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The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones: Volume One Review
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Although Lucas' best-known "origins of" prequel project is the Anakin Skywalker half of the Star Wars saga, it's worth noting that his more Earthbound pop-culture icon, Indiana Jones, also inspired an ambitious but short-lived television series, The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles, which aired for two seasons on the ABC television network from 1992 to 1994.
Lucas' original vision not only included an outline for a 70-episode, four-season run in which the life and times of Henry Jones, Jr. could be explored from his early childhood to his first post-college adventures as an archaeologist, but talks were underway with River Phoenix to reprise the part of young Indy, a role he originally played in Steven Spielberg's Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. Phoenix declined, saying he didn't want to go back to working in television.
Undeterred by this development, Lucas and his Lucasfilm Ltd. team hired Sean Patrick Flannery to take the pivotal role of the future archaeologist/adventurer before his big-screen appearances in Raiders of the Lost Ark, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, and the upcoming Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. (For 10 episodes set before Indy's teen years, Corey Carrier was cast as the precocious "Junior.")
The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles, which was personally overseen by Lucas and executed by producers, writers, editors, and designers who would later be involved in the making of the Star Wars prequels, was a very expensive and ambitious project. Though some of it was shot in Hollywood sound stages, much of the series was shot on location in various countries on several different continents, ranging from Austria to Beijing and back to the United States, with stops in North Africa, Egypt, India, and Russia along the way.
The series also was a training ground for Industrial Light and Magic's computer graphics crew; to recreate early 20th Century locales and enhance a TV series' more modest budgets, ILM techies used digital tools to create huge armies or make Paris look as it appeared during World War I without having to hire thousands of extras or build expensive sets
Finally, Lucas hired many talented writers and directors, including Jonathan Hensleigh, Jonathan Hales, Frank Darabont, Simon Wincer, Bille August, and Carl Schultz, to bring his vision of blending entertainment with some enlightenment; in each episode, viewers would not only see how Indy acquired all the skills used by his Harrison Ford incarnation (his ability to speak various languages, his knowledge of other cultures, and his fighting abilities), but also "meet" real-life historical figures who shaped the major events of the early 20th Century.
Premiering three years after Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, the series started on a positive note. The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles got decent but not spectacular ratings during its first season, but either ABC didn't find a good time slot for the show or the viewers didn't like the mix of history lessons and entertainment, and Chronicles faded off the air with just 31 aired episodes, not even half of Lucas' hoped-for 70-show-run. (Sadly, not even a rare TV appearance by Harrison Ford as 50-year-old Indy could save the series from cancellation.)
Over the years, Lucasfilm managed to keep the young Indy series in home-video stasis, so to speak. In the late 1990s, Paramount Home Video re-released the Chronicles in tandem with re-issues of the feature films, going as far as giving the Harrison Ford flicks "chapter numbers" on the boxes' spines to make them fit into the series' timeline.
Additionally, Lucas and his team of editors took various episodes (some never aired) and spliced chronologically-close stories to make feature-length direct to video "movies" such as Young Indiana Jones and the Attack of the Hawkmen and Young Indiana Jones and the Treasure of the Peacock's Eye.
In the fall of 2007, Lucasfilm, Amblin Entertainment, and Paramount Home Video/CBS DVD released The Adentures of Young Indiana Jones - Volume One, a 12-disc collection of seven "movies," which are really two re-edited episodes tied somewhat together, and supplementary documentaries, plus the TV-movie Travels With Father and the direct-to-video compilation "feature" Spring Break Adventure.
Differences Between the 1990s Episodes and the 2007-2008 "Adventures" DVDs:
Although its content is taken from the original TV series, this box set is not Season 1 of The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles, so if you are a fan of the show and are hoping to get it as it originally aired, put the thought out of your mind right now.
Gone, for instance, is the "hopscotch" nature of the original show, which eschewed a purely chronological approach and alternated between the pre-teen Indy (Carrier) and teen Indy (Flannery). When the show aired in the early 1990s, one episode would be set, say, in 1908 Egypt, while the next would show events taking place 10 years later.
The seven "mini-movies" here depict events that take place during an eight-year span along the Indy timeline, starting with My First Adventure (1908) and ending with Love's Sweet Song (1916).
Also gone are the "Old Indy" bookends starring George Hall as a 93-year-old Henry Jones, Jr. Not a major loss for the most part, but there were a few of the episodes where the short intros and codas did add emotional impact to the series. New viewers won't mind, but fans of the Chronicles may be disappointed by the deletion of the scenes with Old Indy.
Assets:
What does remain, though, is the series' ambitious scope and Lucas' vision of mixing old fashioned storytelling, family drama, and a little knowledge by taking viewers along as Indy follows his father, Prof. Henry Jones, Sr. (Lloyd Owen) and his mother Anna (Ruth de Sosa) on a globe-spanning lecture tour.
The acting is good, too, with the charismatic and dashing Flannery stepping into the Young Indy role in most of the episodes, and the younger Corey Carrier does a great job at capturing the "tween Indy" as both reluctant student to his formidable English tutor, Miss Helen Seymour (Margaret Tyzack) and a budding adventurer with a penchant for getting into trouble.
Liabilities:
Thankfully, there are only a few issues worth mentioning, but they do exist. As noted earlier, fans of the original series won't be pleased to know that the episodes have now been spliced together to make 90-minute-long "movies." Most of the time, the edits have been done so well that we don't notice the spliced-together nature of each Indy adventure, but in My First Adventure there is an abrupt storytelling "switching of gears" as one plot point involving an unresolved mystery set in Egypt gives way to a totally unrelated tale that takes place in Tangiers (which is essentially a Corey Carrier episode filmed late in the series' production run and never aired, which explains why "tween" Indy looks much older than in the Egypt half....) Some viewers will find this jarring at the very least, and awfully confusing at times, but if they stick to the entire three sets, they will see that there is a noticeable continuity that's both consistent and realistic.Content Summary:
The DVDs in this first of three sets contain:
Seven feature-length mini movies: My First Adventure, Passion for Life, The Perils of Cupid, Travels With Father, Journey of Radiance, Spring Break Adventure, Love's Sweet Song
38 companion documentaries
Historical overview
Interactive game
Interactive timeline
Final Thoughts: Although the four feature films directed by Steven Spielberg are the heart and soul of the Indiana Jones mythos, fans will still enjoy this entertaining (if far from perfect) examination of young Indy's formative years, particularly if they're interested in the complex sequence of events hinted at in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. And though much of the action-packed adventures will appear in Volumes Two and Three, there are hints of the future action-hero icon even in these more innocent "early years" episodes.
The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones: Volume One is recommended by Fardreamer
Comments about Fardreamer’s Review
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