Screenwriter David Koepp was the go to man for Hollywood blockbusters throughout the 1990s and into the early 2000s on movies like “Mission: Impossible,” “Panic Room,” “The Shadow,” “Death Becomes Her,” “Jurassic Park” and “Spider-Man”.
Since the mid-2000s though, he’s pulled back on writing that sort of fare beyond the odd title like “War of the Worlds,” “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull,” “Angels and Demons” and the Tom Cruise-led “The Mummy”. He has also served as a script doctor on countless other people’s work so he hasn’t stayed away from that world.
In other words the man has certainly dealt with not just the trials and tribulations of major franchise filmmaking but also all the baggage that comes with work on properties with massive fandoms. With the advent of the internet, and in particular social media, the power of fandoms has become a major factor that can be both a benefit and a curse to filmmakers.
Certainly you’re never going to please everyone, and on a recent stop at the ReelBlend podcast he discussed his run-ins with vocal fandoms in the past:
“It’s very hard. I had this on Spider-Man, also. Because at the time, it was a comic book, it had been around for 35 years, and it was beloved by me and others. … Fabulous, empathetic – it’s just a brilliant design for a character. Somebody who’s truly innocent, screwed up a little bit, and was made to pay far more than was fair, and has been trying to make up for it ever since, but kept their sense of humor. Wow, that’s a great character.
Anyway, it was similar to doing that in that, when the first Spider-Man came around, the Internet was fairly young but it was pretty nasty already. It had already become an inhospitable place. And I felt like, you know in a basketball game when they are on the road and they are shooting free throws and the opposing fans are all screaming and waving those things and banging them together to try and make you miss? I kind of felt like that’s what writing was like on those movies.
So much noise, and so many opinions, and so much… Lucasfilm fans, in particular, are difficult to please. There’s a lot of pressure, and it can be very distracting.”
Koepp certainly bore the brunt of vocal criticisms from Lucasfilm fans with that fourth “Indiana Jones” which performed well at the box-office and did decently with critics – but audiences slammed the film and helped coin the phrase ‘nuke the fridge’ in regards to the opening sequence as a term used for when a film franchise goes off the rails (a variation on TV’s ‘Jump the Shark’ from “Happy Days”).
Koepp was tackling the script for the upcoming fifth “Indiana Jones” but exited when James Mangold inherited directing duties from Steven Spielberg. Head over to ReelBlend for the full interview.
