The
Television Career of Young Indiana Jones
America
has had a fascination with Indiana Jones for decades. The original adventure,
Raiders of the Lost Ark, earned $209 million in 1981, and the
subsequent prequel (Indiana Jones and Temple of Doom) and sequels
(Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Indiana Jones and
the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull) likewise ruled the domestic box
office, respectively scoring $179, $197 and $317 million each. Conceived
by Star Wars guru George Lucas and born from his love of 1940s
serials, the movie franchise features Steven Spielberg as director and
stars Harrison Ford in the title role of Indiana Jones, the fictitious
archaeologist who continuously finds himself in pursuit of lost relics
and ancient treasures.
Old time
movies, however, are just one of Lucas’ many passions, and in
the early 1990s he created The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles,
a television drama that ran on ABC for two seasons, to satisfy yet another:
his love of history. “I
have an educational foundation working with interactive projects, and
I got this idea to get kids involved in history through the Young Indiana
Jones character,” TheRaider.net
quotes Lucas as saying at the time. “The turn of the century is
my favorite part of history because it has so much to do with the emergence
of the modern age we live in today. It seemed like such a great idea
and such an interesting adventure that I just got lured into it by the
creative potential.”
Although critically acclaimed at the time, the series experienced low
ratings despite the popularity of the titular character. Each episode
followed an adventure of young Indiana Jones, either at age eight (played
by Corey Carrier) or in his late teens (Sean Patrick Flanery), and involved
him interacting with actual historical figures. The problem, however,
was that Lucas did not follow any chronological order with the episodes,
and each week viewers were left to wonder which Indiana would be the
central character, as well as where the story fit in with the overarching
timeline. Each installment was also “bookended” by a 93-year-old
Jones (George Hall) reminiscing about his life, a creative device that
was not always well received. Lastly, fans expecting a Raiders-of-the-Lost-Ark-type
adrenaline rush were disappointed to find The Young Indiana Jones
Chronicles more cerebral than adventurous.
“If this wasn’t called ‘Indiana Jones,’ it wouldn’t
have been made,” Lucas commented to the
New York Times in 1992. “I told
the network this is not going to be like the movies, that this is not
an action-adventure film, but a coming-of-age film. It deals with issues
and ideas. It’s not a high-tech adventure thing.” A three-volume
DVD set gives better focus to the vision Lucas initially had, as the
episodes now follow their proper chronological order and thus allow
the development of Indiana Jones as an individual to become clearer
in the minds of viewers.
In the episode “Phantom Train of Doom,” for instance, young
Indy—who enlisted in the Belgian army in order to fight in the
First World War—is separated from his unit in Africa and ends
up accompanying a rag-tag group of older combatants instead. He questions
their lack of planning for the mission, and the commanding officer remarks
that while there is nothing wrong with having a plan, in the end “he
who survives is he who thinks on his feet.” Indiana simply replies,
“Oh, make it up as you go. Oh, boy, that’s great advice.”
But as the episode progresses, as well as the ones that follow, we see
Jones begin to embrace the concept of spontaneity, leading to the point
in Raiders of the Lost Ark when Harrison Ford, asked what the
next step should be, recites the classic line, “How do I know?
I’m making it up as we go along.”
“The show explores how Indiana Jones got to be the way he is,”
TheRaider.net again quotes Lucas. “How, like in the features,
did he learn to speak so many languages? Where did he pick that up?
How did he decide to become an archaeologist? There are so many fascinating
things about the character that you can’t deal with in the features
because they move along so fast on an action level. I thought it would
be interesting to understand how that happened and to build up, mainly
for the teenage audience, a character who likes to learn. He’s
not a nerd; he’s not a jerk, but he loves learning and what the
result of that learning gets him in the end. It doesn’t make him
rich or famous, but it definitely puts him in good stead in terms of
his walking through life.”
That “good stead” includes meeting such influential figures
as T.E. Lawrence (whom Indiana befriends at an early age), Charles de
Gaulle (the two attempt to escape a German POW camp together), Albert
Schweitzer (he nurses Indy back to health in Africa), Theodore Roosevelt
(on safari) and Eliot Ness (Jones’ roommate at the University
of Chicago). Although the majority of these encounters are brief, they
serve more than simply placing Indiana’s adventures in an historical
context as the young Jones is exposed to a variety of concepts and cultures
that help shape the man he will eventually become. Lucas’ objective
is thus both subtle and admirable, as the knowledge Indiana Jones gains
through the course of the television series is the type of well-rounded
education that any learning institution would envy. It was not Lucas’
intention to be a teacher, however, but simply an instigator for further
learning.
“I’m not telling you the story of Teddy Roosevelt in fifteen
minutes,” Lucas told the New York Times. “All I’m
doing is introducing him to you. All I’m saying is that this man
is Teddy Roosevelt. The idea is obviously interactive. The idea is for
the viewer to say: ‘I’m interested in that character. I
want to read more about him.’ The show is designed to spark the
imagination and curiosity of students and just acquaint them, on the
barest level, with these figures.”
For the
DVDs, Lucasfilm produced a series of companion documentaries about the
major historical figures and events that are portrayed in The Young
Indiana Jones Chronicles and added them as extras. In addition
to now following the proper chronological timeline, the episodes have
also been “double-upped” to form a series of hour-and-a-half
long films. The elderly Jones bookends have likewise been eliminated,
with one notable exception: Harrison Ford handled those duties in “The
Mystery of the Blues,” and that cameo remains intact. The end
result is a better structure for the interactive educational experience
Lucas originally envisioned—an historical insight into both the
character and the times of Indiana Jones.
As fate
would have it, one of the episodes planned before the show’s eventual
cancellation had Jones meeting Rene Belloq, his nemesis from Raiders
of the Lost Ark, in 1920 Honduras. According to Lucas’ official
Star
Wars website, the unproduced synopsis
called for the duo to discover a “crystal skull,” which
Belloq subsequently steals and sells to a British explorer. Hollywood.com
reports that Lucas “became fascinated” with crystal skulls
from that point onward, paving the way for the fourth big-screen installment,
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. From films
to television back to film, Indiana Jones has indeed led an adventurous
life, as well as an intellectual journey anyone can both learn from
and enjoy.
Anthony
Letizia (May 12, 2008)
