Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade

Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade is a 1989 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 Sean 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.

Plot Summary
The movie starts in 1912 with Indy (Phoenix) as a boy scout in a failed attempt to retrieve the Cross of Coronado from grave robbers. The small adventure inspires his whip, fear of snakes, fedora (and style of dress), and even the scar on his chin. The story then advances to 1938; Indy (Ford), now a grown man, is successful in getting the Cross and donating it to Marcus Brody's (Elliott) museum.

Walter Donovan (Glover) informs Indy that Henry Jones Sr., his father (Connery), vanished while searching for the missing half of a clue leading to the Holy Grail, which has the power to grant eternal life. Indy and Marcus travel to Venice to meet Dr. Elsa Schneider (Doody) to follow the footsteps of his father. Inside the library (a converted church which is actually the Church of San Barnaba in Campo San Barnaba) where his father was last seen, Indy discovers the tomb of a knight of the "Last Crusade" which holds information needed to begin the quest for the Grail. Indy encounters a secret and fanatical religious cult determined to protect the Grail at all costs. The cult leader, Kazim, tells him that his father is being held in Brunwald Castle near the Austrian-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. Indy and his father escape the Nazis and go to Berlin, to retrieve his father's Grail diary needed to complete the quest. Meanwhile, the Nazis capture Brody, somewhere in Turkey, 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 cult leader Kazim is killed by Donovan's men and a desert chase that reunites Indy and his father with Brody and Sallah.

The quest reaches its climax at the Canyon of the Crescent Moon, in Hatay near Iskenderun, where the Holy Temple (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 is killed.

Indy picks the true Grail, 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, the building collapses and she loses her balance at the edge of a crevasse. Indy tries to save her, but she falls into the abyss while trying to recover the Grail. 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 Holy Temple. Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade ends with Henry Sr. revealing that "Indiana" was the family dog's name; Indy, his father, Sallah, and Marcus ride off into the sunset.

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 Indiana Jones and the 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. 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.

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.

After producing the three Indiana Jones movies in the 1980s, no further movies have been made by Lucas or Spielberg in the Indiana Jones series as of 2006. However, a fourth film is currently in pre-production, and is scheduled for a 2007/2008 release.

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.

Trivia

 * Harrison Ford and Pat Roach are the only actors to appear in all three films in the trilogy (Raiders of the Lost Ark, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade). In Last Crusade, Roach appears only briefly as the Nazi running alongside Vogel towards the Zeppelin. He was to fight Indy as he and Henry Sr. try to steal the biplane from the belly of the zeppelin, but the scene was cut as Spielberg felt it made the film run too long.
 * 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.
 * In The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles, the reason why the elderly Indiana appears so spry for his advanced age may be linked to drinking from the Grail.
 * The stunt where Indy jumps from a horse down on to a tank &mdash; performed by legendary stunt man and coordinator, Vic Armstrong &mdash; 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 American fights like a girl" in German and then gets knocked out by the periscope.
 * 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, 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 "Bandweiler". It was the official march of Hitler's army regiment when he served in the First World War and was often played during his chancellorship.

Home video releases
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.