Indiana Jones and the Saucermen from Mars

Following the success of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, George Lucas would develop an idea or two that could have seen a fourth Indy adventure in cinemas in the 1990s. One that got quite far into the writing process was Indiana Jones and the Saucermen from Mars, an idea that Lucas started working on in 1993. He originally hired Jeb Stuart to write the script for him before passing on the mantle to the late Jeffrey Boam (who had co-written The Last Crusade).

In this one, Indy very nearly gets married at the start to a linguist by the name of Dr. Elaine McGregor. Amongst the guests at the wedding would have been Marion, Willie, Sallah, and his father, but instead of walking down the aisle, McGregor hops into a car on the big day and disappears. The search is thus on to find her.

Turns out she’s working on the discovery of alien bodies and a strange stone cylinder. Indy and McGregor crack the code on said cylinder, which turns out to be coordinates leading them to a mountain. Russian spies want in though, and as Indy tries to rescue Elaine from one of their planes, a flying saucer appears. A further alien encounter sees a truck being lifted off the ground. Meanwhile, a mysterious countdown clock ticks away, with the assumption being that it’s a bomb.

And so the story progresses until the eventual departure of the flying saucers and aliens – after teaching some nasty people lessons by, er, killing them – leaving Indy and Elaine free to go off and get married. Short Round was set to give them a lift in a car at the end of the film too.

A couple of things, then. Firstly, this shows that aliens were part of the thinking long before the script to Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull was completed. Secondly, in George Lucas’ defense, that does tie in to the kind of serials he was watching that influenced him to come up with the Indiana Jones adventures in the first place.