The Adventures of Indiana Jones (Raiders of the Lost Ark/ Temple of Doom/ Last Crusade) - Widescreen Edition Review

In the early 1970s, while a young director named George Lucas was wondering what project he'd do after the unexpected success of his nostalgia-laced teen comedy American Graffiti (1973), he was considering two movie concepts based on the popular "serials" shown in theaters during the 1930s and '40s and were later staples of "kidvid" TV during the 1950s.

 One of them was a space-opera loosely inspired not only by the Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers in the 25th Century Saturday afternoon matinee serials that young George had seen as a child growing up in Modesto, California, but also Errol Flynn pirate swashbucklers, Westerns, war movies, and Akira Kurosawa's The Hidden Fortress; this would evolve into the six-film Star Wars saga.

 At the same time, though, Lucas was also conceiving a more down-to-Earth, set-before-World War II adventure centered on a soldier-of-fortune/archaeologist named, initially, "Indiana Smith." Modeled after several Humphrey Bogart characters, Indy Smith would scour the globe for religious artifacts endowed with supernatural properties, often facing off against Nazis and other shady characters in his perilous quests for "fortune and glory."

 As most movie fans know, Star Wars and its first sequel, The Empire Strikes Back, were made before 1981's Raiders of the Lost Ark, but the success of the former made the existence of Lucas' "Man in the Hat" possible.

 Indeed, it was during the post-release hoopla which surrounded Star Wars in mid-1977 that Lucas had a fateful discussion with his friend Steven Spielberg while the two filmmakers were on vacation in Hawaii.

As Spielberg notes in the documentary which appears in the Bonus Disc of The Adventures of Indiana Jones box set, he was telling Lucas that one of his dream projects was to someday make a James Bond movie.

Lucas, who had been looking for a film in which he could collaborate with Spielberg, a rising star in the Hollywood firmament because of Jaws and Close Encounters of the Third Kind, listened attentively and then said, "Wait, I have something even better."  And there, on a Hawaiian beach over 30 years ago, the two young filmmakers sketched out the outlines for what would be the first of four films centering around a new (and renamed) iconic hero, Indiana Jones.

 Although Harrison Ford wasn't Lucas' first choice ("I didn't want him to be my Bobby De Niro," he says, referring to the actor's appearances in American Graffiti and Star Wars), he won the rights to the role, the snapbrim fedora, the bullwhip, and the Indiana Jones persona when CBS refused to temporarily release Tom Selleck from "Magnum, P.I." - even though the head of the network was a personal friend of Steven Spielberg.  Selleck's loss, of course, was Ford's truly starmaking role; as the dashing adventurer/archaeologist in search of the lost Ark of the Covenant, the actor proved that he could break free from the mold of Han Solo and carry a major picture on his own as a leading man.

With their 1930s-serials' sensibility and 1980s-filmmaking techniques, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade  took audiences along on cliff-hanging thrill-rides and spooky supernatural experiences as Indy went on dangerous quests for "rare antiquities" such as the Lost Ark, the Sankara Stones, and the Holy Grail, with a different "Indy Girl" at his side and with such nasty obstacles as booby-trapped temples, tombs full of snakes, secret chambers crawling with bugs, and sewers creeping with rats.  Villains often dogged Indy's tracks, ranging from an overly-ambitious French rival named Belloq, the murderous cult leader Mola Ram, and, in two of the films, dastardly Nazis and their willing conspirators.

 The films did extremely well at the box office, and when they were released several times during the VCR Era (1984-1999) in VHS tape, they were among Paramount Home Video's biggest hits, even though most tapes were usually of the prevalent full-screen variety.

 The Adventures of Indiana Jones (Raiders of the Lost Ark/ Temple of Doom/ Last Crusade) - Widescreen Edition box set, which is soon to be supplanted by a new one in conjunction with the premiere of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull has been around for almost five years and still, despite the passage of time, selling quite well. (It is, as of this writing, currently ranked #20 in sales in the Movies and TV Shows category at Amazon.com.)  Along with a Bonus Material disc with a full-length "making of the original trilogy" documentary and several featurettes, the set includes the first DVD releases of:

Raiders of the Lost Ark, a.k.a. Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark  (1981), in which Indy is hired by Army Intelligence to go on a globe-trotting quest to find the Lost Ark of the Covenant before the Nazis do.  Witty, fast-paced, and well-written by Lawrence Kasdan, this is usually considered by Indy fans to be the best of the series.

Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984), a very dark-toned and scary prequel set one year before Raiders of the Lost Ark, in which our favorite professor of archaeology and "obtainer of rare antiquities" faces off against the deadly Thuggee cult led by Mola Ram in search of a set of magical Sankara stones and to free an Indian village's children from slavery.

Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989): Because Steven Spielberg, who has directed all four of the movies in the series, had previously wanted to direct a Bond film, it's perhaps appropriate that the actor chosen to play Indiana Jones' father was none other than the original Bond, Sean Connery.  Set two years after Raiders and featuring a prologue with River Phoenix as a 13-year-old Indy, Last Crusade melds a classic Indiana Jones caper (he must find the Holy Grail before the dastardly Nazis do) and a touching, funny, and exhilirating father-and-son/"origins of" story in which we learn why Indy wears the jacket and fedora, where he got his "chin scar," why he has his phobia of snakes, and his real name.

With great casts, amazing stunts and effects, thrilling scores by John Williams, and deft directing by Spielberg, these three films set the benchmark for action-adventure films in the 1980s, and their popularity still resonates more than 20 years after the premiere of Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Although Paramount Home Entertainment and Lucasfilm are going to issue Special Editions of the first three Indy films on Blu-ray and DVD (both individually and in a new four-disc box set), the 2003 The Adventures of Indiana Jones box set's discs are still top-notch. Restored to their theatrical widescreen format (although for pan-and-scan fans, there's a Full Screen set, as well), they have clearer pictures, a good sound mix, and astonishing animated menus. 

Unlike Universal's 20th Anniversary release of E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial, no changes were made to the content or visual effects of the 1980s-era Indy films. For instance, although the DVD cover artwork of Raiders of the Lost Ark has the "Indiana Jones and the..." prefix to match the other two movies' titles, the main title sequence from 1981 remains unaltered.  Ditto for the special effects sequences of all three films but particularly in Raiders: there are no computer generated imagery (CGI) re-edits as in both the 2002 re-release of E.T. and the 2004 DVDs of the Classic Star Wars Trilogy.  If you look closely and are nitpicky about such things, you're bound to see matte lines, rotoscoping, and miniature effects and tell them apart from live-action shots.

Finally, there is no audio commentary by George Lucas and/or Steven Spielberg, but no DVD of a Spielberg film has that feature. It's something Spielberg apparently hates doing and it's not really necessary, even for students of film. I have discovered that director's commentary is worthwhile if the director and others involved in the track actually have something meaningful to say.   (Also, the Bonus Disc in the The Adventures of Indiana Jones box set has a long documentary and several "featurettes" in which the director discusses many aspects of the creative process that goes into making an Indiana Jones film, which negates the need for a commentary track.)

 For fans who first saw the Indy films in theaters in the 1980s, as well as for new fans who'll see the now-gray-haired "obtainer of rare antiquities" on the big screen for the first time in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull this spring, The Adventures of Indiana Jones is a good addition to their DVD collections.