Paul Verhoeven’s Crusades: The Too Big Movie That Will Never See The Light Of Day

let’s dream Imagine Paul Verhoeven’s fiercely polemical and even violent film, which has the First Crusade leading to the capture of Jerusalem in 1099. A movie starring Arnold Schwarzenegger wearing Hagen’s clothes. A slave turned thief, he remained in the ranks of the crusader army, which began in 1095 during the reconquest of Jerusalem.

A film that wanted to address – we suspected from the background of the filmmaker – the malfeasance and corruption of the Pope, the creation of false miracles, the Arab point of view and the anti-Semitic aspects of this crusade. The epitome, in particular, of what was called the “Germanic Crusades”.

Or armed troops traveling south from the German states and responsible for pogroms and massacres of Jews in Regensburg, Prague and most cities crossed before stopping in Hungary.

in total Crusade was a highly explosive and controversial cinematic cocktail that could have been a dream cross between Flesh and Blood and Ridley Scott’s Kingdom of Heaven. for verhoeven flesh and blood – his first film made in English – was a sort of response/reaction to the idealized Middle Ages or in any case highly romanticized on screen at the time.

He wanted to show a time when the brutality of fighting, sickness and poverty took men more often than natural death, which was very rare. with CrusadeIf we had been able to realize the project in 1994, we would have clearly gone higher.

Wild Horde screenwriter in pen

The film had a screenplay conceived and written in pure measure: Wallon Greene, to whom we owe the scripts of Peckinpah’s Wild Horde and William Friedkin’s The Extraordinary Wizard. This is what a regular author of a famous American site said in 1998 There is no cool newswho had the privilege of reading the script: “All the new rumors aside, Crusade is probably the biggest unproduced movie script of the last decade.”

In addition to the excellent rapport between the filmmaker and Schwarzenegger after the filming of Total Recall, the two talents were at their peak then. Schwarz became a global star after the worldwide and monumental box office of Terminator 2; Verhoeven, he is still riding the wave of three previous successes: Robocop, Total recall and basic instinct.

Supporting Arnie, we’re talking about a cast that includes Gary Sinise, Robert Duvall, Jennifer Connelly, John Turturro, and Christopher McDonald. Charlton Heston should have played the Pope!

then what happened It seems that Karolko’s picturesfuture film production company, and despite its success at the time (it had notably produced Terminator 2a colossal success at the box office) greatly appreciated his financial capacity to produce such a film.

As producer-screenwriter Gary Goldman, who is familiar with the project, summed it up well: “Paul doesn’t really lie about the budget, which is a mistake, because you just can’t make films like this without lying.” !”

The problem is that shutting down the project even cost Carolco money. Although several million dollars had already been spent on pre-production, Schwarzenegger’s contract also stipulated that he was to be compensated for immobilization during pre-production, even though he had not filmed anything.

From the Crusades to Pirates

Given that the project was too risky financially, especially with this issue, the producers ultimately preferred to put their eggs in another well-stocked basket, but considered less risky: Pirate Island. Bad choice… Unfortunately, it will be an absolute financial disaster: Karolko’s pictures went bankrupt after the film’s dismal failure in theaters in 1996, permanently damaging Geena Davis’ film career.

Unfortunately, you have to decide: there is no chance Crusade They finally came out of the ground one day. Beyond his overly sulphurous subject matter, which would be impossible to see in the current mainstream Hollywood landscape (you should have already seen the grotesque Storm in a Glass of Water in Aronofsky’s Noah…), our beloved Arnie is also very old.

As for Verhoeven, he is more focused on intimate dramas, but is not without polemics between Elle and Benedetta. But it is far from its brilliant beginning. And, at the captain’s venerable age (84 years old), it’s hard to imagine him spending insane amounts of energy on such a project.