In the early 1980s, an established idea emerged from brainstorming in between Stephen Spielberg And George Lucas was made, there was initially no talk of a second Indiana Jones movie. After the resounding blockbuster success of the Indy opening film “Raiders of the Lost Ark” (1981), it soon became clear to those involved that it had to go ahead. To date, Harrison Ford has played the iconic role of an archaeologist five times – more than 40 years after the first part, “Indiana Jones and the Wheel of Destiny” comes to the cinemas, for the first time not directed by Spielberg, but staged by James Mangold ( “Logan-The Wolverine”).
The fact that the fanbase has only grown over the past few decades hasn’t made it any easier to find new topics for future Indiana Jones adventures. Several ideas were rejected for fear of lack of success or rejection by fans, and the films that were eventually made didn’t always have it easy either: Most followers of the original trilogy disliked the late fourth installment Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008) – finding many of the script ideas too absurd and the sci-fi elements inappropriate.
Unfortunately, there’s no way to verify what they would have said about Indiana Jones And The Monkey King, one of the two sequels George Lucas had in mind after the success of the first and second films. After Spielberg immediately rejected the suggestion that Indy is fighting ghosts in a Scottish haunted castle, the “Monkey King” at least managed to get his hands on a script for the screenplay. The script was entrusted to Chris Columbus, who wrote one of the biggest blockbusters of 1984 for Spielberg’s Amblin production company, “Gremlins: Little Monsters”, and went on to direct such hit films as Home Alone and the first two Harry Potter films.
Instead of fighting Nazis and searching for the Holy Grail with his father, played by Sean Connery, as in “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade” (1989), the archaeologist was originally supposed to meet a mythical African monkey king in the third part – a premise that Spielberg failed to convince …
One idea more absurd than the other
Perhaps Spielberg’s rejection was because Lucas just wouldn’t let go of his haunted house idea. In any case, the draft script, which can be read online, does not start in Africa, but in Great Britain. While on a fishing trip, Indy encounters a group of torch-wielding Scottish locals who ask him to solve a mysterious series of murders. His investigation led him to an ancient castle supposedly inhabited by ghosts. Not exactly a typical Indy scenario – and after the opening scene it’s over again.
The rest of the script comes with more quirks: For example, Indy fights against a group of steampunk Nazis supported by monkeys with machine guns. In another sequence, he flees from a rampaging rhinoceros, only to land on his back on the roof of a giant tank, which explodes beneath them. Promised: We would have loved to see this scene…
“Far too far-fetched,” was Spielberg’s scathing verdict – and so Columbus’s wild spectacle was never realized. Unfortunately, we’ll never know if “Indiana Jones and the Monkey King” would have had the same chances of success as the movie shot: “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade” was by far the highest-grossing film of 1989 with box office receipts of 474.2 million dollars.