Enter The Jungle

Starring:

Michael Fassbender as Will Archway

Liam Neeson as Elton

Michelle Monaghan as Mary Archway

Estimated Budget: $40,000,000

Estimated Box Office Gross: $87,000,000 Domestic, $145,000,000 International

Extended Plot Breakdown:

Act I:

Will Archway (Michael Fassbender) wakes up in the jungle.

He has no idea how he got there.

Men in camouflage that he can never get a clear look at are hunting him. He also must contend with ferocious creatures and animals. The cobras and tigers are especially dangerous.

At one point, Will sees a gorilla trapped in a painful trap. At first he leaves the gorilla. But his conscience gets the better of him and he wearily approaches the gorilla and frees him. In a tense scene we see the gorilla and Will try to get a read on each other. They’re hesitant at first but eventually a fragile trust is established. As the movie goes on, Will and the gorilla team up and become partners. Will starts calling the Gorilla Jeremy. They fight side by side and each save each other numerous times.

Most of the first act is Will surviving using only his wits in the jungle, while having no idea what’s going on. We don’t even know why he’s so skilled at this kind of survival. He has to fight animals, man, creatures, etc using only the tools available to him in the jungle and his own know-how. For example, he strangles one camouflaged man with a cobra, thereby killing both enemies in one fell swoop. The battles are brutal and each encounter with a new foe leaves him more and more damaged.

Eventually Will stumbles upon a group of Tigers, the fiercest predators in the jungle. He is not prepared for this and after putting up a good fight, the tigers start to ravage him. As Will finally succumbs to the pain and fear and begins to pass out we see a shadowy figure carrying a torch and shooting a gun in the air scare the tigers off. Will passes out as the man leans over him to pick him up.

Act II

Will is having a flash-back during a fever dream. We see that Will used to work as a forest ranger at Yosemite National Park. He worked alongside his wife Mary (Michelle Monaghan). They were very much in love and always went on adventures together. One day while scaling a mountain, the cable supporting Will’s wife snapped and Will reaches out to grab her but is too late. She falls to her death.

We see another flash-back (a series of scenes) of a depressed, lifeless Will carrying out his park ranger duties, which include camping in the park at night alone to patrol the areas. Eventually he notices a strange man following him over the course of a few days. One day, while Will is setting up his tent, the man approaches. He asks Will a series of unsettling questions about his work (ex: “How long do you think you could survive out here alone?” “Have you ever killed an animal with your bare hands?”). He compliments Will on how well he has set up camp and survived in the wild (hunting fish for dinner, etc.). The strange man then departs, leaving an unnerved Will to try and figure out what the hell just happened.

Will wakes up in a shack in the middle of the jungle. He finds that he is in the residence of a mysterious old shaman named Elton (Liam Neeson). Elton offers Will temporary refuge (food, shelter, medicine, sleep) and tells him only a limited bit of information (He vaguely dances around who the camouflaged men are because he either doesn’t fully know or doesn’t want to say. We’re not sure which.). Elton gives supplies to Will and tells him to make for the foot of the mountain to the North where he will find a radio transmitter to signal his presence to the rest of the world so he can escape. Elton says he spent his whole life trying to leave society behind and he will go no further with Will for fear of losing his anonymous life-style. He has built a sustainable life in his shack and doesn’t believe he would return alive from venturing out into the jungle again. He offers Will a chance to live with him but Will is determined to get back to society and figure out what is happening to him.

Act III

Will leaves the shack and continues to battle the increasingly hostile elements, both in the form of new creatures and animals and more camouflaged hunters than ever. The action is ramped up: In one scene, Will chops the hands off of a puma, and then uses the puma’s own claws to savagely kill the animal. Finally Will is able to get hands on a gun as a number of enemies are bearing down on him and he uses his mountain-scaling techniques to quickly climb a tree. From there we see him start sniping everything on the ground floor with expert precision. It’s a bloodbath.

He then runs into a snake pit full of Cobras and right as the snakes are preparing to attack, Jeremy the Gorilla shows back up and starts beating them to shit alongside Will.

The foot of the mountain, Will’s destination, is finally in sight. But he soon realizes there are countless camouflaged men and tigers patrolling the building they’ve constructed that holds the radio equipment. Since they’ve been hunting him this whole time, Will knows they would be hostile to his presence.

Together with Jeremy, Will uses his gun and other tools he’s built using jungle materials (a rudimentary cross-bow that he uses to shoot sharp pine needles through his enemies eyeballs, etc.) to attack the compound. It’s a furious battle with Will being attacked by men and animal in equal measure. Finally all the men are killed, Will is out of weaponry and ammo, and one final Tiger stands between him and the door to the compound. But this is the leader of the Tiger pack. The biggest, nastiest one of them all. And he’s pacing back and forth ready to pounce. Will and the Tiger face off and prepare to fight. Finally they launch themselves at each other and the Tiger jumps higher than Will could have ever expected. Will is going to be clobbered to death. But just as the Tiger’s lunge is about to crush Will, Jeremy jumps out of nowhere and takes the brunt of the Tiger’s attack himself. Using this split-second distraction Will punches the tiger in the face to death. He then moves to Jeremy, who’s lying on the ground breathing heavily. The gorilla dies as Will cradles him in his arms.

Will enters the compound. The room is full of gadgetry and equipment. He slowly explores all the machines and tries to radio out. As it becomes clear he’s getting no reception an increasingly desperate Will continues to shout into the radio. Suddenly he hears a voice from behind him saying, “They won’t hear you”. It’s Elton. Except he’s no longer a dirtily clothed shaman, but an impeccably-tailored suit wearing business man. Will can’t believe it.

Elton explains that this entire experience has been a training scenario. Elton’s organization scouted and recruited Will based on his abilities and experiences to carry out an operation for them. The entire time in the jungle was a test to see if Will could survive the elements without dying. If he died, it would be clear he wasn’t suitable to carry out their operation and the organization would move on. The camouflaged men that he killed were all criminals who were given jobs because of overcrowded prisons but not told they’d likely die in the process. Elton only gave Will a lifeline (helping him recover in his Shack) because they saw potential in Will and wanted him to continue the trial (the implication being Elton has let many candidates die that he could have saved because they didn’t have what it takes).

Elton wants Will to navigate an identical jungle 100 miles away and break into a compound that acts as the headquarters of the world’s leading illegal diamond drilling company. Once there Elton is to kill all officers present and claim the facility for Elton’s organization. Just as Will screams that Elton is insane and that he’ll never work for him, a figure comes out of nowhere to jam a syringe into Will’s arm. It’s a sedative. He passes out.

Will wakes up in a new jungle. Just as he’s getting oriented to his surrounding he hears a voice in his ear. He reaches up and feels an earpiece. It’s Elton. He tells Will that he must carry out the operation or “We’ll kill your wife”.

“My wife is already dead!” Will screams.

A few seconds of muffled reception in the earpiece later we hear a woman’s frantic voice. “Will!? Will!? Is that you!?”… We see a look of shocked recognition on Will’s face…It’s Mary…She’s alive.

Suddenly 20 enormous tigers, each at least two times bigger than the final tiger in the last jungle, appear from out of the trees and surround Will. The tigers growl dangerously, ready to pounce. Will breathes heavily and steels himself. Finally he lunges off-screen just as we hear all 20 tigers roar ferociously–

SMASH CUT TO BLACK.

The End.

Exclusive Scene from the Script: