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Movies sometimes take a circuitous route to the screen. The internet is littered with stories of big time movies that almost were, only to end up as something else completely. Some of the most fascinating of these un-made movies are the ones for the Indiana Jones series. Here's a breakdown of scripts from the Indiana Jones movies that almost were.

For the sake of brevity, I'll be ignoring any versions that had largely similar plots to the final film, so nothing from Raiders of the Lost Ark or Temple of Doom and nothing from the several drafts of Last Crusade that hew closely to the final film.

Note: All information is taken from The Complete Making of Indiana Jones and the various script leaks, unless noted otherwise.

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For a timeline of Indy III scripts and downloads of available ones, see the excellent screenplay page on fan site The Raider.

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Chris Columbus's Indiana Jones and the Monkey King

Background

George Lucas completed an 8 page treatment for Indiana Jones and the Monkey King in September, 1984. Lucas wanted to make the Holy Grail the MacGuffin, an idea he'd proposed for the second Indy movie, but Spielberg didn't like it. So Lucas put the eternal life and healing powers that he'd imbued the grail with into magical peaches in the Monkey King treatments. After writing a second, 11 page treatment, Lucas hired Chris Columbus to write the script. His first draft (which has found its way online) was finished in May 1985 before delivering a second draft in August of that year. That second draft was titled Indiana Jones and the Lost City of Sun Wu Kung (Sun Wu Kung was another name for the Monkey King). Both scripts opened with a prelude in a haunted castle in Scotland, an idea that had first been proposed for Temple of Doom. Lucas and Spielberg both liked Columbus' script, but felt it was too supernatural for an Indiana Jones movie.

Synopsis

For a (much) more detailed synopsis, see this page on IndyFan.com

(Synopsis taken from here)

While on a fishing vacation in Scotland, Indy gets roped into a murder investigation that leads to an allegedly haunted mansion. Inside, Indy faces off against empty animated suits of armor and matches wits with a long-dead nobleman who's responsible for the murders on the moor.

The story really kicks off when Indy gets back to Marshall University and is contacted by his old friend Marcus Brody. Brody tells him about zoologist Dr. Clare Clarke, who has come in contact with Tyki, an African pygmy, who claims to know the location of the lost city of Sun Wu-Kung, the Monkey King. As proof, Tyki says he is 200 years old thanks to an enchanted peach pit that he wears around his neck, apparently from the Monkey King's orchard, where the fruit can grant eternal life with a single bite.

Indy boards a ship to Mozambique along with a stowaway he's unaware of until he reaches port – his young teaching assistant, Betsy Tuffet, who has a schoolgirl crush on her professor. Indy and Betsy join Dr. Clarke, a no-BS kinda gal, Scraggy Brier, a superstitious native, and Tyki, the good-natured pygmy.

Unfortunately, before the expedition can begin, Tyki is kidnapped by Sgt. Helmut Gutterburg, a Nazi stooge with a machine gun arm, who is under the command of Lt. Werner Von Mephisto, a hulking Aryan monstrosity. The Nazis escape with Tyki inside their three-story tall, 100-foot long tank. Of course Indy rescues Tyki and the good guys make their way to the lost city with the Nazis on their tail.

They are stopped at the gates by a troop of guardian gorillas that have been trained to defend the city from intruders. Just as a gorilla is about to throw Indy off the mountain, Tyki shouts a command and the gorilla snaps to attention. We soon discover that Tyki isn't just any resident of the city – he is the future king.

Soon Indy, the natives, and the gorillas are battling it out with Mephisto and his men. In a surprising twist, Indy is shot and killed by Mephisto, but his body is carried into the enchanted peach orchard. There, Sun Wu-Kung, the half-man, half-monkey god, is reconstituted from ancient skeletal remains. The monkey-man heals Indy and then gives him a shape-shifting staff as a gift for his valiant defense of the Monkey King's chosen people.

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(For a great rundown of the crazy rumors and speculation that went around prior to Indy IV being greenlit, check this excellent blog post.)

For a timeline of Indy IV scripts and downloads of available ones, see the excellent screenplay page on fan site The Raider.

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Jeb Stuart's Indiana Jones and the Saucer Men from Mars

Background

Following the completion of Last Crusade, while Spielberg and Ford were interested in doing another, Lucas felt he was done with them. His attitude changed while filming a small cameo of Harrison Ford for The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles. He hit upon the idea of doing an Indy movie based around an older Indy in the 1950s, which would open up a 50s sci-fi B-movie angle for the film. Ford and Spielberg didn't care much for the angle, but let Lucas get a script together with a screenwriter. Lucas approached Jeb Stuart (Die Hard, The Fugitive) in late 1993 about writing Indy IV with several ideas already in mind: the Doom Town atomic bomb sequence (actually taken from the first draft of Back to the Future), a fight on a rocket sled, aliens, psychic power, Soviets as the villains, Indy married at the end, a double agent, and the CIA helping and hindering Indy. Stuart wove those into a draft that he finished on May 24th, 1994. After some discussions with Lucas in August and September of that year, he finished a revised draft (which has found it's way online) on February 20th 1995.

Synopsis

For a (much) more detailed synopsis, see IGN's review of the script.

(Synopsis taken from here)

In this one, Indy very nearly gets married at the start to a linguist by the name of Dr Elaine McGregor. Amongst the guests at the wedding would have been Marion, Willie, Sallah and his father, but McGregor, instead of walking down the aisle, hops into a car on the big day and disappears. The search is thus on to find her.

Turns out she's working on the discovery of alien bodies and a strange stone cylinder. Indy and McGregor crack the code on said cylinder, which turns out to be coordinates leading them to a mountain. Russian spies want in though, and as Indy tries to rescue Elaine from one of their planes, a flying saucer appears. A further alien encounter sees a truck being lifted off the ground. Meanwhile, a mysterious countdown ticks down, with the assumption being it's a bomb.

And so the story progresses, until the eventual departure of the flying saucers and aliens - after teaching some nasty people lessons by, er, killing them - leaving Indy and Elaine free to go off and get married. Short Round was set to give them a lift in a car at the end of the film too.

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Jeffrey Boam's Indiana Jones and the Saucer Men from Mars

Background

Lucas wasn't happy with Stuart's revised draft, so he handed the project off to Last Crusade writer Jeff Boam. Boam wrote three different drafts in 1995 with the same title as Stuart's version, with the third dated December 18th. In early 1996 Boam said, "George is very happy with the script and Steven is happy with it too, but the next step is to get Harrison on board." The script was dropped after Independence Day was released to huge box office success. Spielberg didn't want to do an alien movie so close to ID4 and Lucas refused to do a version of Indy 4 without aliens. This essentially killed the project until 2000.

Information about the contents of the script are scarce. Due to the identical title, it's probably similar to Stuart's take. The atomic explosion was in the middle in Boam's script (from The Complete Making of Indiana Jones pg. 251):

We ended up putting the atom bomb scene that Jeff Boam and I had in the middle at the head of the movie.

A little more about Boam's work from an interview with him in 1995:

DP: WHAT HAVE YOU BEEN DOING IN THE MEANTIME? THE DATE ON THE SCRIPT IS JANUARY.

JB: “I’ve been working on a fourth installment of ‘Indiana Jones.’ I’m just about done with the first draft. Somebody else had also tried their hand at it, and it didn’t work out too well.”

DP: THEY ALWAYS KEEP COMING BACK TO YOU, JEFFREY.

JB: “It’s nice, you know. Actually, George Lucas came to me to do this first, and I was busy writing a movie called ‘The Phantom.’ So I couldn’t do ‘Indy,’ because I had to do that, and when I finished that, George came back to me and said, ‘It didn’t really work out with the other writer, are you available?’

DP: WHEN WILL THEY START SHOOTING THE “INDY” MOVIE?

JB: “Well, it’s conceivable that it could be the movie that Steven (Spielberg) does next. It could go very quickly. George has seen most of the first draft; we put off the first 15 pages because we weren’t really sure what we wanted to do there. So I gave him everything but the first 15 pages, and he’s very happy with that. So I know we’re well on the road to having the script that he likes. And generally when he likes it, Steven’s not far behind. And once Steven’s on board, Harrison (Ford) is much easier to snag, as well.

DP: ANY HINTS AS TO WHAT THE “INDY” THING’S ABOUT?

JB: “It’s set in the ’50s, I’ll tell you that. And Harrison will play his own age. A considerable amount of action. We have him (Sean Connery character) back, for kind of a cameo. I’d love to tell you more, but George is secretive about these things.

“Whatever the ’50s conjur up, that’s probably what this is about. That’s all I’ll say. I think you’ll kind of automatically grasp what the story is if you just think about what the ’50s is about and how it might relate to Indy.

“It’s not about Elvis, though.”

The movie apparently would have been primarily shot in the US, with only one week overseas.

As for “Indie,” he says Steve Spielberg wants the pic to shoot here. Only one week will be on location, probably in Honduras. Russia had first been planned. “And,” added Boam, Harrison Ford will play his own age, “so he can limp and/or wear glasses!”

(For comparison, Kingdom of the Crystal Skull filmed entirely in the US)

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Frank Darabont's Indiana Jones and the City of the Gods

Background

And now we come to the most infamous unused script. At the AFI tribute to Harrison Ford in 2000, most of the principals involved in the Indy movies (Lucas, Spielberg, Ford, producers Kathleen Kennedy and Frank Marshall) reunited. Their desire to do another one was rekindled when they met backstage and started reminiscing about the previous films. The "big three," Spielberg, Ford, and Lucas, would meet for a story conference on April 12th, 2000. Lucas and Spielberg would meet again for a story conference in December of 2001 and twice more in June of 2002.

Screenwriter/director Frank Darabont (The Green Mile, Shawshank Redemption) was then hired to write the movie. He talked with Lucas by phone about the script several times in July and George wrote up an outline on July 31st. Darabont delivered his first draft on May 27, 2003, a second draft sometime later, and a third on November 4th. This third draft apparently got the approval of both Spielberg and Harrison Ford, but Lucas vetoed it, thus sending the project back into limbo. Shortly after Kingdom of the Crystal Skull was released, Frank's third draft hit the internet via Wikileaks, with rumors claiming he or some one close to him had leaked it.

The first draft supposedly gave Indy and Marion a 13 year old daughter. Spielberg didn't like this, saying he had already done that in The Lost World: Jurassic Park and didn't want to re-tread that ground. Another sticking point was the villains. They were apparently Nazis who had escaped to South America and wanted to exact revenge on Indy for killing Rene Bellocq and Toht in Raiders. Both Spielberg and Lucas felt that the 50s setting meant a Soviet villain. And after making Schindler's List and Saving Private Ryan, Spielberg felt he couldn't satirize the Nazis and Harrison Ford thought they "plum wore the Nazis out." Darabont cut the daughter and introduced Soviet baddies in subsequent drafts.

Synopsis

For a (much) more detailed synopsis, check the City of the Gods page on the Indiana Jones wiki.

At a secret military hangar in Nevada Indy witnesses his partner Yuri, along with several Soviet soldiers, attempting to obtain plutonium. After a chase through the hangar and a fight on a rocket sled, Indy gets captured and taken to a nuclear test site to be killed. He escapes his captors and survives an atomic blast in a fridge. The US government thinks Indy might be a spy like Yuri, so the university puts him on a leave of absence. Devastated, he drunkenly heads to the school that night where a bad guy named the Thin Man shoots the FBI agent tailing him. Indy and the Thin Man get into a fight in the workings of the university's clock tower, eventually resulting in the death of the Thin Man.

A clue on the body of the Thin Man leads Indy to a crystal skull and a hotel in Peru. There, Indy is shocked to run into Marion. They discuss how the crystal skull will supposedly lead to the Lost City of the Gods, which can grant the wish of anyone who enters. Indy's friend Professor Vernon Oxley had vanished searching for it years before. Marion is part of a new expedition to find it. Flying on their way to the expedition, Marion and Indy get ambushed by a plane flown by Yuri.

They crash, but are found by men connected to the expedition, which is headed by famous archaeologist Peter Belasko, who turns out to be Marion's husband. Yuri convinces the Peruvian president to join him on an expedition to find the city, with help from Nazi Doctor Von Graun. Indy discovers that Belasko has been getting much of his information from a completely mad Oxley. Yuri and President Escalante find them, triggering a stand off that is broken by a giant army ant attack. Indy and Marion are eventually captured by Escalante's men, then freed by Belasko who reveals that he's working for the Soviets.

Marion and Indy get tied up at the entrance to the city by Belasko and Yuri, only for Belasko's men to betray him and tie him and Yuri up with the others. Oxley helps them escape, after which the party enters the main temple in the city where they find the mummified bodies of 13 aliens. When the skull is placed on a crystal skeleton, one alien seemingly comes back to life, hypnotizing the other five men and asking them what their wish is. Von Graun and Belasko get killed by their wishes, Escalante gets turned into an Amazonian tree frog and Indy is freed from the hypnosis after asking for Marion. He shoots the skull, freeing Yuri. Yuri, Marion, Indy, and Oxley flee the city as a massive saucer fails to escape the earth and crashes, causing a giant mushroom cloud

Back in the US, Indy is cleared of all government charges and marries Marion. The script ends with Henry Jones Sr. drunkenly singing Fly Me to the Moon at the reception.

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Jeff Nathanson's Indiana Jones and the Atomic Ants

Background

After Lucas vetoed Darabont's third draft, he wrote a revised version he called Phantom City of the Gods, presumably as a starting point for the next writer. That next writer turned out to be Jeff Nathanson (Catch Me If You Can and The Terminal). He was brought in to write a new script in 2004 and met with Lucas and Spielberg for story conferences in August of that year and May of 2005. He quickly pumped out three drafts in November and December, with the third draft being delivered in December with the title "Indiana Jones and the Atomic Ants." Spielberg and Lucas weren't entirely happy with it and brought in Steven's trusted "closer" David Koepp to give it a shot.

Again, like Boam's work, there's very little information about what Nathanson's script contained. It was apparently set in the late 40s. Drew McWeeny (aka Moriarty), currently of HitFix and previously of Ain't It Cool News, has mentioned having a copy of one of Nathanson's drafts. Since Nathanson got a "Story by" credit on the final movie, his script probably bears a resemblance to the film, which he mentioned in an interview:

Were you and Lucas satisfied with the results of your collaboration?

I think for what George and I did and where we left off, I think we had figured out the movie for structure and character and storytelling. I think George was ultimately really happy with the story at that point. I think it then was the responsibility of the director to come in and get the script in the shape that he wanted it to be in to shoot.

He may have created Mutt, but I can't find a solid source for that.

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Notes

• I left out a bonkers supposed pitch for Indy II. According to Mythmaker: The Life and Work of George Lucas, the movie would have opened with a motorcycle chase on the Great Wall of China leading to Indy stumbling upon a hidden valley filled with prehistoric creatures including dinosaurs, but the project was abandoned after China refused the production permission to film in the country. Since The Complete Making of Indiana Jones makes absolutely no mention of this, I'm ignoring it.
  
• Similarly, Spielberg: A Biography by Joseph McBride says Diane Thomas (Romancing the Stone) wrote a script for Indy III set entirely within a haunted mansion. Since the timeline is sketchy (Lucas wrote a treatment for Monkey King only 4 months after Temple of Doom opened which leaves very little time for Thomas to have written the script) and The Complete Making of Indiana Jones doesn't mention it at all, I'm ignoring it.
  
• Many fan scripts did the rounds during the dead period from 1996 - 2000 with media outlets sometimes biting and claiming them as real. Two different ones (Indiana Jones and the Sons of Darkness and Indiana Jones and the Sword of Arthur) were passed off as official work by Jeff Boam. Several sites claimed to have gotten their hands on leaked scripts (Law of One, Raiders of the Fallen Empire, and Red Scare being the most notable), though they were almost assuredly fakes.
  
• M. Night Shyamalan talked to Lucas and Spielberg about writing the movie in 2000, but was never hired and never wrote a draft.

 

[Oozer3993]

Raiders of the Lost Ark

Background

George Lucas originally conceived of the idea of Indiana Smith (as he was first called) while working on The Star Wars in 1973. Lucas then famously pitched his idea to Steven Spielberg while both were vacationing in Hawaii during Star Wars' opening weekend in 1977. Spielberg mentioned that he'd love to do a Bond movie causing Lucas to say that he had something Steven "might like as much." The two would bring in Lawrence Kasdan to write the script.

A number of ideas were tossed around during their story conferences. Lucas wanted Indy to be a Bond like playboy, but Spielberg thought that being a professor and a "treasure hunter" would be a complicated enough personality. But Steven wanted Indy to be an alcoholic, which Lucas objected to. So they compromised and Indy was neither. Spielberg also changed his name to "Jones," thinking "Indiana Smith" was too close to "Nevada Smith," a role Steve McQueen had played in 1966.

First Draft

(See note at bottom)

RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK
LAWRENCE KASDAN
FIRST-DRAFT SUMMARY
JUNE 15, 1978

Lawrence Kasdan's first draft names the rich wilderness of the film's opening the Eyebrow of the Jungle. It contains an enormous structure: the 2,000-year-old temple of the Chachapoyan warriors. One of Indiana's companions, Satipo, translates the porters' whispering: "They say they have never been so near the House of Death." When Indy's second companion, Barranca, pulls a gun on the archaeologist, Indy uses his whip to make Barranca shoot himself.
Inside the temple's secret sanctuary, Indy places a lead weight on the pedestal to replace the idol, but as he and Satipo flee a giant boulder, Jones loses his hat, which is crushed. Outside again, the double-crossing Satipo is killed by Hovitos Indians, who remain hidden throughout their pursuit of Indy as he escapes to his waiting pilot and plane.
In the National Museum in Washington, DC, Indy and Marcus Brody admire the idol, and Indy has a "new felt hat…The jeweled figurine from Peru is on a small pedestal before him..."

INDY: If it's not the right one, I can always return it.
BRODY: It's even more beautiful than I imagined.

Brody takes Jones to meet with Musgrove, Eaton, and Davona— the "important people" who have come to discuss Hitler and his occult obsessions—and they discuss the Spear of Destiny. Hitler is planning to annex Austria to get it. Indy then leads them to the museum basement, where Calvin Stansbury debriefs them on the Ark of the Covenant. He explains that the medallion of the Staff of Ra, which enables one to locate the Ark's hiding place in the map room, is broken into two pieces, one of which can be found in Shanghai.

STANSBURY: There's one other thing that Hitler undoubtedly believes about the Ark—It's said that the Lost Ark will be recovered at the time of the coming of the True Messiah.

At three o'clock the following morning a sleeping Indy is awakened by the government trio, who cajole him into pursuing the Ark by revealing that a Frenchman named Victor Lovar, Indy's nemesis, is already in Egypt hot on the trail. Indy takes the job.
In Shanghai, his first stop, American Buzz Kehoe and Chinese Bang Chow help Indy outrace and outsmart the Nazis who have come for the same piece of the medallion, which is housed in the museum of a warlord named Tengtu Hok. To retrieve it, Indy battles two samurai and then escapes Hok and the Germans, who are blasting machine guns at him, by hiding behind a rolling gong and crashing through a window. Kehoe and Bang then drive him to a plane bound for New Delhi; Indy can go from there to Nepal and locate the other piece of the medallion.
But the plane is ditched by its passengers and pilot, so Indy wraps himself in an inflatable life raft and jumps out, inflating the raft in midair and careering down snowy slopes and through a Sherpa village where a Shaman stands before the people.

Indy whizzes by on his raft. He waves once. The Shaman looks wearily... and decides not to mention it...

In Patan, Nepal, at the Raven saloon, the character of Marion is introduced as she breaks up a fight between an Australian and a Nepalese. Marion's hard life after the death of her father, Abner Ravenwood, is described in more detail—it's insinuated that she had to prostitute herself, which has left her determined not to return to the United States until she can do so in style. Like Indy, she is somewhat mercenary. After Indy's fight in the saloon with a Nazi named Belzig and his cronies, Marion runs back into the burning bar to retrieve the second part of the medallion.
In Cairo, Egypt, Indy meets with Sallah and pays a visit to the Tavern of the Crocodiles, intending to obtain more money from a US government agent for Marion's payoff—since Indy's first payment was burned up in the fire in her saloon. There he bumps into Lovar for the first time.

LOVAR: Funny, isn't it, our meeting in Cairo?
INDY: Just looking for a little sun.
LOVAR: You should have come directly. There is more sun here than in Nepal.

Jones then finds that his government contact, Stanton, has been murdered with three daggers in the back. Shortly afterward, Indy pursues on camel the Nazis who have kidnapped Marion in a brown Chevy. Jones believes that she is switched to a waiting Ford and killed after he shoots at the vehicle, which plunges off a cliff.
At this point Sallah recruits Indiana's college roommate, a more serious and more learned archaeologist named Jules Spencer, who talks Indy out of giving up. "Her death will be meaningless if you just concede to these people," Jules says. The poisoning of the dates takes place at Spencer's, and it is Spencer who figures out that the Nazis and Lovar are digging in the wrong place, after deciphering the clues on the medallion.
After their several adventures, Indy and Marion spot the Flying Wing landing on a secret strip; it's being refueled when the action begins. Indy chases the truck with the Ark on a motorcycle. Bad Nazi Belzig is killed when his car goes through a dust cloud and over a cliff.
When Indy meets Katanga, the captain of the Bantu Wind is friendly to Indy because of a mutual friend named Petrovich— "the Bloody Vulture"—and his legendary adventure with Indy in the "islands." In their cabin Jones reflects:

INDY: Looks like the whole damn world will be fighting soon.
MARION: That won't be much of a change for you.
INDY: Yes it will. I hate crowds.

The following day ten German wolf-pack submarines surround them; a short but tense scene ensues in which the German captain debates with the Nazi Schliemann whether or not to blow the Bantu Wind out of the water, ultimately deciding, "Nothing is to be gained." After Indy swims over to the Nazi U-boat, the Wurrfler, and lashes himself to the periscope, we see a number of quick scenes—morning, evening, night, morning, et cetera—that depict him barely surviving as the U-boat travels to its island hideout.
There Indy follows the Ark, which is taken through a railway tunnel to the Tabernacle, housed in a natural cavern. Just as Lovar emerges in robes to speak the appropriate invocation before opening the Ark, Indy arrives and threatens to blow it up with a bazooka — but Nazis come up from behind and subdue him. Because Lovar has forbidden them to kill Indy in the presence of the Ark, the Nazis hold him in the Command Center. Outside, Lovar opens the Ark — and he along with all the surrounding Nazis are instantly killed by searing arcs of light and a sound like "the whisper of God."
Indy takes advantage of the subsequent havoc, subduing his captors, then locating and rescuing Marion. They escape in the chaos caused by the fire started by the Ark, but also manage to load it onto a mine car. Schliemann and others jump into a second car... and the race is on.
The explosion of munitions kills the pursuing Nazis, but Indy and Marion outdistance it, going off the end of the tracks and plunging into the bay just as most of the island is blown to bits.
The "cast credits roll over" the tranquil bay, with no sign of Indy or Marion. They then pop up in the bay, as does the Ark. Cut to the Pentagon, where Marion receives a cash settlement and her new start in the States, while Jones tries to find out from Davona what's happened to the Ark, but leaves unsatisfied. "As they do, crew credits roll."

MARION: Just put your mind on something else.
INDY: Yeah, like what?
Marion makes a face, then puts her arms around his neck and plants a humdinger of a kiss on his mouth.
It goes on a while. Finally they break.
INDY: It's not the Ark... but it'll have to do.

The "end credits roll" as the Ark is encased in a wooden crate and filed away among thousands of similar crates in a top-secret government warehouse.

As you can see, it's essentially Raiders of the Lost Ark + Temple of Doom. Some names would change (Lovar became Bellocq and Belzig became Toht), but the overall plot is the same. Not mentioned in the synopsis, but in the script is Belzig's mechanical arm, which contained a machine gun.

This, along with the scene in Shanghai, would make it almost all the way to the shooting script. The arm was story boarded, but was dropped due to being too fantastical and hard to pull off, while the production couldn't find a good location for the scene in Shanghai.

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Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom

Background

Previous Lucas collaborators Gloria Katz and Willard Huyck (American Graffiti, Star Wars) were brought onboard to write the next adventure of Indiana Jones, a run in with the occult in India. The first draft was actually called Indiana Jones and the Temple of Death. Since it was largely made out of the cut portions of Raiders, Temple changed little between the first draft and final film.

First and Revised Drafts

The early drafts are so close to the final film that I've left them off for space considerations. There's a synopsis of the first draft at the link at the bottom.

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Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade

Background

As detailed above, the first script commissioned for Indy III was greatly different from the final movie. Lucas wanted to use the Holy Grail as the MacGuffin the entire time, but Spielberg was hesitant, thus the grail-less first attempt. But after both decided to pass on Monkey King, Spielberg suggested bringing in the writer of The Color Purple, Menno Meyjes, and relented to having the Holy Grail as the MacGuffin, though he added Indy's father. Menno would submit two drafts that shared the same basic story with the final film.

Drafts

(See note at bottom)

INDY III
MENNO MEYJES
BASED ON A STORY BY LUCAS AND MEYJES
FIRST-DRAFT SUMMARY
OCTOBER 2, 1986
The first draft opens with a battle in Mexico between Indy and Banano, a crazed individual with a whip and a loyal band of gorillas. The object of their dispute is the death mask of Montezuma. Indy manages to throw Banano off a cliff, and his gorillas go free.
No sooner is he back in the States than Indy has to depart for France to look for his father—who has disappeared while looking for the Holy Grail. With a friend named Maude he goes to Montsegur, where they meet a nun named Chantal and her relation De La War, who explains that they had found a map that led Indy's father to Venice. But Nazis, led by Baron Balder von Grimm, were hot on the trail of Indy's dad. Grimm has a hapless sidekick named Hans, whom he is always calling "Idiot!" and then throttling.
After adventures in Venice and on the Orient Express where they are disguised as royalty, Indy and Chantal arrive in Istanbul. Clues and escapades put them on a train to Petra, where they are soon fighting for their lives. Fortunately Indy's old friend Sallah arrives with two horses, which they mount. Sallah then leads them to a Bedouin on horseback—who turns out to be Indy's father. Together they find the Grail in Petra, within the City of the Dead. At the climax Grimm shows up, but when he touches the Grail, he explodes; when Henry Sr. touches the Grail, a stairway to heaven appears, which he ascends. The nun Chantal is tempted to take the stairs as well, urged on by Indy. But her love for Jones makes her stay.

INDY III
MENNO MEYJES
REVISED FIRST-DRAFT SUMMARY
NOVEMBER 21, 1986
In the revised first draft the Nazi villain is Greta Von Grimm. And this time Indy finds his father tied to a pillar in a crusader's castle called Krak Des Chevalier. He'd been forced to help the Nazis in their search for the Grail, but they'd left him to die when he was no longer useful. At the place of the Grail, Indy does battle with a fantastic demon creature, whom he defeats by stabbing it in the belly with a dagger inscribed with the words GOD is KING. Bad girl Greta is vaporized by the Grail.

Spielberg and Lucas still weren't entirely happy, so they brought in Jeffrey Boam (Lethal Weapon 2 & 3) to give it a go. Just as with almost every writer before him, he'd start with a rough treatment from Lucas.

INDIANA JONES AND THE LAST CRUSADE
TREATMENT BY GEORGE LUCAS
MARCH 1987
Indy rides with two friends into a "guarded outback town." They give a secret password and proceed to a cantina. On the bar are a lot of trinkets that the bandits have stolen, but Indy notices that one of them is a "pre-Columbian-looking idol." He winks at his companions; they start a fight in the cantina while Indy grabs the idol. They're pursued on horseback at first, but they hitch a ride on a train where, during a big fight, Indy defeats all the bad guys. Afterward much is like the final film. "Indy's father is a strong, Victorian-type teacher who has always been very strict with Indy, so their relationship is one of a strict schoolmaster and student, rather than a father and son." Nazis are again the chief adversaries. But between the Grail and the good guys, this time around, is an armored and mounted crusader knight, whom Indy defeats with his bullwhip.

INDY III
JEFFREY BOAM
PAGES 1-83, SEPTEMBER 15, 1987
REVISED PAGES 84-102 (END), SEPTEMBER 30, 1987
FIRST-DRAFT
The story opens in Mexico 1939 with Indiana accompanied by two loyal friends. Astorga and Ponce, as he penetrates the hideout of a notorious Mexican bandit to retrieve a valuable statue of the Aztec Sun God. To create a diversion in the cantina, Indy turns to Astorga and says:

INDY: (improvising) Go down to the end of the bar... count to twenty, then grab it.
ASTORGA: But-
INDY: -do it. (Astorga turns to go) Wait. Better make it twenty-five.
Astorga nods, turns to go—but again, Indy stops him.
INDY: Better yet—thirty. Count to thirty.

After a big chase on a circus train—where Indy encounters a lion, a gorilla, and so on—he succeeds in keeping the statue. He gives it to Astorga, who turns out to be a museum curator:

INDY: Dr. Astorga... I believe your museum is the proper home for this.
Astorga takes the statue with a grateful expression... then his look sours.
ASTORGA: Oh. You've scratched it.

Indy returns to his college and finds in his mail a shrunken head, sent to him, presumably, by an admirer. Brody's mail contains a book sent to him from Venice by Henry Jones Sr. Brody shows it to Indy when they discover that the house of his father has been ransacked. They also find in the yard a dead housekeeper, strangled with a clothesline.
When Indy arrives in Venice to find his father, Nazis—led by Vogel and a new villain, Kemal—are already waiting. They track Indy, Brody, and their contact, art historian Dr. Elsa Schneider, a woman with dark hair and dark eyes. Funded by the Chandler Foundation, she and Henry had been scouring Europe for the Grail when the latter disappeared in Venice. Indy is told by a cafe proprietor named Aldo that his last whereabouts were the catacombs. Their entrance is through a trapdoor in a library, the Biblioteca Nazionale.
Elsa and Indy find the tomb of a Grail knight, but Kemal tries to kill them first by fire in the catacombs and then with machine guns mounted in boats during a chase in the Grand Canal and the Venetian harbor. Indy outsmarts Kemal and learns, with an additional tip from Elsa, that he and his Ottoman agents are from the Republic of Hatay, the city of Iskenderun, which is built on the ruins of Alexandretta.

KEMAL: What you are after can never be yours! It belongs in our land—to our people!

But Kemal confesses that the Nazis are holding Indy’s father in Austria. So Brody goes to Iskenderun to search for the grail, while Indy and Elsa voyage to Austria. When Indy finds his father in a castle, Henry Sr. smashes Indy over the head with a vase.

INDY: If I was one of them, would I have broken in through a window?!
HENRY: (sarcastically) Okay! I hit you 'cause you failed trigonometry in high school! (beat) Jesus! We haven't talked in five years. We gonna start off with an argument now?

In their escape they don't take the boats because it's been established that Indy is easily seasick and hates the water. They choose to go to Berlin because the Nazis won't look for them there. When they are shot at on the beach by a Nazi fighter plane, it's Indy who makes the seagulls bring down the last plane.
Inside the mountain temple, Kemal is about to force Elsa to brave the decapitation trap, having already killed all his retainers, when Indy, Henry, Brody, and Sallah arrive. Kemal shoots Henry Jones in order to make Indy do his bidding. Indy braves the traps and bests the crusader knight on horseback—"I am Lord de Bauvais, seigneur of St. Gobain and Folembray. Castellan de Cambri, Viscount of Savoy... known far and wide as William the Lion, Duke of Brittany."
Kemal drinks from the wrong chalice and dies. Indy tests the water from a simple earthenware jug—and his wounds heal. The knight then breaks off the outer vessel to reveal a radiant Grail hidden within the jug. Indy cures his dad, but Vogel grabs the Grail and is immediately crushed by a giant boulder. Elsa perishes, too, falling into infinite darkness; all Indy can see is the receding light of the Grail.
As they leave the mountain temple, the crusader rides out of a cloud of dust—but he and his horse are turned to stone, which then becomes sand and is blown away by the ensuing explosion that seals the cave.

INDY III
JEFFREY BOAM
SECOND REVISION
FEBRUARY 23, 1988
Much like the final film, the second revision begins with Indiana Jones as a teenager on a Boy Scout field trip in Colorado, 1912. When he races home with the Cross of Coronado, his dad is on a long-distance phone call concerning an important document. Indy's mother, Margaret, shoos Indy away.
A new character, only referred to in the previous draft, is rich philanthropist Walter Chandler, who tells the adult Indy: "Find the man and you will find the Grail." In Venice, Brody and Indy are introduced to a large Italian family, in whose house Elsa and his father were staying. The family provides comic relief and gives Indy a clue that leads him to the library. Elsa is more of a central character and an ambivalent figure. Her personality is more developed, with her distinguishing characteristic being that she is always eating or snacking on something.
Henry Sr.'s diary is more central to the story—everyone is trying to get it because it's the key to finding the Grail. Indy, Brody, and Elsa go to a basilica, where the priest tells them the library used to be an old church. Indy and Elsa fall through a trapdoor. As they make their way through the catacombs, we learn something new about Indy's father:

INDY: Ha! He never would have made it past the rats! He hates rats! He's scared to death of 'em! (beat) I know. We had one in the basement once. Guess who had to go down there and kill it? And I was only six!

When Indy and Elsa travel to Austria, there is more talking in the car, as they discuss food. The Nazi Vogel makes his first appearance at the castle. Chandler is also now in the castle. Indy escapes with his dad, and, on the road, Henry explains why it's so important to obtain the Grail and his diary, and hence go to Germany instead of rescuing Brody right away:

HENRY: There is an evil loose upon the world, son. Perhaps the greatest evil mankind has ever faced. The only thing that matters is the Grail... and who gets to it first. (beat) I had a lot of time to think while they were holding me in that castle. And I realized that this is why my search has taken so long... because now - at this exact moment in history - is the time to release the Grail's radiance upon the world. Now is the time to shed its light of goodness and wisdom. Of compassion and charity. Now is the time to share its power of healing and immortality, (beat) But if the Grail falls into Nazi hands, its light will be extinguished for all time... and it will be the armies of the Fuhrer who live forever.

Once in Berlin, Indy crosses paths with the notorious Nazi filmmaker-propagandist Leni Riefenstahl, who is trying to shoot a documentary:

LENI: One step forward, please, Mein Fuhrer.
Hitler takes a step back.
LENI: (sighing) All right. That's fine. Everybody else... one step back as well.
They, instead, take one step forward. Leni wants to pull her hair out...
CREW MEMBER: (to Leni) The Fuhrer says, 'No double chin'!

Elsa is about to throw the Grail diary into the bonfire of forbidden texts, but Indy manages to switch books on her before she obliges Hitler and Riefenstahl's camera. Later, as father and son converse on the Zeppelin, Henry confesses that he slept with Elsa, too.
During Indy's fight with the Nazis in the desert, Chandler goes over the side of the cliff on the Nazi tank. He plunges to his death, but Indy—believed dead—has saved himself by cutting off part of his pants:
Indy carries the knife in one hand and his pants— which have been slit from the waist down-gather in a heap around his ankles...

HENRY: I would have missed you, Junior.
SALLAH: Junior?
Indy makes a face, tries to improvise a way of holding up his pants... Sallah laughs even louder-slapping Indy on the back-causing Indy's pants to drop around his ankles again.

Vogel is beheaded in the Grail trials. Then a big gun battle takes place as Kemal tries to blow everyone up so they can't retrieve the Grail; the fight is semi-comic as a trail of gunpowder is repeatedly lit and extinguished. Kemal and all his men are knocked out, with Sallah's help—but Elsa shoots Henry. After Indy locates the Grail room, it is Elsa who drinks from what she believes is the Grail cup—indeed, she is about to shoot Indy when she dies horribly. Henry and Indy cross over the seal with the Grail, provoking an earthquake. Henry almost falls to his death—but he lets the Grail go. The Grail Knight turns into a skeleton as they leave.

-------------------------------------------------

(All synopses come from The Complete Making of Indiana Jones and were taken from transcriptions here. Parts in bold are taken directly from the draft. Copies of some of the scripts can be found at fan site The Raider.)

 

[DMczaf]

God damn it Lucas...

 

[Replicant]

I don't know. I kinda like the Monkey King script. Can't be any worse than what we eventually got for Kingdom of Crystal Skull. Too supernatural? Nonsense. The first Indiana Jones had ghosts literally coming out of God's Ark.

And Kingdom of Crystal Skull.....ick

 

[Retro]

Interesting idea for a thread, maybe a little limited by being only about Indiana Jones, but still a pretty cool read. However....

Lucas refused to do a version of Indy 4 without aliens.

This small passage sets my teeth on edge like nothing else. I'd love to know at what point Lucas' internal "bad idea-o-meter" broke and he just started spewing this sort of nonsense. Probably when his wife stopped keeping his ass grounded.

 

[Cow Mengde]

I don't know. I kinda like the Monkey King script. Can't be any worse than what we eventually got for Kingdom of Crystal Skull. Too supernatural? Nonsense. The first Indiana Jones had ghosts literally coming out of God's Ark.

I like the Monkey King script as well. Plus, they can't be worse than the Chinese version of the Monkey King. That movie blows chunks.

 

[Lionel Mandrake]

The Monkey King sounds like the least interesting aspect of the Monkey King script.

 

[btrboyev]

Crystal skull would have been good if Spielberg didn't direct it and they didn't use so much sound stage and cgi work.

I didnt think speilbergs heart was into that movie. Still, I don't think it's as bad as some people think. I still enjoyed the movie.

 

[JoseJX]

I don't know why they never used the Fate of Atlantis game as inspiration. It was a great setting and would have made a much better movie than what we got out of the Crystal Skull.

 

[KidGalactus]

Can you post about the stuff that got left out of Temple, Raiders and Crusade?

Also, if you have info, could you post about the crazy ideas that almost made it in? I know that at one point the villain in Raider was a terminator style cyborg.

 

[Lonewolf_92]

The title "Atomic Ants" makes me think of It Came from the Desert and Them!, that and "the Saucer Men from Mars" Sort of give me a "Indiana Jones and the 50's B-Movie Script" vibe.

 

[Oozer3993]

Can you post about the stuff that got left out of Temple, Raiders and Crusade?

Also, if you have info, could you post about the crazy ideas that almost made it in? I know that at one point the villain in Raider was a terminator style cyborg.

I'll try to get to that when I have time. It's mostly the original set pieces moved from Raiders to Temple and some alternate openings and endings for Crusade. And of course, cyborg Toht:

 

[genjiZERO]

Any reference to Wukong is cool. But the peaches weren't his - he stole them.

 

[Secret Fawful]

I like the haunted castle ideas. I also like the idea of a B-movie Indy flick. It could have been good if these guys just settled on an earlier script, like the one with the thin man villain.

 

[Succinct Verbosity]

Indiana Jones is always at its best when it's dealing with biblical mythology. I mean, damn, Indian Jones 1 and 3 were so good.

Edit: Nazis too. Always Nazis.

 

[adamsappel]

Just think about all that money those writers earned for those drafts. Hollywood is great for writers (moneywise, not respect). You can't earn money not having novels published.

 

[Kain]

George Lucas: crushing dreams since ever.

 

[iuxion]

Blows my mind how many drafts they went through to get to the result that was Indy IV.

 

[Retro]

Can we agree that "Lt. Werner Von Mephisto" is both a ridiculous and totally badass villain name?

 

[BUNTING1243]

Indiana Jones and The City of Gods is a pretty awesome title. It's interesting to see how various elements of these scripts got put into the final movie, for better or worse.

 

[Oozer3993]

I apologize for the necro-bump, but I finally got off my lazy duff and finished the nearly character-limit-busting second post about the early drafts of Raiders and Last Crusade. Not much changed from the first draft of Temple of Doom to the final movie (besides it originally being called Temple of Death), so I didn't include it. I needed the space for cyborg Toht, bar brawls, and Leni Riefenstahl.