ProfessorChaos
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Indiana Jones and the Cave of Death... More than a Memory?
A little history behind this Indy film that never came to be...
For those not in the know, Indiana Jones and the Cave of Death was an Indy 3 idea once mentioned in Starlog magazine (and a couple other magazines, if I remember correctly) back in the years following the release of Temple of Doom. They showed concept art (poster art too) for it and eveything, and then it vanished like the Ark of the Covenant. No one knows what happened, only that at some point the Monkey King script was created and rejected and then Last Crusade came to be. But Cave of Death, unlike Monkey King, was lost to time. You can read the script for Monkey King. It's all over the web! But if you Google Indiana Jones and the Cave of Death... nothing turns up. Only a single cryptic reference on a script website which says, and I quote as follows: "Indiana Jones and the Cave of Death - Script." Yet no script at all turns up for it on the site. They had Raiders, Temple of Doom, and Last Crusade. They had Monkey King a.k.a. Garden of Life, they had Lost City of the Gods... heck, they even had some of the fan scripts that weren't real. But for Cave of Death there was only an empty entry. Cryptic, isn't it! And that merely adds to the mystery. Just what was it about Cave of Death that made them want to (seemingly) wipe out any traces of it ever having existed?
I know I'm curious. After all... it couldn't have been worse than Monkey King! Supposedly, George Lucas didn't like how dark Temple of Doom was, and that was why he made Last Crusade more light-hearted. Could the reason for the disappearance of all info regarding Cave of Death be because it was going to be darker even than Temple of Doom? Or pehaps just as dark! If you are like me, and find darker takes on things interesting, you're probably just as much curious as I am, if not moreso. Well... this is the place for just that curiosity!
So, what is the purpose behind a thread dedicated to this?
All most people can say is they remember the pictures, or they remember the name, and they remember the plot featured the return of Willy Scott. But for all intents and purposes, everything else about Cave of Death has been just plain forgotten. So, on behalf of myself and like-minded folks who recall this rejected Indy idea, I've started this thread. Here, anybody with info about it can post their findings. Got images from it? Put 'em up for all to see! Have a link to a site with info on it, or best of all the script (if there was one)? Let's see it. Sure, there were other rejected Indy concepts... but only Indy 3: The Cave of Death got special treatment in Starlog! That makes it different, and because of it's mysterious disappearance from common knowledge... it's an adventure worthy of Indy himself. Rejected Indy concepts are to Indy sort of what the Apocrypha is to Religion. Sure, those texts never made it into the Bible, but reading about Jesus going down into Hell to free souls, in the book of Nicodemus, is still interesting in an epic, Dante's Inferno kind of way.
A little history behind this Indy film that never came to be...
For those not in the know, Indiana Jones and the Cave of Death was an Indy 3 idea once mentioned in Starlog magazine (and a couple other magazines, if I remember correctly) back in the years following the release of Temple of Doom. They showed concept art (poster art too) for it and eveything, and then it vanished like the Ark of the Covenant. No one knows what happened, only that at some point the Monkey King script was created and rejected and then Last Crusade came to be. But Cave of Death, unlike Monkey King, was lost to time. You can read the script for Monkey King. It's all over the web! But if you Google Indiana Jones and the Cave of Death... nothing turns up. Only a single cryptic reference on a script website which says, and I quote as follows: "Indiana Jones and the Cave of Death - Script." Yet no script at all turns up for it on the site. They had Raiders, Temple of Doom, and Last Crusade. They had Monkey King a.k.a. Garden of Life, they had Lost City of the Gods... heck, they even had some of the fan scripts that weren't real. But for Cave of Death there was only an empty entry. Cryptic, isn't it! And that merely adds to the mystery. Just what was it about Cave of Death that made them want to (seemingly) wipe out any traces of it ever having existed?
I know I'm curious. After all... it couldn't have been worse than Monkey King! Supposedly, George Lucas didn't like how dark Temple of Doom was, and that was why he made Last Crusade more light-hearted. Could the reason for the disappearance of all info regarding Cave of Death be because it was going to be darker even than Temple of Doom? Or pehaps just as dark! If you are like me, and find darker takes on things interesting, you're probably just as much curious as I am, if not moreso. Well... this is the place for just that curiosity!
So, what is the purpose behind a thread dedicated to this?
All most people can say is they remember the pictures, or they remember the name, and they remember the plot featured the return of Willy Scott. But for all intents and purposes, everything else about Cave of Death has been just plain forgotten. So, on behalf of myself and like-minded folks who recall this rejected Indy idea, I've started this thread. Here, anybody with info about it can post their findings. Got images from it? Put 'em up for all to see! Have a link to a site with info on it, or best of all the script (if there was one)? Let's see it. Sure, there were other rejected Indy concepts... but only Indy 3: The Cave of Death got special treatment in Starlog! That makes it different, and because of it's mysterious disappearance from common knowledge... it's an adventure worthy of Indy himself. Rejected Indy concepts are to Indy sort of what the Apocrypha is to Religion. Sure, those texts never made it into the Bible, but reading about Jesus going down into Hell to free souls, in the book of Nicodemus, is still interesting in an epic, Dante's Inferno kind of way.