Wow, I was just reading the Wikipedia entry for Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, and there’s a whole lot of WTF going on here. A sampling:
Lucas initially suggested making the film “a haunted mansion movie.” Lucas first introduced the Holy Grail in an idea for the film’s prologue, which was to be set in Scotland. Spielberg did not care for the Grail idea, which he found too esoteric. Lucas completed an eight-page treatment entitled Indiana Jones and the Monkey King. The story saw Indiana battling a ghost in Scotland before finding the Fountain of Youth in Africa.
Chris Columbus changed the main plot device to a Garden of Immortal Peaches. His script begins with Indiana battling the murderous ghost of Baron Seamus Seagrove III in Scotland. Indiana travels to Mozambique to aid Dr. Clare Clarke, who has found a 200-year-old pygmy. The pygmy is kidnapped by the Nazis during a boat chase, and Indiana, Clare and Scraggy Brier -— an old friend of Indiana -— travel up the Zambesi river to rescue him. Indiana is killed in the climactic battle but is resurrected by the Monkey King. The tank is three stories high and requires Indiana to ride a rhinoceros to commandeer it.
Spielberg hired Menno Meyjes to begin a new script. It depicted Indiana searching for his father in Montségur, where he meets a nun named Chantal. In the denouement, the Nazis touch the Grail and explode; when Henry touches it, he ascends a staircase into Heaven. Chantal chooses to stay on Earth and marries Indiana. In a revised draft the Nazi leader is a woman named Greta von Grimm, and Indiana battles a demon at the Grail site, which he defeats with a dagger inscribed with “God is King.”
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