popular mythology of the decade it is in, and so Indy deals with enemies that and had adventures that follow the tropes of the setting. So in the forties, he fights Nazis while looking for magic ancient artefacts, and in the fifties he fights commies looking for alien swag. Based on this framework, Indiana Jones of the 60s should fight social expectations while searching for an authentic life.

I call it Indiana Jones and the Ennui of Modern Man.

Doesn't any of you remember the LucasArts adventure game "Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis"?

That's the movie right there!!

Depending on when the adventure is set, I would very much like to see the return of Sophia Hapgood and her affiliation with the CIA.

Oh, maybe World War Two era: the North African campaign. In February 1943 Indiana Jones has to sneak behind enemy lines in northern Tunisia due to reports of strange digging being done in the area. (Maybe he was already in Tunisia doing some "Monuments Men" -style preservation work, trying to save artefacts or monuments from the ravages of the war.) Jones became somehow aware of that there's an artefact of great power hidden under the Tophet - the ancient cemetery near the old site of Carthage - and there's a dungeon-crawling adventure in this secret, previously hidden temple "underneath" the actual site, complete with traps in the temple and mentions of baby-sacrifice and Nazi fighting in order to keep the enemy from taking the prize with them. (That reminds me, I need to ask on here about human sacrifice at the Tophet and whether there's any controversy over that conclusion!)