The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones: Volume Two - The War Years Review

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Young Indy grows up - fast - in a world at war in Volume Two

Indiana Jones aficionado, into movies that tell a great story, Movie guru, Star Wars fan of the 1977 Generation

Pros

Mixes learning with entertainment, Good acting, More action, Documentaries are watchable

MAY

2008

)Genesis of the series:

Some time during the pre-production work for 1989's Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, the third feature film in the popular franchise, executive creator George Lucas was asked so many questions about Indy's early years that not only did he and screenwriter Jeffrey Boam create a prologue set in 1912 (with River Phoenix as young Indiana Jones), but he also began thinking about exploring Henry Jones, Junior's childhood, adolescence, and early adulthood in a TV series that would both entertain and educate its target audience of kids, teens, and even young college students.

Lucas eventually came up with 70 story outlines that, if the series survived and thrived in the dodgy world of Nielsen Ratings and fickle audiences, would cover 18 years of the future archaeologist/adventurer's life, starting in 1908 and culminating in 1926, perhaps ending its run with Indy's falling out with his mentor Professor Abner Ravenwood 10 years before the events depicted in Raiders of the Lost Ark,

Lucas and his impressive creative team, which included well-known screenwriters (Frank Darabont, Jonathan Hensleigh, Jonathan Hales, and even Carrie Fisher) and directors (Simon Wincer, Bille August, Vic Armstrong), put together 28 one-hour episodes (45 minutes each, plus commercials) which aired mostly on ABC (with the last few on the USA cable network) over two seasons from March 1992 till July 1994. with unaired episodes edited together as TV movies, as well as four additional Family Channel-exclusive features.

Lucas had wanted to cast River Phoenix to reprise his role of young Indy, but the actor declined, so Sean Patrick Flannery became the teen/young adult incarnation of the Man in the Hat. And in the original network broadcast of the series, Flannery's episodes would alternate with Tween Indy Corey Carrier's, veering back and forth along the timeline.

The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones DVDs

In 2007, Lucasfilm and Paramount Home Entertainment began releasing the remastered and re-edited version of The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles on DVD, eschewing the back-and-forth-across-the-years format of the TV series. The re-edits had already been made in the late 1990s when the series was released on VHS and "tacked on" to the re-release of the Indiana Jones features (which were then labeled Episodes 23, 24, and 25 on the re-jiggered box cover art), but Lucasfilm wanted to clean up the transfers from the original 16 mm film stock and improve some of the transitions for the DVDs. The producers also wanted to release the renamed The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones in advance of the May 22, 2008 premiere of Steven Spielberg's Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.

In October of 2007, Lucasfilm and Paramount issued The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones: Volume One. Also known as Volume One: The Early Years, this set features five "Tween Indy" tales starring Carey Corrier in the title role and two Teen Indy stories (Spring Break Adventure, Love's Sweet Song) which delve into the young proto-hero's spy ring busting adventures in New Jersey, a fateful cross-border jaunt into Mexico, and Indy's idealistic induction into the Belgian Army, with romantic layovers in Dublin and London added in for good measure.

Volume Two: The War Years

When we last saw Indy (Sean Patrick Flannery), he and his Belgian buddy Remy (Ronny Coutteure), they had both joined the Belgian Army in World War I London, with the future Dr. Jones lying about his age and coming up with the nom de guerre "Henri Defense" because America is still officially neutral.

In Chapter 8 - the chapters are all sequential, sort of like Lucas' other serialized franchise, Star Wars - the two friends and comrades-in-arms are first at the Somme's Trenches of Hell, in which they are not only witnesses to the horrors of trench warfare (poison gas and flamethrowers being among them), but then get separated temporarily when Indy gets captured and sent to a notorious maximum security POW camp inside Germany (where one of his fellow detainees is Capt. Charles De Gaulle).

The other seven episodes, each one on its own disc. follows Indy and Remy as they are transferred from one Franco-Belgian unit to the other, sometimes serving as line soldiers/officers in East Africa and the Congo, sometimes as intelligence agents on the fringes of the war. Along the way, Indy crosses paths with historical figures who play a huge role in World War I, among them Mata Hari, T.E. Lawrence - who Indy met in Volume One in My First Adventure - Albert Schweitzer, Raoul Lufberry, and Manfred von Richtofen.

In addition to Trenches of Hell, Indy's World War I experiences are chronicled in the following episodes:

Chapter 9: Demons of Deception (Verdun + Paris 1916)
Chapter 10: Phantom Train of Doom (German East Africa 1916)
Chapter 11: Oganga, the Giver and Taker of Life[German East Africa + Congo 1916)
Chapter 12: Attack of the Hawkmen (Ravanelle + Alhorn, Germany 1917)
Chapter 13: Adventures in the Secret Service (Austria + Petrograd 1917)
Chapter 14: Espionage Escapades (Barcelona + Prague 1917)
Chapter 15: Daredevils of the Desert (Palestine 1917)

Assets: Although most of these "features" still consist of several aired and sometimes unaired original series episodes (with the exception of Attack of the Hawkmen, which aired as a TV-movie on the Family Channel), the editing by T.M. Christopher (originally done for the VHS releases) is pretty good, giving the 90 minute-long "movies" a feature-film feel even though the credits often tell you who wrote and directed each half. The transitions seem a bit more organic and flow naturally.

The acting, of course, is very good. Flannery and Coutteure have the familiar Indy-sidekick act down pat, and their friendship seems real as it evolves and survives the trials and tribulations as they go from one battlefield situation to the next with realistic emotional ups and downs. In some ways, watching Indy and Remy is like watching Abbott and Costello with a serious undertone to their adventures and misadventures.

Then, of course, there's the mix of education and entertainment that Lucas deliberately concocted; not only does Indy interact with real-life historical figures, but Lucasfilm produced 25 short documentaries that delve into the real-life aspects of The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones - Volume Two: The War Years. Whether it's a quick biography of Mata Hari or an overview of aerial warfare in World War I, the documentaries are not only informative without being dry, but - along with the features - they ought to be a part of any savvy social studies or history teacher's curriculum.

Final Thoughts: Although not all of Henri Defense's wartime exploits appear here - the final months of World War I and Indy's pre-University of Chicago experiences are in Volume Three: The Years of Change, the second box set of The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones not only add more depth to Harrison Ford's iconic Man With the Hat persona, but it's also a wonderful treasure trove of entertainment and information worth seeking out.

Last edited on May 15, 2008