Monkey King: strip it for parts?

Toht's Arm

Active member
Somebody has already mentioned that the stamping on the trail of gunpowder was actually done in the Tintin comic itself, right? Surely the Columbus copyright issue is a moot point...
 

emtiem

Well-known member
Finn said:
I've a feeling we're talking apples and oranges here. I said myself, a singular idea is not the same as using a character or some setting, which you are clearly alluding to here. Those are works that can be copyrighted. A simple idea can't.

Trust me: If Chris Columbus wrote a scene where Indy battles a Nazi over a trail of blazing gunpowder and later sees Captain Haddock do the same with some pirate, he can't take anyone to court over that. To suggest an idea like that can be claimed ownership, or think it's analogous with some work that can be copyrighted is a pretty big folly.

It's pretty much the same as suggesting that you can't film a scene where somebody jumps from a plane without a parachute only to catch one midair because James Bond already did that, or suggest that Lucas owns the intellectual rights to all mine cart chases, or, or... well, you get the idea. If things were like that, the guy who came up with the basic concept of "student seduces professor" could just retire from royalties all the planet's porn production companies owe him.

Nah sorry; I don't trust you on this because I don't know if you have any experience in this area and the way you've been writing about this doesn't make me think you have. You've concentrated on the 'apples and oranges' part and ignored the rest of my post. When it's a gag written for a particular director who then uses that gag in another, very similarly-themed movie, it's not a coincidence and it's not the same as the examples you give for that very reason. Even not from a legal point of view there would be a question of what's professional.
Now, I accept in this case it may well be moot: it may have come from the Tintin story or indeed been an idea that Spielberg or Lucas had, so I'm more wondering that if, say, Kasdan had come up with a great idea for a scene in Raiders that was later used for Crystal Skull, or even Phantom Menace or something, how that would work.
 

Finn

Moderator
Staff member
emtiem said:
Nah sorry; I don't trust you on this because I don't know if you have any experience in this area and the way you've been writing about this doesn't make me think you have.
In which case I guess all I can do is to direct you towards reading some copyright law. (FYI: I have. I possess a degree in Information Science, and knowing what kind of immaterial properties are free to use and what are not is a BIG part of that. It's also the reason why I scoffed at your question so strongly. I consider myself an expert, and it felt so bizarre, even coming from a layman.)

And I have to wonder why did you bother to ask about it on an Internet forum in the first place, if the respondent's credentials are that big of an issue to you? Or did that only come to play when the answer was not something you expected it to be, and you hate to admit you were caught tripping with the issue?

And before thinking what I may or may not know, may I suggest you peruse the forum a little? I've in fact mentioned my background enough times to consider it common knowledge. I prefer not to flaunt it around, though, because I don't want anyone to think I'm trying to badger people with the "I've a degree, so I'm smarter than you and therefore right by default" argument. (Until now, at least. Look what you made me do.) But I certainly won't be vague about it if someone asks. So, please... the next time someone who's certainly an old hand on the forum tells you something and you think they're full of it... RTFM.

emtiem said:
Now, I accept in this case it may well be moot: it may have come from the Tintin story or indeed been an idea that Spielberg or Lucas had, so I'm more wondering that if, say, Kasdan had come up with a great idea for a scene in Raiders that was later used for Crystal Skull, or even Phantom Menace or something, how that would work.
I don't know if there are any unwritten rules or gentleman's agreements in Hollywood about paying a homage - that definitely goes outside my field - so pondering about those is a valid point, I give you that, but from the POV of the written law? Won't change a thing. There are no limitations on recycling simple ideas, even when there's a decent reason to suspect where their origins might lie. If that was the case, 90 percent of all fiction, whether written or pictured, would be far more dull than it is.
 
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Attila the Professor

Moderator
Staff member
emtiem said:
Nah sorry; I don't trust you on this because I don't know if you have any experience in this area and the way you've been writing about this doesn't make me think you have. You've concentrated on the 'apples and oranges' part and ignored the rest of my post. When it's a gag written for a particular director who then uses that gag in another, very similarly-themed movie, it's not a coincidence and it's not the same as the examples you give for that very reason. Even not from a legal point of view there would be a question of what's professional.
Now, I accept in this case it may well be moot: it may have come from the Tintin story or indeed been an idea that Spielberg or Lucas had, so I'm more wondering that if, say, Kasdan had come up with a great idea for a scene in Raiders that was later used for Crystal Skull, or even Phantom Menace or something, how that would work.

What if Kasdan wrote a scene wherein Indy runs behind a gong while being shot at with a machine gun? Or where he jumps out of an empty plane with a life raft? Or where he flees the bad guys in a mine cart?

Or if Columbus wrote a scene where Indy fights a tank on his way to an immortality-granting artifact?

Or, hell, if Columbus wrote a scene where the hero and his friends are forced to do battle with weird beasts in a coliseum-style arena?

Incidentally, if what Toht's Arm says is right, here's another interesting tidbit from our Raiders of the Lost Drafts series:

bellosh said:
This device of a secret chamber behind a waterfall is borrowed (like other elements of the story) from a Tin Tin adventure, Prisoners of the Sun (interestingly a Tin Tin film was being developed for Amblin at this time, to be scripted by E.T. writer, and wife of Harrison Ford, Melissa Mathieson). Had the film been made, the cavern would have been an amazing Elstree set.

Anyway, since <I>we know</I> that elements from earlier Indy drafts have made it into later stories, maybe we can get back to what this script might augur for the future?
 

Jonesy9906753

Well-known member
Attila the Professor said:
While I don't see Spielberg wanting to film in Africa, it's certainly uncharted territory for the Indy films.

Africa would work really well. But i think the biggest challenge for them would be introducing a strong macguffin for the story. I must ask, what macguffin might be worth chasing after if they go that route?
 

Attila the Professor

Moderator
Staff member
Jonesy9906753 said:
Africa would work really well. But i think the biggest challenge for them would be introducing a strong macguffin for the story. I must ask, what macguffin might be worth chasing after if they go that route?

I don't know; that's a fair question.

I think, on some level, we need to recognize that not every option they might pursue is going to be in the front lines of easily recognized mythical or occult objectives; apart from some New Age interest, the source material for the Sankara stones is generally unfamiliar to Western audiences (and the lingam concept is, perhaps, distorted to unrecognizable to Hindu ones as well).

The story of Sun Wukong, the monkey king, seems to be an important one in an East Asian context, but similarly unfamiliar to most Westerners.

Whether the current Lucasfilm regime will feel similarly about the possibilities for non-Western artifacts and myths is an open question. Even Indy IV grafted the very modern mythos of Roswell, New Mexico onto allegedly pre-Colombian and Spanish ideas of the Americas.

This blending is pretty conventional for the series; there's a lot of Egypt going on in a story about a post-Red Sea Exodus artifact, and the Thuggee cult gets a bunch of add-ons courtesy of Caribbean voodoo and Aztec heart-removal sacrifices. Even Last Crusade is doing some interesting playing around with the actual Crusades and the mythic knights of the Arthurian grail legend.

So maybe we could see something that's a non-African gloss on an African idea, or (less palatably, perhaps) a non-African idea given an African context, either in the sense of the Monkey King script setting a Chinese myth of a journey to the West in an African context (much like Fate of Atlantis playing with distance in order to get Atlantis in in the Mediterranean instead of the Atlantic) or in the sense of Western (or other non-African) legends <I>about</I> Africa.

Of the latter, stories about Prester John are going to be the most prominent. Apparently there's also a fictionalized version of Timbuktu called Houssa. The Indy series did just tell a story of a lost city, but that was far from the story's focus, so maybe there's still something to be had there.

The Ashanti trickster character of Anansi the spider, originating in what is now Ghana, is possibly the most prominent piece of African myth that has any prominence in the US; I remember hearing some Anansi stories in elementary school. (The African-American South's Br'er Rabbit is a spiritual descendent of Anansi.) Anyway, there are two stories about Anansi and a gourd, one in which he collects all the stories in a gourd and one in which he collects all wisdom in it. (I might argue that these two stories - these two gourd contents - could be one and the same.) This could be squarely in the Indiana Jones wheelhouse.

Some here with knowledge of H. Rider Haggard might know of legitimate African stories that he was ripping off. Or maybe someone knows a bunch of African lore and hasn't been letting on. (Hell, I think Le Sab's let on a bit.) I'm not terribly knowledgeable on this.
 

Attila the Professor

Moderator
Staff member
Attila the Professor said:
The Ashanti trickster character of Anansi the spider, originating in what is now Ghana, is possibly the most prominent piece of African myth that has any prominence in the US; I remember hearing some Anansi stories in elementary school. (The African-American South's Br'er Rabbit is a spiritual descendent of Anansi.) Anyway, there are two stories about Anansi and a gourd, one in which he collects all the stories in a gourd and one in which he collects all wisdom in it. (I might argue that these two stories - these two gourd contents - could be one and the same.) This could be squarely in the Indiana Jones wheelhouse.

I took a look at this again, and the possibilities are even stronger than I first noticed. Here's a partial transcript, from <I>African Mythology, A to Z</I>:

Patricia Ann Lynch and Jeremy Roberts said:
One story tells how Anansi came to own all the tales that are told. In the beginning, all tales belonged to Nyame [Note: a/the sky god, either Anansi's friend or father]. Anansi wanted to own the stories himself, so he offered to buy them. Nyame told Anansi that he was willing to sell the stories, but the price was high. He wanted three things: Mmoboro, the hornets; Onini, the great python; and Osebo, the leopard. Anansi was confident that he was clever enough to perform these tasks. He first cut a gourd and made a small hole in it. He then poured water on himself and on the tree where the hornets lived. Anansi then told the hornets that they were foolish to stay in the rain, and he offered the gourd as shelter. When the hornets flew into the gourd, Anansi plugged up the hold and took the hornets to Nyame. Next, Anansi cut a bamboo pole and went to visit Onini, the python. He told Onini that he and his wife had been arguing over whether Onini was shorter or longer than the pole. Onini suggested that Anansi measure him against the pole, and he stretched out along it. Anansi convinced Onini to let him tie the python to the pole to keep him straight. He then carried the bound python to Nyame. To capture Osebo, the leopard, Anansi first dug a pit and covered it with branches and leaves. When Osebo fell into the pit, Anansi offered to rescue him. He bent a tall tree toward the ground and tied it in place. Next, he tied a rope to the top of the tree and dropped the other end of the rope into the hole. He told Osebo to tie his tail to the rope. When Anansi released the rope that held down the tree, the tree sprang upward, leaving Osebo dangling in the air. Anansi had no trouble capturing the helpless leopard. When Anansi presented Osebo to Nyame, the sky god agreed that the price had been paid. From that day onward, all stories belonged to Anansi.

Perhaps the bad guys think that the stories include stories of the future. Perhaps it's about having control over how history is told, which could be very interesting in the period of African independence. This could also play very nicely into the evolution from fact to truth that Pale has suggested exists in the series.
 
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