Indiana Jones and the Monkey King - Christopher Columbus
Ok, so this is way better than Indiana Jones and the City of the Gods and Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull put together. It just has that Indy feeling that the those other two are missing. It was supposed to be Indiana Jones III, and it owuld have fit well there, but it has a similar goal (something that gives it's user eternal life) as the Last Crusade.
Now, on the writing. This script illustrated a couple of the stylistic things that different instructors talked about in their seminars.
1) We hear: A couple of the seminar instructors talked about avoiding phrases like "We see" and "we hear". In Monkey King there is a ghost story as the opening and Columbus is building tension then suddenly "We hear the distant, MANIACAL LAUGH of a man." It takes us completely out of the story and reminds us that we are reading and not experiencing the story. He could have just as easily done "The MANIACAL LAUGH of man, can be heard in the distance" or something a little more artful, but you get the point.
2) Transliteration: One of the dialogue instructors told the class never to transliterate (e.g: sound out for accents, dropping the "g" on words, etc.) dialogue. He said it was insulting to the actors, who are just going to do whatever they want. I guess I can see his point, but I think he's missing an inmportant point. This is being read first, then performed. I think transliteration allows the reader to get fuller experience of the character.
3) Huge blocks of action: This script has A LOT of action, sometimes for pages with little to no dialogue. I have to be honest, even though it was exciting, my eyes glazed over when I saw a page of action.
That's all for today. Tomorrow will conclude my look at the unproduced Indiana Jones scripts.
Indiana Jones and the Monkey King: http://www.mypdfscripts.com/unproduced/indiana-jones-and-the-monkey-king-aka-indiana-jones-iii
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