First:
There are
three Indiana Jones films. End. Of. Discussion.
I'm just curious if they have no Shia, what's a plausible explanation for his whereabouts? He is Indiana's son but it'd be cheesy to just say he's "away" or somesuch. Oh yeah, and Indiana is a married man now. Another mistake that should've never happened. I never saw him as the marrying type...
"Note: Mutt died on the way back to his home planet."
In seriousness:
- Shia will not be back. For that matter, don't expect to see Shia getting much (if any) work in the foreseeable future. It'll be another 10-15 years before we see him in anything other than maybe some weird indie thing (probably self-financed, -directed, and -acted). Why? He now has a reputation as being...."difficult." Also, he's batspit crazy. He's not necessarily as bad as, say, Lindsay Lohan (for whom you need to take out insurance in case she gets blotto the night before shooting), but I don't expect many people in Hollywood will want to work with him. Lastly, he's just not a box office draw. Whatever public goodwill he might have earned with the first few Transformers films, it's been erased by his lunacy. Plus, that franchise showed that he wasn't the draw (the same way Megan Fox wasn't the draw). It's really just about CGI robots punching each other and big asploshunz.
- They can just recast the character, if necessary. Though I wouldn't be surprised if they went with a female Dr. Jones.
It's a freekin' era issue too guys. .
So let's go where Indy gets young again from fountain of youth even, or we get a new guy he passes things off to... Dakota Jack or whatever.
It's missing that magical 1930s era of the serials that yes you might just find a lost city somewhere,
you can travel with guns to other countries, you could tomb raid and sell stuff, It becomes too modern and
sucks the magic out of all that.
To me, this is the biggest issue. Indiana Jones was always about Republic serials, and especially stuff like Tarzan and Doc Savage and such. Star Wars was the Flash Gordon/Commander Cody analogue. All of that is basically rooted in the inter-war period and
maybe up through WWII itself. The 1950s, aliens, all of that just...doesn't fit. Commies do not make for convincing bad guys anymore. They're just ersatz Nazis.
The farther you go along in the time period, the less this story really works, especially once you hit the 1960s and 1970s. Indiana Jones and the Secret of the Brown Acid? Indiana Jones and the Tet Offensive? It's really difficult to pull off.
The only thing that
might work is...Argentinian Nazi Remnants looking for something like the fountain of youth, the Garden of Eden, El Dorado, whatever. Some occult or spiritual or mystical or magical macguffin that will propel them back to glory.
Actually, here's an idea. It's the search for the fountain of youth, but what nobody understands is that the fountain of youth doesn't actually make you young...not exactly, anyway. In fact, you do not become young in the present. Instead, you are transported back through time to the point where you were young, and allowed to re-live your life. (The idea being that you'll do better this time.) So, Indy goes in search of it at the behest of, I dunno, a group of archaeologists accompanied by Mossad agents, who have credible information that some Fourth Reich attempt is in the works, led by the evil Count Herman von Greutscher (or whatever). Booby traps, melting neo-Nazis, brushes with death, etc., yadda yadda yadda, von Greutscher drinks from the well and disappears, Indy puts it together, goes back in time, hands off his hat to whomever his heir apparent is (daughter, I'd guess), takes a sip, and now you have not one but two Indy franchises you can play with: one set in Indy's past (allowing for the Chris Pratt/Anthony Ingruber BECAUSE DUH, CAST HIM YOU IDIOTS takeover), one set in the present or near-past with Indy's daughter or son or both or whatever.
The Henry Jones, Jr. adventures focus on a young Indy trying not only to not screw up his past, but also to stop von Greutscher's efforts to make himself the new Fuhrer, powered by various occult knicknacks. Figure it's a 3-5 picture deal, where von Greutscher doesn't die at the end. Maybe he only barely appears in the first one or two films, and it's his tough underlings that Indy fights. We can figure that out later.
The Henrietta Jones (or whatever) films focus on Indy's daughter following in her father's footsteps, but maybe with a bit less focus on the "magical" aspects, and more stuff like protecting archaeological treasures. Kind of taking that "That belongs in a museum!" line, but updating it a bit.