Han Solo and Captain Kirk in Tom Clancy's Star Wars: Revisiting Tom Clancy's The Cardinal of the Kremlin as it Might Have Been.

Recently revisiting the matter of the ultimately failed attempt to make a film adaptation of Tom Clancy's The Cardinal of the Kremlin back in the 1990s I was reminded of the involvement of William Shatner in the production--and of course, struck by how a movie about "Star Wars" which brings together "Han Solo" and "Captain Kirk" can seem replete with metafictional possibilities to the point of their overshadowing everything else.

Of course, there was some precedent for a big Harrison Ford-starring action movie series having something comparable without its dominating everything. Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade had “James Bond” as Indiana Jones' father--as he was in a creative sense. Not only was it the case that the James Bond films paved the way for later high-concept action-adventure blockbuster filmmaking in a broad way. George Lucas himself constantly cited the Bond films not only as predecessor but inspiration, such that he would reference it when making his early sales pitches to the studios about the kind of movie he meant to make when he was trying to get Star Wars into production, with this apparently carrying over to Dr. Jones. (After all, he offered Steven Spielberg the idea specifically because he fancied a chance to direct a Bond movie that was simply not forthcoming in those days.*)

Still, I am not sure to what extent the broad public has been attentive to this. Indeed, I have been struck by how those writing the history of the making of Star Wars, and the broader rise of the blockbuster, both those favorably and unfavorably disposed toward the film and its associated franchise, cut the precedent of James Bond out of the picture, such that the general viewers were, if anything, less likely to see very much in "James Bond" and "Indiana Jones" being in a movie together.

One might add that, if they had hardly forgotten that Sean Connery was James Bond once upon a time (indeed, before the pretense that the rebooted films are the only ones that count, Connery was in fact remembered as the best of them), he appeared here as being as un-Bondian figure as one could imagine, a tweedy old professor of Medieval literature very much out of his element when shooting it out with the Nazis. (One can add that, at least according to Joseph McBride's biography of Spielberg, Spielberg got squeamish about keeping the bit about the elder Jones' affair with Elsa Schneider, and only Connery's insistence saw it retained--about which McBride quotes Connery remarking that he "didn't want [Henry Jones Sr.] to be such a wimp.")

It helped that Connery, more than most figures who get to be so associated with a major franchise, managed to make a name for himself beyond and after that franchise, with at the time of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade's release in 1989 Connery having starred in a long string of major non-Bond films, many well-received critically and successful commercially (like The Wind and the Lion, or Robin and Marian), or otherwise making their mark (like the oddity that is Zardoz, or the cult hit Highlander, or the ambitious misfire that was The Name of the Rose). Indeed, he won a Best Supporting Actor Oscar just two years earlier for his performance in The Untouchables, which was likely far fresher in viewers' minds than his run as Bond, which, the merely middling success of Never Say Never Again six years earlier apart, ended in 1971--all as, arguably, the cachet of the Bond series was at something of a low point (as we saw when Licence to Kill proved that franchise's biggest-ever flop that same summer), with all that implies for how much anyone would have thought about it.

Altogether, while it was quite possible to see James Bond-as-Indiana-Jones'-father as a sort of inside joke that did not make very much difference to most, and certainly did not turn the movie into a joke.

By contrast, it is almost impossible to see William Shatner and not think of . . . Captain Kirk, the more in as between TV, film and video gaming he not only played the character for at least four decades (which made the more impression because of Shatner's infamous impression on screen--the highly theatrical line delivery with its entirely ungrammatical dramatic pauses, the self-deprecating sense of humor), but how he has so strongly associated himself with that figure. Thus did we see William Shatner officially playing himself over and over again in episodes and even films where he appeared precisely because he had been Captain Kirk (as in 1998's indie film Swingers-for-Star Trek fans, Free Enterprise), while even when not officially playing himself he was apt to be playing off of the association with Captain Kirk somehow--all as, in his numerous non-acting public appearances, he never let us forget the connection, not least by writing, directing and starring in the documentary The Captains (2011), which is about his interviews with the other five Star Trek captains of the small and large screens. A different attitude from Connery's relationship to James Bond is harder to imagine, and depending on just how big Shatner's part would have been in the Cardinal movie it would likely have been much more remarked, and much more consequential for the viewing experience--such that looking back at this ‘90s-era idea one can only wonder, "Just what is the deal with that?"

* These days the Bond franchise's runners love hiring big-name auteur directors from all over the place to helm the movies (Marc Foster, Sam Mendes, Cary Joji Fukunaga), but back then they were a "creative producer's" show (specifically Albert R. Broccoli's show), with the directors local Brits who had often worked in prior Bond films in lower-level functions. John Glen, who helmed the five '80s-era EON Bond films (For Your Eyes Only, Octopussy, A View to a Kill, The Living Daylights and Licence to Kill), had been with the franchise since the '60s, working as editor and second unit director on On Her Majesty's Secret Service, The Spy Who Loved Me and Moonraker before getting the job.