Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade

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FILM
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
Director(s)	Steven Spielberg
Producer(s)	George Lucas (executive) Kathleen Kennedy (executive) Frank Marshall (executive) Robert Watts
Writer(s)	George Lucas (story) Menno Meyjes Jeffrey Boam
Starring	Harrison Ford Sean Connery Denholm Elliott Alison Doody
Music by	John Williams
Distributor	Paramount Pictures
Released	May 24, 1989
Runtime	127 min
Budget	$48,000,000
Rating	PG-13
Canon	G
Timeline	1938
Preceded by	Raiders of the Lost Ark
Followed by	Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

"The man with the hat is back. And this time he's bringing his dad."

―Tagline^[src]

Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade is the third film in the Indiana Jones series. Released in 1989, it was directed by Steven Spielberg. Although it was the third motion picture released, the movie is chapter twenty-five in The Complete Adventures of Indiana Jones.

Set two years after the events of Raiders of the Lost Ark, the story follows archaeologist Indiana Jones as he discovers his estranged father has gone missing while seeking out clues leading to the Holy Grail. Guided in his search by his father's diary, Jones learns that the Nazis are also interested in the Biblical cup, and must overcome them to be reunited with his parent.

The movie was released on VHS in 1999, and twice on DVD in 2003 and 2008 respectively. The 2003 DVD was part of The Adventures of Indiana Jones box set containing the first three Indiana Jones films, while the 2008 release was promoted as a Special Edition of the film, as part of Indiana Jones – The Adventure Collection (first three films), then individually and as part of Indiana Jones - The Complete Adventure Collection (all four films).^[1]

Contents 1 Synopsis 1.1 Utah, 1912 1.2 Portuguese Coast, 1938 1.3 Venice, Italy 1.4 German border 1.5 Hatay 2 Appearances 2.1 Cast 2.2 Other characters 2.3 Artifacts 2.4 Locations 3 Overview 4 Production 5 Toy Line 6 Video games 7 Trivia 8 Home video releases 9 Notes and references

[edit] Synopsis

[edit] Utah, 1912

The film starts in 1912 with Indy (River Phoenix) as a Boy Scout in a failed attempt to retrieve the Cross of Coronado from treasure hunters. After stealing the Cross from Fedora and escaping across the countryside on horseback and circus train, Indy returns home, only to have the local sheriff reclaim the Cross for Fedora and his client, Panama Hat. The small adventure inspires his whip, fear of snakes, fedora (and style of dress), and even the scar on his chin.

[edit] Portuguese Coast, 1938

The story then advances to 1938, two years after the events in Raiders of the Lost Ark, with Indy (Harrison Ford) now a grown man. He successfully retrieves the Cross from Panama Hat and after returning to Barnett College, donates it to Marcus Brody's (Denholm Elliott) museum.

[edit] Venice, Italy

Walter Donovan (Julian Glover) informs Indy that his father, Henry Jones, Sr. (Sean Connery), has vanished while searching for the Holy Grail, which Donovan believes has the power to grant eternal life. Indy is shown half of an ancient tablet, a marker leading to the Grail, and told that the other one is buried with the knight's dead brother. Indy and Marcus travel to Venice to meet Dr. Elsa Schneider (Alison Doody) to follow the footsteps of his father. Below the library where his father was last seen, Indy discovers the tomb of a knight of the "Last Crusade" which holds the second marker with information needed to begin the quest for the Grail. Indy encounters the Brotherhood of the Cruciform Sword, a secret and fanatical religious cult determined to protect the Grail at all costs. Their leader, Kazim (Kevork Malikyan), tells him that his father is being held in Brunwald Castle near the Austrian-German border.

[edit] German border

In Germany, Indiana finds his father but both find themselves being betrayed by both Schneider and Donovan. Indy discovers that both work for the Nazis and that his father's kidnapping was staged to get him to solve the mystery of the Grail for them. Elsa ties up indiana and mockingly kisses him. Indy and his father escape the Nazis, and after a daring escape on motorcycle, head for Berlin in order to retrieve his father's Grail diary. Meanwhile, the Nazis capture Brody in Hatay and learn where to start the Grail quest.

Donovan and Schneider, with Brody, begin the Grail quest on one path, as does Indy with his father and Sallah on another, and the cult on yet another. Eventually, their individual quests cross paths and lead to a confrontation where Kazim is killed by Donovan's men and a desert chase that reunites Indy and his father with Brody and Sallah.

[edit] Hatay

The quest reaches its climax at the Canyon of the Crescent Moon, in Hatay near Iskenderun, where the secret home to the Grail is located. Donovan captures Indy in the temple and shoots Indy's father, forcing him to face a set of challenges and retrieve the Grail for its healing powers to save his father's life. Indy, guided by his father's diary, surpasses the challenges, arriving in a room with Holy Grail hidden amongst many false grails and a knight of the last Crusade surviving by the Grail's power. Donovan and Schneider immediately follow Indy. Schneider then picks out a golden, bejeweled grail which Donovan drinks from. The grail was a false one and Donovan rapidly ages and is killed.

Indy picks the true Grail, a carpenter's cup. But the knight commands him not to let the Grail go "past the Great Seal", as it is the boundary of immortality. Indy takes the Grail with the holy water and heals his father. Schneider then tries to leave with the Grail and crosses the Great Seal. As the knight warned and defiance to the law of God, the building collapses and she loses her balance at the edge of a crevasse. Indy grabs her and tries to pull her up, but she tries to reach for the grail instead. Schneider falls into the abyss when the glove on her other hand slips off. Then, Indy attempts to get the Grail, but his father tells him to "let it go", thus the Grail is never recovered as the heroes escape the crumbling temple. The film ends with Henry revealing that "Indiana" was the family dog's name; Indy, his father, Sallah, and Marcus ride off into the sunset.

[edit] Appearances

[edit] Cast

[edit] Other characters

• Anna Jones (Mentioned only)
• Brunwald (Mentioned only)
• Helmut
• Heinrich Himmler
• Adolf Hitler
• Indiana
• Librarian
• Massad
• Periscope Soldier
• Tyree (Mentioned only)

[edit] Artifacts

• Cross of Coronado
• Grail tablet
• Holy Grail
• Richard's shield
• Ark of the Covenant (Pictured only)

[edit] Locations

• Berlin
• Castle Brunwald
• Hatay
  • Canyon of the Crescent Moon
• Utah
• Venice
  • Library of San Barnaba
  • Knight's tomb
• Barnett College
• New York City

[edit] Overview

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. Also Marcus Brody is a 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 light-heartedness of the movie especially contrasts to its predecessor Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, which is usually cited as the "darkest" in the trilogy. Despite being regarded as some to be derivative of the original film, it is often regarded as the second best of the trilogy.

The Last Crusade is estimated to have grossed over US$197 million in the United States and $277 million elsewhere. These sales figures put the film second to Batman in the United States and first globally for 1989.

[edit] Production

Indiana Jones artist Drew Struzan created the film's distinctive artwork. Also like the previous films in the series, the soundtrack was composed by John Williams.

The opening sequence, with River Phoenix as the young Indiana Jones, was shot at the end of production. The rock formations during the opening credits belong to Arches National Park, outside of Moab, Utah. The circus train was shot on the Cumbres & Toltec Scenic Railroad, which runs between Antonito, Colorado and Chama, New Mexico. As with the previous two films, studio filming took place at Borehamwood Studios in Hertfordshire, England. The Church of San Barnaba in Campo San Barnaba served as the exterior for the fictional Venetian church-turned-library.

[edit] Toy Line

There was no toy line originally released for Last Crusade when it hit theaters in 1989. However, there was a toyline based on the film released by Hasbro in July 2008.

[edit] Video games

In 1989, Lucasfilm Games released both a graphical adventure game and an action game of the same name, based on the film. 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.

[edit] Trivia

• 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. Ford had also offered advice to Phoenix on how to stay grounded in the high pressure world of Hollywood and was reportedly grief-stricken when he heard of Phoenix's death four years later in 1993.
• When Indiana and Elsa are in the catacombs under the Venetian church-turned-library, Elsa points out a mural. Indiana says it is the Ark of the Covenant, to which Elsa asks "are you sure?" Indiana replies "pretty sure." Indiana would know this because the focus of Raiders of the Lost Ark was his search for the Ark. There is also a musical cue from Raiders playing during this exchange.
• In the Boy Scout Scene, Indiana Jones is a Life Scout. There are several claims as to why this is:
  • 1) He was supposed to be an Eagle Scout, but the badges are not given out to anyone other than Eagle Scouts, so he had to be just one under. (Critics of this theory note that a costume department with a big budget could have just had one made.)
  • 2) Indiana Jones was a Life Scout in honor of Eagle Scout Steven Spielberg's father who had died recently and who earned the rank of Life Scout in his youth.
  • 3) Indy, born in 1899, would have been 13 at the time, and Eagle was much more rigorous and much less seldom earned until older, until well into the 1940s.
  • 4) When Harrison Ford was younger, he was a Boy Scout and had earned the rank of Life Scout

• The stunt where Indy jumps from a horse down on to 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.
• The interior of the Zeppelin sequence was filmed in the blistering heat of Spain. Neither Ford nor Connery wore pants during the conversation at the table to get longer takes before having to wipe the sweat from their faces. (Connery's character is wearing a tweed suit and Ford's character had a leather jacket in that scene.)
• There is a curious German sentence in the movie: when Indy and his friends are cornered by the German troopers in the Grail temple, one of them shouts in German, "Das ist ein Überfall!" Literally meaning, "This is a robbery!" or "This is a heist!" which bankrobbers yell to intimidate their victims, and thus unrelated to the scene. It remains unclear whether it is supposed to be a hidden joke or a misinterpretation of the foreign language material. Earlier in the film, during the fight on the tank, soldiers inside the tank watch as Indiana is in a fistfight. One of the soldiers asserts "The Americans - they fight like girls" in German and then gets knocked out by the periscope. Another odd one takes place in the Castle Brunwald. When Indy grabs the machine gun from the Nazi soldier, the soldier yells "Wo ist die scheisse?" which translates into "Where is the shit?"
• Connery's hair and beard, and Ford's sideburns lengthen during two scenes: after the motorcycle chase and after the tank goes off the cliff. These two additional scenes were filmed after principal photography had ended.
• Last Crusade was the first Indiana Jones movie to receive an MPAA rating higher than PG, the recently created PG-13. This was the certificate Spielberg himself was partly responsible for (see Ratings in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.
• Tom Stoppard performed uncredited rewrites on the dialogue for this film as a favor to George Lucas.
• Sean Connery, Alison Doody, John Rhys-Davies, Michael Byrne, and Julian Glover all appear in the James Bond series. Steven Spielberg once said he would have liked to do a James Bond film.
• The march played by the Nazis in Berlin is called "Königgrätzer Marsch".
• Donovan's wife is played by Julian Glover's actual wife.
• In the movie the grail is located in the Republic of Hatay near the city of Alexandretta. There actually was a Republic of Hatay from 1938 to 1939, after the region was granted independence from French Syria and before it became a province of Turkey. The capital of Hatay was Alexandretta before 1939 when the city's name was changed to Iskenderun and the capital moved to Antioch.
• Harrison Ford, Michael Sheard, and Julian Glover all appeared in George Lucas' Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back. This film also features an uncredited cameo by Nick Gillard as the Periscope Soldier. Gillard later choreographed the lightsaber duels in the Star Wars prequel trilogy, and appeared in Revenge of the Sith.
• During the scenes in the Republic of Hatay, most Nazis wear AfrikaKorps uniforms, and the emblem of the AfrikaKorps appears on a Nazi truck in Iskenderun. The DAK was never part of the Schutzstaffel and they would never participate any expedition to find religious artifacts. Also the DAK did not exist until 1941.
• The gray uniform worn by Colonel Vogel while he is in Hatay reflects nothing like the real Wehrmacht colonel nor the Standartenführer. However, his rank patches were real Standartenführer's insignia of 1938.
• When Donovan presents the payment to the ruler of Hatay, his phrasing (especially the pause before "donated") suggests that the money is, in fact, gold stolen by the Nazis from the Jews. Though the concentration camps were not yet started by the time Last Crusade takes place, the Nuremberg Lawes were in effect and they would have seized much Jewish gold. (It is also possible his hesitation stems from him noticing that the Sultan isn't actually paying attention to him but instead wandering over to the Rolls-Royce.)
• When Indy "escapes" from his students at Barnett College, he is surrounded by (for those who saw Raiders,) a group that would appear to be Nazi agents, one of which wears his coat in a similar fashion to Arnold Toht. Those who guessed it was Toht would be inaccurate, as he died in 1936. We shortly find out after that it was a gag and the group was just an escort.
• The car that is given to the Sultan of Hatay is not, in fact, a Rolls-Royce Phantom II, but instead a Rolls-Royce 20/25. It seems odd that the Nazis would have a British staff car (the novelization calls it a Daimler-Benz, at any rate).

[edit] Home video releases

Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade was released on laserdisc and VHS in 1990 and on DVD in October 2003 and again in 2008. 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 Raiders of the Lost Ark.

[edit] Notes and references