UFO

Indiana Jones watches the saucer take flight.

An Unidentified Flying Object, commonly abbreviated as UFO, also known as Flying Saucers or Flying Discs, is the name given to any apparent anomaly in the sky that isn't identifiable as a known object or phenomenon.

Indiana Jones encountered UFOs of terrestrial, extraterrestrial and interdimensional origin during his lifetime.

Adventures with UFOs

Beings from the "space between spaces" utilized UFOs to travel interdimensionally from their own dimension. After arriving on planet Earth, the interdimensional beings established the legendary city of Akator near Ilha Aramaca, Brazil. In addition, they sparked the development of several ancient human civilizations, such as the Ugha, who honored and worshiped them as gods. Since man's first flights, stories of UFOs simultaneously began, people feeling as if watchers in the skies waited for civilization to reach the proper industrialization level before making themselves known. Others thought maybe UFOs were behind the disappearances of several of the ships lost in the Bermuda Triangle.

In 1883, sightings of UFOs were reported in Zacatecas, Mexico.

During the visits of the interdimensional beings to Earth, a number of their UFOs crashed. Two of these crashed into the territory of the USSR, including the event that would be called the Tunguska explosion in Siberia, Russia, in the year 1908 that occurred by the Tunguska River.

In 1930, the organization called Enterprise Ventures International Limited that sought world domination disguised their aircraft as flying saucers but their scheme was foiled by a group led by American archaeologist Indiana Jones.

Jones was later hired by the USA government for an expedition in 1939 to Odinsland, an iceberg near Greenland which held a trapped Viking longship. Odinsland was also of interest to the Nazis but the iceberg also concealed a UFO which escaped the ice and destroyed the Nazis' submarine before departing the planet.

In 1943, while on a World War II mission on Zile Muri-yo, Haiti to retrieve the Heart of Darkness before the Nazis or the Japanese Imperial Army, Jones reflected that with the way his adventures had gone with crazed experiences, he wouldn't be surprised to look up one day and see a spaceship full of little green men from Mars dogging his heels.

A third interdimensional craft crashed in 1947 (killing its pilot in the process) near Roswell, New Mexico, in the USA. Indiana Jones participated in the investigation, though the true nature of the event was kept from him, and the body of the interdimensional was boxed and hidden away at Hangar 51, a government warehouse in Nevada.

By 1952, a UFO was reportedly seen flying New Jersey's skies. Jones kept the image and sketch of the alleged UFO in his journal. By the 1950s, Jones was skeptical of all the UFOs he had barely seen throughout his life, sardonically taking note that he should take a snapshot of an UFO by making it stay still so he could take a clear photograph as evidence. During the Cold War, Jones privately wondered if maybe the Russians had spotted similar objects. Around this time, a Washington friend of Jones shared with him the sketch for a retro-constructed UFO-like machine the American military had been designing based on parts of Roswell's UFO among other places, which Jones wished to ride once it were done.

In 1957, Jones and his allies discovered that the Crystal Skull of Akator was part of the skull of an interdimensional being whose remains were in Akator. After neutralizing the Ugha with the skull, Jones and his allies managed to enter the Temple of Akator and the chamber in which sat thirteen crystalline skeletons. However, during this time, KGB agent Irina Spalko appeared on the scene with her Soviet soldiers, annihilated the Ugha and snatched the crystal skull from Harold Oxley, one of Jones' friends. She placed it with the rest of its body. However, the temple began to collapse and the UFO around which the temple was built began to activate, pulling the Russians into a portal to the beings' home dimension that was fed by nether forces at the universe's edges nourished by the energy of vibrating atoms, swelling outward along elliptical planes shattering dimensions and consuming all matter in its path, with its heart churning dark energies and matter preparing for what was to come. Jones and his allies (except the traitorous Colonel George McHale, who sacrificed himself and was dragged into the portal) managed to escape from the temple. The UFO rose from Akator, erasing the city and the Ugha in the process and then proceeded to return home.

Behind the scenes

A giant UFO appeared in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull created with CGI for the destruction of Akator sequence.

In real life, there has been no evidence to date that UFOs of alien origin actually exist. On several occasions, there have been rumors and stories that people have seen aliens and UFOs on Earth like the Roswell UFO incident.

During the early development of the fourth Indiana Jones film, George Lucas conceived the idea of an Indy film centered around aliens and UFOs. Jeb Stuart's script Indiana Jones and the Saucermen from Mars featured many UFOs and aliens having a battle against Indiana Jones and his love interest Dr. Elaine McGregor. A script allegedly written by Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade writer Jeffrey Boam sometime after Spring 1995 had the story, according to rumors, centered around the UFO crash of Roswell, New Mexico and maybe combined it with a Soviet plot to establish a missile base on the moon. In Frank Darabont's script Indiana Jones and the City of the Gods, a giant UFO appeared almost at the end of the film, destroying the lost legendary city of Los Dioses (Akator in the final film) and part of the Peruvian jungle, producing a nuclear-like mushroom cloud.

During production, the inter-dimensional portal that opened at the film's climax and sucks up Mac, the Russians and all the artifacts was scripted to be an enormous sinkhole and the ship the aliens departed in was depicted not as the classic UFO it took the form of in the final film, but rather a transparent, bubble-like orb. Both James Rollins' novelization, James Luceno's junior novelization and the Dark Horse Comics' comic book adaptation preserve the original visual intention of the portal and the aliens' exit.

Thinking that plans for a fourth movie had fallen through, former LucasArts employee Hal Barwood, considering ideas for what became Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine, proposed using the Roswell UFO incident as the video game's plot device. However, Lucas vetoed it because he still wanted the idea kept for the eventual release of Kingdom of the Crystal Skull almost a decade later.

Appearances

• Indiana Jones and the Sky Pirates
• Indiana Jones and his Desktop Adventures
• Raiders of the Lost Ark game (Mesa)
• Indiana Jones und das Schiff der Götter
• Indiana Jones and the Army of the Dead (Mentioned only)
• Indiana Jones and the Saucermen from Mars (Cancelled)
• Indiana Jones and the City of the Gods (Cancelled)
• Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
• Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull novel
• Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull junior novel
• Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull comic
• LEGO Indiana Jones 2: The Adventure Continues (Non-canonical appearance)
• LEGO Indiana Jones: Escape from the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull! (Non-canonical appearance)

Sources

• The World of Indiana Jones
• Indiana Jones and the Sky Pirates and Other Tales
• The Lost Journal of Indiana Jones
• Grail Diary (prop replica)

External links

• UFO on Wikipedia