I too like the idea of bringing Short Round back, but does Jonathan Ke Quan even act anymore? I suppose they could always recast. Might be interesting to go back to Asia, either way, although not sure if it’s a good idea to touch Vietnam or not.
I, too, like the idea of bringing back Short Round. He was a cute kid and a fun sidekick. I thoroughly enjoyed how Indy treated him like an adult, gambling with him, having him drive the getaway car, etc.
I think if we ever do see any Indiana Jones prequels, I’d like to see Wu Han get some air time. He states, “I’ve followed you on many adventures,” and I think I’d like to see at least one of them (even though the OT.com crowd is relentlessly unforgiving of any nods to previous films).
Otherwise, given the timeframe, I could see something involving Berlin or Germany in general. I’ve been saying for awhile it might be fun to do a bit of Nazi zombies but I don’t know if they’ll want to reign it in after the alien backlash.
Cold War Berlin could be interesting. Soviets also experimented with attempted psychic espionage, so that could be interesting (I guess that was part of the intent of the Crystal Skull, though, so maybe that’s too similar). Something related to the nuclear arms race could worthwhile as well, but after nuking the fridge in the last movie and after so many other movies using a disruption of the nuclear balance as a plot device, that too sounds too cliched. Like you say, maybe Vietnam is too much, but perhaps something related to the Space Race might present some opportunities.
The one thing that blows my mind is that it will have been 12 years since KOTCS. That’s only 7 less years than the gap between that and TLC. It’s a real shame they didn’t make at least one in the 90s. That way it wouldn’t quite feel like there’s so much time we’ve missed (and we’d get to see Indy in the 40s).
I couldn’t agree more 😦