Indiana Jones And The Temple Of Doom is now officially 30 years old, having been released on May 23rd, 1984, and though the film is the most frequently criticised - not least by some of the people involved in making it - it remains a pillar of cinema as a defining part of one of the most enduringly popular character franchises of all time. There is a reason Indiana Jones continues to be a marketable character despite the comparative sins of the fourth movie, and a reason also why Harrison Ford remains drawn to the character enough to attach himself to a fifth. The tail-kicking, quip-swipping master of the whip and of archeology is an icon of a bygone age, built on the fundaments of entertainment that have long endured in cinema even as technical quirks and frivolous short-term fads pass in and out of popularity. To celebrate the Temple Of Doom's anniversary yesterday and today's 25th anniversary of the release of The Last Crusade, we're looking back at some of the best and rarest facts related to the production of all four Indiana Jones films...
25. Indy Almost Fought A Monkey Army
Almost every Indiana Jones movie seems to have been the subject of considerable rewrites in pre-production, and one early version of Temple Of Doom included a haunted castle (which Steven Spielberg nixed having just made Poltergest), a 200-year old pygmy named Tyki, Indy attacking a tank with a rhino and then dying and being brought back to life by the Monkey King with a magic peach. Another rewrite - but Chris Columbus - changed the Monkey King into the villain of the piece, and gave him a gorilla army that Indy had to escape. Ultimately, in a rare moment of self-awareness, George Lucas rejected the script as too unrealistic.
