The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones: Volume Three - The Years of Change Review

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Young Indy loses his innocence in 'The Years of Change'

character-lover, Indiana Jones aficionado, movie lover, Long-time reviewer, a movie buff

Pros

Mix of action, humor, and chills, Harrison Ford is in one chapter!, Edutainment value

MAY

2008

Although the critically-acclaimed television series The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles had a lot going for it, including a set of distinguished screenwriters, a pool of talented directors, and production values that still rival some of today's feature films, George Lucas' ambitious hybrid of action-adventure prequel and history lesson failed to attract a large enough viewing audience for ABC to keep it on the air for more than two seasons.

Perhaps audiences were put off by Lucasfilm's decision to not present the coming-of-age years of the world's favorite archaeologist/adventurer in a linear fashion; instead, especially during the first season in 1992, the episodes alternated between a 'tween Indy (Corey Carrier) and teen/young adult Indy (Sean Patrick Flannery) and would hopscotch across the years and locales. One week, Indy would be romancing Mata Hari in 1916 Paris, and the next he'd be a 10-year-old in Peking while on a global lecture tour with his father, Prof. Henry Jones, Sr., his stern-but-loving tutor, Miss Seymour, and his mother Anna. It was an interesting technique that had worked well in the film series, but it probably confused many viewers, and confusion is not conducive to retaining a TV audience.

Whether it was the whipsawing from one point in the timeline to another or the fact that perhaps the Emmy-winning series' "edutainment" formula of combining education and entertainment might have been too good for TV, the series started out with decent but not great ratings, then slowly sank in the Nielsen ratings over the span of two seasons. Not even a great cameo by the "real" Indiana Jones (Harrison Ford) in the "bookends" for The Mystery of the Blues or two moves to cable networks USA and Fox Family Channel could save the show from cancellation.

From "Chronicles" to "Adventures"

Although Lucasfilm and Paramount Home Entertainment tried once to release the now-renamed series on VHS videocassettes in the late 1990s, only half of the show's content - including several unaired episodes - made it to store shelves before Paramount aborted the project to release every Indiana Jones-related story (including the three Spielberg-directed features then in existence) as one coherent narrative. Indeed, it wasn't until after Lucas and producer Rick McCallum finished work on Star Wars-Episode III: Revenge of the Sith that Lucasfilm Ltd. began preparing the three Volumes of The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones for release on the DVD format.

In anticipation of the premiere of the long-awaited fourth feature film, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull in May of 2008, Lucasfilm, Paramount Home Entertainment, and CBS Home Entertainment have released the re-edited, remastered, and chronologically correct versions of The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones in three separate box sets.

Volume One, a.k.a. Volume One - The Early Years covers the period between 1908 and 1916 and focuses mainly - but not exclusively - on Indy's first glimpses at the world as he accompanies his dad and mom on an around-the-world lecture tour. Here Indy encounters such notables as Picasso, Norman Rockwell, Teddy Roosevelt, T.E. Lawrence, Frederick Selous, and Archduke Franz-Ferdinand of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. falls in love several times (yes, even as a child!), and begins asserting his independence as a young teenager.

The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones: Volume Two - The War Years takes up the story as Indy (using the assumed name "Henri Defense") and his Belgian friend Remy (Ronny Coutteure) criss-cross Europe and Africa as enlisted men, then junior officers in the Belgian Army. Here we see Indy go from idealistic soldier to somewhat talented but still naive spy for the Allies. and in several episodes he's young Man in the Hat material as he crosses paths with Mata Hari, Vladimir Lenin, Franz Kafka, Albert Schweitzer, and even the Red Baron himself, Manfred von Ritchofen.

The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones: Volume Three - The Years of Change

The final set of seven feature-length adventures begins with Chapter 16,Tales of Innocence, a serio-comic story that starts with a humorous rivalry between a young Ernest Hemingway (Jay Underwood) and Indy over a gorgeous Italian lass, then segues into a Beau Geste-like espionage tale involving the French Foreign Legion, Arab insurrectionists and German plots in Morocco. It's a pretty solid combination of stories and some of the comedic bits in the Northern Italy half are pretty funny.

The Istambul/Transylvania stories are, I think, the darkest in the entire series, since they strongly hint at why Indy never romantically commits to one woman. The Transylvania interlude, interestingly, is the only segment that contains two trademarks of the big-screen features, i.e., elements of the supernatural and a ewww, yuck sequence which is definitely not for the squeamish.

Indy-and-Remy fans get one last "buddy" picture adventure in Treasure of the Peacock's Eye, which sends the now-discharged army vets on a quest for a legendary diamond supposedly owned by Alexander the Great. If the series had lasted as long as Lucas planned, the diamond - which will finally appear in Temple of Doom - would have been a lingering "quest item" for Indy. Here, though, its pursuit nearly destroys the friendship between Indy and Remy.

The Winds of Change is perhaps one of the most important historical lessons, particularly because it's in this chapter where Indy realizes that his war service may have been for naught as he sees what goes on in the Versailles Peace Conference, with England and France's cynical leaders outmaneuvering the naive idealism of President Woodrow Wilson and planting the seeds of almost every major conflict from 1918 to the present day.

On a personal note, the Princeton half is the chapter that shows how the rift between Henry and Indy widened, partly because of the younger Jones' involvement in the war, and partly because of his post-war choices.

You left just when you were becoming interesting. - Prof. Henry Jones, Sr, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade

For Indy fans, the big draw will be Chapter 20, which is the one in which Harrison Ford (then filming Andrew Davis' The Fugitive) reprises his role of the Man in the Hat for the introduction and coda to the Jazz Age/Prohibition-era The Mystery of the Blues, in which the archaeology major becomes enamored with jazz and gets entangled with various Chicago mobsters, including a young Al Capone. (This is also the sole episode of the series which uses John Williams' Raiders' March in the score; it's heard during the 50-year-old Indy's sequences.)

The final two chapters are lighter in nature and are tied to Indy's brief career in show business, with a hilariously disastrous stint on Broadway in The Scandal of 1920 and a double-bill of movie-making fiascos and thrills in The Hollywood Follies. Indy not only gets into trouble romantically, but he mingles and collaborates with George Gershwin, Erich von Stronheim, and John Ford.

The Content:

The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones: Volume Three - The Years of Change includes the last seven chapters of the series:

Chapter 16: Tales of Innocence (Northern Italy + Morocco 1917)
Chapter 17: Masks of Evil (Transylvania + Istanbul 1918)
Chapter 18: Treasure of the Peacock's Eye (London/Egypt + South Pacific 1919)
Chapter 19: Winds of Change (Paris + Princeton 1919)
Chapter 20: The Mystery of the Blues (Chicago 1920)
Chapter 21: The Scandal of 1920 (New York 1920)
Chapter 22: The Hollywood Follies (Hollywood 1920)

This 10-disc set contains not only seven discs with the Young Indy movies, but three Special Features DVDs loaded with documentaries, an interactive timeline, a PC game, and a historical lecture ("New Gods From Old").

Additionally, five of the seven "movie" DVDs contain at least three documentaries about the events and historical figures that shaped the life of the fictional Indiana Jones. The more-than-30 documentaries are 20 to 30 minutes in length, and offer varying perspectives and insights about, say, President Woodrow Wilson, Paul Robeson, the Treaty of Versailles, and, interestingly, Count Vlad Tepes, a.k.a. Dracula.

Final Thoughts:

The nice thing about the whole Adventures of Young Indiana Jones endeavor, beyond the obvious assets of good writing, superb production values, good music, and fine performances, is the fact that there's a sense of realistic continuity that flows naturally. It was there in the original TV series, but since the features are presented in chronological order, it's easier to follow the adventures, misadventures, and heartaches of Henry Jones, Junior's life before he became the hero audiences first encountered in Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Another thing I enjoy about all the sets is that they keep the spirit of the movies alive while not having to depend on the Saturday matinee serials approach of the Spielberg-directed films. Because different writers and directors worked on the series and cable television movies, each of the seven "features" has a style and thematic content of its own, ranging from comic farce in the first half of Tales of Innocence, horror in Masks of Evil, serious reflections on the nature of geopolitics in Winds of Change, and even anger, sadness and regret.

Finally, the coolest thing about the three sets is the fact that not only do we get to see that "before the world discovered Indiana, Indiana discovered the world" as a youth, but there was a really good motive in Lucas' part when he decided to mix a little knowledge with the entertainment and excitement expected of an Indy prequel series. The fact that Lucasfilm spent five years on the 94 documentaries for the entire collection speaks volumes about Lucas' true character; he looks beyond the profit motive and gives viewers exactly what Indy's dad seeks throughout his life...enlightenment and illumination.

Last edited on May 16, 2008