Genre: Action-Adventure
Premise: After some ghost-banshee hunting at a Scottish estate, Indiana Jones sets out on the hunt of the legendary Monkey King and his garden of golden peaches. There’s also a “hilarious” subplot about Indy’s romance with one of his underage students.
About: Temple of Doom was a hit. A sequel was needed. After Diane Thomas (Romancing the Stone) was either let go or perished in an unfortunate car crash, Chris Columbus was brought on (he was basically Speilberg’s bright boy of the week like Robert Zemekis had been five years previously). I’ve heard everything from “the script was written for a young director” to “None of us wanted to go to Africa for four months”. But those statements beat around the bush. This script is expensive. Really expensive. And it’d be remarkably hard to film all of the actions sequences, so I’m going to say it was scrapped ultimately because it was too exorbitant. Ultimately, there were several more writers brought in before Last Crusade reached completion.
Writers: Chris Columbus (who has a ton of credits directing, but at this time had written the scripts for Gremlins, Goonies, and Young Sherlock Holmes)
This is the most enjoyable Indy script I’ve ever read. You know how Goonies veers off in another weird direction every five minutes? You know how Gremlins has this very witty chaos in the midst of black comedy? That’s what the Monkey King does. There are definitely things in here that were kept for the Last Crusade (the Venice boat chase and the scene with tanks). Plus there’s an awesome scene at a Scottish castle for the mandatory opening action sequence. Also, Indy is taken out of his Christian realm and made to hunt Chinese artifacts, which does much to expel his image as a religious zealot.
The thing is, though, Chris Columbus goes straight up weird with this story. Like, at times I thought I was reading Hot Shots Part Deux mixed with Never-ending Story. In addition to riding a rhino while tank hunting and hunting pygmies, Indy is actually killed. Legitimately deceased. That is, until somebody tosses a golden peach into his grave. Now, I can see how this would bother some. But, Indy has always sort of relied on completely insane set pieces and ridiculously improbable stunts. So, who really cares if this script is a little too insane in places if it’s fun and original?
I have more of a problem that Chris Columbus has this running joke about how Indy is actually a child rapist because he dates underage grad students. And, he writes the whole thing off like it’s this big joke and we should in turn all laugh about it. I mean, really? This is about as racist as the Asians in 1941. Betsy, Indy’s student who is in love with him, also frequently threatens to commit suicide if Indy won’t return the affections. I mean, that’s crazy. And mixed with Gremlins/Goonies-like action? This is jarring. Not to mention, Chris Columbus lovingly makes all Scots drunk, all Africans primitives. I mean, shoot even the Nazis and the Indian thugs were kind of multi-layered.
Scooby Doo (Complete Crap)
Atilla (Poor, Few Redeeming Qualities)
Wedding Crashers (Mediocre)
[X] - Hot Rod (Good)
Definitely Maybe (Pretty Darn Good)
Isla Prospects: Not really at all. Betsy is too young, and there’s another female competitor of Indy’s who is way too old.
What I Learned: When your characters team up with an insurmountable God as easily and ready as Indy and crew join up with The Monkey King, there really isn’t much of a challenge for your good guys. As a result, this whole thing doesn’t feel as hopeless or as desperate as the other Indy films. So when I read on the Indy wiki that in the second draft of Monkey King, Columbus deleted Betsy and turned Sun Wu into a villain, I felt like both of the main comments I made here (Betsy doesn’t fit, Sun Wu’s alliance is too easy) were taken into consideration.
Script Link: There are several sites online posting this script. If you do a Google search for “Indiana Jones and The Monkey King”, it can easily be found.
No comments:
Post a Comment