Indiana Jones 4: The Scripts That Weren't
by Tom Burns

[Disclaimer: Although this is an exploration of previous unused Indy 4 scripts, alleged storylines, and information that has appeared online over the years, the aggregated info MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS AND THEORIES about the franchise at large. If you don't want to speculate along with us, we urge you to TURN BACK NOW.]

Admit it, movie nerds. As soon as the lights went up on The Last Crusade back in 1989, you immediately turned to your friends and started to argue about whether or not Indiana Jones would ever return to the big screen. Theatre lobbies around the world were filled with shouts of "How do you top the Holy Grail?!", "He rode off into the sunset!", and "It's called The LAST Crusade, moron!" as Indy fans struggled to come to terms that the Man in the Hat, alas, might never come back. Things probably seemed fairly bleak until George Lucas announced his Star Wars prequels, and the fan community realized that if King George is crazy/stubborn enough to bring back the galaxy far, far away, then maybe things weren't so hopeless for our favorite Nazi-punching archeologist.

After almost 19 years in development, this Memorial Day Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull will bring Harrison Ford and his fedora back to silver screen. While we don't know much about the plot (see our previous round-up feature on everything we know about Indy 4), it's safe to say that over 19 years, the story has probably evolved and changed considerably. Lucas and Spielberg have had a small army of well-known screenwriters trying to hammer out another Indy sequel since 1989, a select club that includes Jeff Nathanson, Frank Darabont, Jeffrey Boam, Jeb Stuart, and Mr. Twist himself, M. Night Shyamalan. According to reports, David Koepp, the film's final screenwriter, had the job of taking all of the previous drafts, mining out the best bits, and assembling them into a story that pleased Lucas, Spielberg, and Ford to return to their action-serial roots.

Some of the early scripts have seen the light of day, even making it online, while others are as hard to locate as footage of Eric Stoltz as Marty McFly in Back to the Future (Look it up, it's true). Since, as some outlets have suggested and reported, Koepp's script is allegedly an amalgam of past drafts and new material, we here at The Deadbolt have taken a look at a couple of the defunct scripts and all of the information surrounding the early works to see what secrets might be hidden. Who knows, maybe they'll shed some light on where Indy is heading in Chapter 4? We're also going to explore what we've heard surrounding a couple of fake Indy 4 scripts that have made the online rounds (believe us, they're everywhere), so you'll hopefully know a B.S. spoiler when you see one.

So grab your whip, don't eat those dates, and step into the alternate universe of Indiana Jones movies that never happened.

Script: INDIANA JONES AND THE MONKEY KING

Writer: Chris Columbus (writer of The Goonies, but you know him best as the director of Home Alone and the first two Harry Potter movies)

Authenticity: Strong. (Though there is some debate regarding which draft is available on the internet and whether or not that draft has been tinkered with.) Spielberg and Lucas have both confirmed that Columbus did work on a Monkey King-themed script. Here's the thing - this script originated back in 1985 and was supposed to be the follow-up to Temple of Doom. Ultimately, it didn't work out, however. Spielberg told theraider.net: "Chris writes comedy brilliantly and his script was very humorous ... It was upbeat and full of the same nostalgia that we tapped into in Raiders of the Lost Ark, so in that sense Chris was right on the money. But I don't think any of us wanted to go to Africa for four months and try to get Indy to ride a rhinoceros in a multi-vehicular chase, which was one of the sequences Chris had written." It was rumored that the script was retooled following Last Crusade as a possible Indy 4, but this has yet to be confirmed.

Plot: Indy heads to Africa to find the lost civilization of Sun Wu-Kung, the legendary Chinese Monkey King, who is said to have a Garden of Immortal Peaches that can grant eternal life.

The Good: Say what you will about Columbus, but the man knows how to write action. His Monkey King script is filled with elaborately-imagined action sequences, which would've made this a $200 million dollar movie, even back in 1985. Apparently, Spielberg liked the action so much, he borrowed some of Columbus' set pieces for Last Crusade (the Venice boat chase and the tank pursuit both have their origins in this script). Plus, even though the general public (i.e. cargo pants-wearing Americans) don't know much about the Monkey King, Columbus gets points for adding a Chinese deity to the canon of other Jones-discovered religious artifacts.

The Bad: Yes, Columbus can write action, but he writes pure-bred CRAZY action, crazy on a level that's appropriate for the Mummy movies, but not Indiana Jones. There IS a sequence where Indy rides a rhino while chasing a tank, and there's an extended battle at the end with Indy organizing an army of African pygmies and super-smart gorillas to battle an army of Nazis Ewok-style. No fooling, there's a bit where the gorilla starts driving a tank. Plus it opens with a bizarre sequence where Indy is fighting a banshee in a Scottish castle and it has NO relevance to the rest of the story (just something that happened on his vacation). He's not a Ghostbuster or Fox Mulder, he's an archeologist!

The Ugly: Beyond the implausibility of Columbus' script, there's also a disturbing undercurrent of stereotyping and misogyny. There is literally a part where Indy's lovelorn grad student, Betsy, attempts to commit suicide again and again because Dr. Jones won't return her affection, and Indy couldn't care less. (He's mad that she almost ruins his whip by trying to hang herself with it.) And Betsy remains a punching-bag for the rest of the script. If that wasn't bad enough, the foreigners are all painted with such ridiculously broad strokes - the Scots are all drunks, the Africans are simple primitives - that it's cringe-worthy. And we're not even getting to the fact that Indy DIES at the end of the The Monkey King, only to be resurrected by Sun Wu-Kung, who tells Dr. Jones that he has enjoyed watching his adventures from the heavens. How do you say "lame" in Chinese?

Indiana Jones 4: The Scripts That Weren't Page 2