Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade

Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
File:Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade A.jpg
Directed by	Steven Spielberg
Written by	George Lucas (story) Menno Mejes (story) Jeffrey Boam (screenplay)
Produced by	Robert Watts
Starring	Harrison Ford Sean Connery Denholm Elliott Alison Doody John Rhys-Davies Julian Glover
Music by	John Williams
Distributed by	Paramount Pictures
Release dates	May 24, 1989
Running time	127 min.
Language	English
Budget	$48,000,000

Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade is a 1989 adventure film directed by Steven Spielberg and starring Harrison Ford, Sean Connery, Denholm Elliott, Julian Glover, Alison Doody, River Phoenix, and John Rhys-Davies. This film is the third released, though the twenty-fifth chronologically, in a series of film and TV productions about the adventures of the heroic fictional archaeologist Indiana Jones.

When Dr. Henry Jones Sr. (played by Connery) vanishes while pursuing a life-long search for the Holy Grail, Indiana must retrace his father's steps in the hopes of rescuing him – and the Grail – from the clutches of the Nazi military machine. Worldwide, the film was the highest grossing movie of 1989.

Plot

Indiana Jones, aged 13, holding the Cross of Coronado

In 1912, boy scout Indiana Jones steals the Cross of Coronado, an ornamental cross belonging to Francisco Vásquez de Coronado, from grave robbers, believing it should be in a museum instead of a private collection, in the process using a whip, scarring his chin, and gaining his fear of snakes. Although he rescues the cross, the robbers tell the police that Indiana was the thief, and he is forced to return it, while his oblivious father, Henry Jones, is working on his research. One of the robbers, dressed very similarly to the future Indiana, gives him a fedora. In 1938, an adult Indiana is on the robbers' ship, the Coronado, off the Portuguese coast, finally retrieving the Cross and donating it to Marcus Brody's museum.

Indiana meets the wealthy Walter Donovan, who informs him that his father vanished while searching for a clue to the location of the Holy Grail, using an incomplete stone tablet. Indiana and Marcus travel to Venice to meet Dr. Elsa Schneider to retrace his father's footsteps, starting at the library where he was last seen. Indiana finds an "X" (inlaid in the floor) literally marks the spot, smashing through the floor to ancient catacombs underneath, filled with oil several feet deep. Inside is the tomb of Sir Richard, a knight of the First Crusade, whose shield holds a complete version of the information on the tablet. The Brotherhood of the Cruciform Sword, a secretive and fanatical religious cult that protects the Holy Grail, set fire to the oil in the catacombs to kill Indiana and Elsa. Indiana overturns Richard's sarcophagus so that he and Elsa can take refuge inside from the flames, and emerge from a sewer grate in Venice outside the library. Indiana and Elsa commandeer a motorboat to escape, managing to fight off all but the cult's leader, Kazim, during the ensuing chase. Jones convinces Kazim that he is looking for his father, not the Grail, and Kazim reveals that his father is being held in Castle Brunwald near the Austrian-German border.

Indiana finds his father, but they are betrayed by Schneider and Donovan, who worked with the Nazis to stage Henry's kidnapping to get Indiana to solve the mystery of the Grail for them. Indiana and Henry escape together and travel to Berlin to retrieve Henry's diary, which contains all he has learned of the Grail, including clues to evade three booby traps. They arrive at a pro-Nazi book burning rally, where a disguised Indiana corners Elsa and convinces her to return the diary to him, in the process bumping into Adolf Hitler. Indiana and Henry travel on an LZ-138 Zeppelin, which begins to turn around, making Indiana realize the Nazis know they are on board. They escape the ship by taking an attached fighter plane, evading Nazi dogfighters, but Henry accidentally shoots out the tailfin, and they crash land. They steal a car, causing one Nazi plane to be destroyed when it follows them through a tunnel. On a beach, Henry uses his umbrella to stir up a flock of seagulls. The seagulls cause numerous bird strikes on the second plane, crashing it. The Joneses meet up with Sallah and confront the Nazis, who have captured Brody. The Brotherhood of the Cruciform Sword also appears, attacking the Nazi caravan, but are defeated. Henry attempts to rescue Brody from the tank he is being held in, but is himself captured. Indiana jumps onto the tank and rescues the captives before it drives off a cliff, killing Donovan's aide, Colonel Vogel.

The Joneses, Sallah and Brody reach the Canyon of the Crescent Moon, in Hatay near İskenderun, the site of the temple housing the Grail. The Nazis capture them in the temple and shoot Henry, forcing Indiana to retrieve the Grail to heal his fatal wounds. Guided by the diary, Indiana circumvents the deadly booby traps, reaching a room where a knight of the First Crusade, kept alive by the power of the Grail, has hidden it amongst many false cups, while Donovan and Elsa follow. The knight informs them that, if they wish for the Grail, they must choose wisely for it, for while drinking from the true Grail will bring them everlasting life, a false Grail will take it from them. Schneider identifies a golden, bejeweled cup as the Grail, and Donovan impatiently drinks from it. Realizing the Grail is false, Donovan dies in a gruesome manner, aging rapidly into dust.

Indiana picks out the true Grail, a plain cup with a gold interior, worthy of a humble carpenter, and drinks from it without harm. Indiana fills the Grail with water and uses it to heal Henry. Despite a warning from the knight not to let the Grail go past the Great Seal in accordance with the Law of God, Elsa tries to leave with the Grail and the interior starts to collapse. She loses her balance at the edge of a newly-formed crevasse, and despite Indiana's attempts to lift her, she greedily reaches for the Grail and falls into the abyss. Then Indiana loses his footing and finds himself in the same situation, with his father keeping him from following the same fate as Elsa. He also tries to get the Grail, until Henry says simply, "Indiana...Indiana...let it go." Realizing that this is the first time his father has properly referred to him by name, Indiana reluctantly obeys, and the Grail along with the old knight are left in the ruins as the Joneses, Brody and Sallah escape the crumbling temple. Afterward, Henry reveals that "Indiana" was the family dog's name, much to Sallah's amusement, and that Indiana's real name is Henry Jones, Jr. They then all ride off into the sunset.

Production

Al Khazneh at Petra, Jordan, exterior of the Holy Temple in the film

After the release of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, Spielberg returned to previously possible concepts of the Monkey King and a haunted castle, before Lucas suggested the Holy Grail. Spielberg had previously rejected it as too ethereal, but then came up with telling a father-son story. He thought, "The Grail that everybody seeks could be a metaphor for a son seeking reconciliation with a father and a father seeking reconciliation with a son." Further exploring Indiana as a character, something Harrison Ford wanted to do, Lucas came up with a flashback of Indiana as a teenager to begin the film. Menno Mejes, who worked on The Color Purple and Empire of the Sun with Spielberg, co-wrote the story with Lucas while Jeffrey Boam wrote the script's final draft.

Filming began on May 16 1988 with a budget of $36 million, shooting in Venice, Almeria, Jordan, Austria, Germany, Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Texas. Almeria was used for the plane chase and the tank fight. Originally scripted for two days, Spielberg expanded the tank fight with storyboards and had two tanks built, one for close-ups. When shooting the scene where Henry Jones uses seagulls to take down a plane, the seagulls did not fly, so Spielberg had doves used instead. Shooting in Venice took place in August, when the crew took over the Grand Canal. The fight near the propeller was shot at a tank in Elstree Studios, while the catacombs sequence had 2000 rats specially bred, to keep out disease. River Phoenix shot his scenes in September, three weeks after filming wrapped. After viewing a rough cut, Spielberg added the motorbike chase which was shot at Lucas Valley.

Cast

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Connery and Ford on the set of The Last Crusade

• Harrison Ford as Indiana Jones: The intrepid archaeologist and adventurer who seeks to rescue his estranged father.
• Sean Connery as Professor Henry Jones: Indiana's father, who cared more for looking for the Grail than his son. He has a fear of rats.
• Denholm Elliott as Dr. Marcus Brody: Indiana's bumbling colleague.
• John Rhys-Davies as Sallah: A friend of Indiana, he is a professional excavator living in Cairo.
• Alison Doody as Dr. Elsa Schneider: An Austrian professor who is in league with the Nazis. She seduced both of the Joneses.
• Julian Glover as Walter Donovan: An American businessman who sent the Joneses on their quest for the Holy Grail, he works for the Nazis and desires immortality.
• River Phoenix plays the young Indiana Jones in the film's opening.
• Michael Byrne as Vogel: A brutal Nazi colonel.
• Kevork Malikyan as Kazim: The leader of the Brotherhood of the Cruciform Sword, the organization that protects the Holy Grail.
• Robert Eddison as the the Knight who guards the Grail. He drank from the cup of Christ during the Crusades and is immortal as long as he stays away from the marked entrance.

Elliott and Rhys-Davies reprised characters from Raiders of the Lost Ark, with Spielberg seeking to recapture the tone of that film following their absence in the darker Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. Spielberg suggested Connery as Henry Jones, feeling no one else but the first James Bond could pull off the role. Connnery initially turned it down, as he was only twelve years older than Ford, but he relented. Being a student of history himself, Connery began to reshape the character into somebody who was a match for his son.

River Phoenix, who plays the younger version of Harrison Ford's character, played Ford's character's son in The Mosquito Coast. Ford personally recommended Phoenix for the part, citing that of all the young actors working at the time, River Phoenix was the one who looked the most like himself when he was around that age.

Soundtrack

Main article: Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (soundtrack)

Reaction

This installment in the Indiana Jones series has more humor than the previous two films. The humor is mainly shown through the relationship between Indiana and his father. Marcus Brody is also a much less serious character than his previous appearance in Raiders of the Lost Ark, being described as a museum curator who "once got lost in his own museum". The lightheartedness of the movie especially contrasts to its predecessor Temple of Doom, which is usually cited as the "darkest" in the trilogy.

The Last Crusade is estimated to have grossed over $197 million in the United States and $474 million worldwide. These sales figures put the film second to Batman in the United States and first globally for 1989. The film was also well received by critics, earning a 92% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. The film won the Academy Award for Best Sound Effects Editing.

As of March 13, 2007, it was ranked as #119 on IMDb's list of the Top 250 Movies of All Time.

The stunt where Indy jumps from a horse down onto a tank — performed by legendary stunt man and coordinator, Vic Armstrong — was voted one of the 10 best stunts of all time by Sky Movies viewers in the UK in 2002.

Video games

In 1989, Lucasfilm Games released Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade: The Graphic Adventure and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade: The Action Game, both based on the film. In its era, the adventure game is generally considered one of the best of its genre, right along with Maniac Mansion, The Secret of Monkey Island, and Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, which are all also produced by Lucasfilm Games. There are also two completely different games for the NES called "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade", with no subtitle to differentiate the two versions. The newer game of that title is a port of the action game, while the older game was a different action game. There was also an Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade game released for Game Boy and Game Gear. Lucasfilm games are also currently producing a new Indiana Jones game for the next-generation games consoles, PlayStation 3, and Xbox 360.

The last part of the video game Indiana Jones' Greatest Adventures, released in 1994 by JVC for Nintendo's Super Nintendo Entertainment System, is based entirely on the film. Several sequences from the film are reproduced (the biplane dogfight and battle in the tank against Vogel for example); however, several scenes of the film such as the boat chase in Venice, the start of the movie where Indy appears as young boy, Indy getting the Cross of Coronado in the Portuguese coast, the motorcycle chase and the "Word of God" and the "Leap of Faith" tests in the Grail Temple level were not featured in this game. LucasArts and Factor 5 developed the game.

DVD release

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DVD cover of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.

Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade was released on laserdisc and VHS in 1990 and on DVD in October 2003. A VHS release in 1999 and the DVD release was packaged with the previous two theatrical films in the series: Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark.

External links

• Official Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade site
• The Indiana Jones Wiki
• Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade at IMDb
• Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade at Rotten Tomatoes
• Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade at Box Office Mojo