Indiana Jones & the Last Crusade
As the title says, the Last Crusade is meant to be the last Indiana Jones, capping off a trio of fun adventure movies and capping the franchise at three movies until two decades later, with the honestly rather poorly received Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull. Back then, sequels aren't very common, and either franchises are driven to the ground with multiple identikit sequels that are just regurgitating relatively the same tired things over and over again, or they'll be happy to cap things off with three or four movies.
Throughout his first two adventures, the character of Indiana Jones has been a little bit of an enigma. We know he's a bit of a dick but ultimately a nice guy who cares about his friends and cares about putting archaeological findings in museums or returning them to the villages they come from. He teaches in a university, but goes around with a bullwhip and a fedora on daring adventures. We know he's afraid of snakes. But we don't really know just why he's like that. Temple of Doom gave us a brief character development by turning Indy from a 'fame and glory' mindset into respecting the archaeology profession and returning the plot device to the Indian village, but who is Indy as a person, really?
The movie opens very smartly with two children stumbling upon several men huddled around an archaeological dig, the leader among them wearing a fedora... only for one of the kid calling the other 'Indiana'. We go through one of Indiana's earlier adventures when he's a child, as he tries to 'rescue' a random artifact from a bunch of treasure hunters (the leader of whom ends up having a grudging respect for Indiana and helps to rescue him from the lion in the circus train and giving him his iconic fedora)... but a combination of Indy's own dispassionate father (who's tied in on his own research) and the fact that the white-hatted boss ends up seeing a failure.
We then cut to the present day, with the adult Harrison Ford Indiana Jones righting his past failure, going up against mr. white-hat on his ship, which is a pretty thrilling bit with items sliding back and forth on the ship with waves crashing here and there. It's a nice contrast compared to the bright colours that Young Indy had on the circus train. It's more zany, with Indy falling into crates of snakes (and getting his ophidiophobia from there) or trying to scare off a lion with a bullwhip (again, showing the origins of Harrison Ford's face scar and his affinity for whips). It's not that Indiana Jones' journey has become so jaded and dark, because the fight in the ship is still so much more fun, but it's definitely slightly darker, relatively speaking. People die and the stakes are higher.
And just as this movie looks to the past as inspiration, it also does so in a more meta sense, bringing back multiple characters and aspects from Raiders of the Lost Ark which was ignored in Temple of Doom. Once more, Nazis and the World War setting are back. Indiana Jones teaching in the university is seen once more. Characters like the hilarious local guide Sallah (John Rhys-Davies) and Indy's fellow professor, Marcus Brody (Denholm Elliot) return for larger roles. And most importantly, the writers know that just another journey for a mysterious artifact isn't going to feel fresh. Like, yes, the Holy Grail is an iconic historical artifact, but what can make it different from finding the Ark of Covenant?
Well, they had the amazing idea of showing Indiana's estranged father, played amazingly well by James Bond himself, Sean Connery. And Henry Jones Senior is as different a person from Indy as can be. They are both archaeologists, sure, and they are both good guys, but Henry is very detached from the savviness that Indy shows. He panics when Indy shoots a couple of Nazi guards dead, he accidentally destroyed the tail fin of the biplane Indy commandeered, and most egregiously he doesn't really seem to care much for Indy beyond being a fellow archaeologist, being so, so obsessed with his search for the Grail.
The post-prologue scenes first began with Indy and his friend, Marcus Brody, going on a frantic search for Henry, who has gone missing after being contracted by big businessman Walter Donovan (who, of course, turns out to be the big bad of the movie though it really doesn't make that much effort to hide it). Indy's search leads to a pretty intense sequence of meeting the movie's female protagonist, dr. Elsa Schneider and fighting enemies on the riverways of Venice as well as in underground catacombs, before finally rescuing Henry Senior from the clutches of the Nazis only to find out that, shit, Henry is still being a detached father whose value of measuring Indy's self-worth depends on how useful he is in terms of his quest for the Holy Grail. Sean Connery is the perfect fit for a father that's both charismatic yet assholish, and plays off Indy very well.
The movie gets rid of most side characters relatively quickly, with the revelation that Elsa is actually a Nazi double-agent, while Marcus Brody gets sent off alongside another returning ally Sallah in order to hide another plot device, leaving Indy and Henry alone to go off on their adventure and it's amazingly done. Indy's angry confrontation with Henry while on the airship about how Henry's never there for him, with Henry's justification that he's a good father because 'hey, I never stopped you from doing anything you wanted', and Indy finding that now that Henry says 'fine, what do you want to talk about' that, well, there aren't much to talk about beyond their work. It's a very sobering scene, a surprising bit of melancholic disconnect between father and son in-between burning Nazi mansions or using a flock of seagulls to take down a Nazi plane.
The movie goes from scenes between Indy and Henry's awkward bonding to insane action scenes, and even three decades later the movie's action scenes still stand out, including the rather extended scenes in the climax with Indy and the Nazi general fighting on top of a moving tank, while Henry and Marcus, two old non-action guys, try their best to help out from the inside. It's a great scene and Henry's absolutely distraught reaction when he thought Indy bit the dust is amazingly acted.
Yes, at the end of the day it's just another action movie that goes from one exotic set to the next, but the journey is definitely fun to watch. The ending drags on a little, but the shock at seeing Donovan shoot Henry, causing Indy to rush his way into the temple of the Holy Grail (and then using the answer of the riddles that both of them figured out) to work past the traps of the temple to reach the Holy Grail's chamber. Indy's desperation to find the Grail to save his father, compared to Donovan and Elsa's greed, is well-contrasted, and in the end it's these greed that kills both villains. Donovan picks up the brightest, most ornate cup ("he chose... poorly", as the immortal knight notes) and gets aged to death in a pretty spectacularly done effect of rotting away into a skeleton. Elsa, meanwhile, ignores all the warnings and tries to bring the Grail out of the temple, causing the temple to collapse and instead of grabbing Indy's hand she tries to reach for the Grail and falls to her death.
And Indy? Indy could try and reach for the Grail, to try and reach for the object of his father's lifelong dream... but it's Henry that tells Indy to "let it go", choosing his son over his obsession. Over their adventures, the two have bonded and it's definitely a great story that injects character and context that we care about compared to just 'adventurers hunting for treasure'. Add that to absolutely hilarious jokes between Indy and Henry's interactions, and both Brody and Sallah being amazingly hilarious in every scene they're in, and the Last Crusade is a pretty amazing movie that I enjoyed far more than I expected I would.
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