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?