CS Weekly Archive > The Big Picture > 5/23/08

Excavating the Archaeologist:
The Development of Indiana Jones

By jason davis

From the subject of a 1977 Hawaiian beach conversation to a pop culture icon starring in his highly anticipated fourth feature film, Indiana Jones has proved a versatile hero for a franchise now into its third decade. This week, CS Weekly uncovers the history of the character and charts the substantial developments wrought upon him with each adventure.

Spoilers follow, so if you haven't seen the three Indiana Jones movies released in the 1980s, please watch them before you read any further.

The story goes that George Lucas introduced Steven Spielberg to Indiana Jones while Lucas was in Hawaii, eluding the theatrical opening of Star Wars. Spielberg wanted to direct a film in the vein of the James Bond franchise, and Lucas supplied him with the American equivalent—a mercenary adventurer who womanized, battled Nazis, and recovered the most extraordinary of archaeological relics. Illustrator Jim Steranko would create the character's memorable fedora-and-flight-jacket silhouette, and writer Lawrence Kasdan would attend multiple meetings with Spielberg and Lucas to turn their various notions into a screenplay.

At the suggestion of Lucas' friend, filmmaker Philip Kaufman—who worked briefly on the concept -- then-named Indiana Smith's first adventure would find him pursuing the lost Ark of the Covenant. After a Spielberg veto changed the surname "Smith" to the more familiar "Jones," it would seem that a cinematic icon had taken form… or had he? Between Raiders of the Lost Ark in 1981 and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade eight years later, the character, as well as the execution of the films themselves, would undergo radical revisions that would transform the fallible anti-hero into a superhuman figure on par with larger-than-life characters like the aforementioned James Bond.

The first stage of Indy's evolution occurred before audiences ever got a glimpse at the adventurous archaeologist. As Creative Screenwriting's Senior Editor Jeff Goldsmith points out in the May/June issue, Lawrence Kasdan's Raiders script underwent significant revision before Harrison Ford stepped in front of the camera as Jones. As late as the third draft in August of 1979, the Indiana Jones on the page is a far cry what we know today. Rather than disarming the treacherous Peruvian Barranca (Vic Tablian) in the opening sequence, Indy kills the traitor with an adept twitch of his trademark bullwhip. Kasdan gives the character a beat of remorse, but the killing of Barranca is only the tip of the iceberg. This Indiana Jones' womanizing steps over the line.

When Indy is reunited with Marion Ravenwood (Karen Allen) early in the film, the two recall the romance that sundered Indy's friendship with her father, Abner. "I was a child," she protests, but only in the script does that line, and the consequent math, suggest that Marion actually was a child, and that Indiana Jones could be convicted of statutory rape. It's been said that Spielberg originally wanted the character to be even more unsavory and collegiate, and Jones having an affair with a 15-year-old certainly punches that ticket. The fact that Marion then reveals that she became a prostitute before procuring her bar only deepens the darkness of the scenario.

The excision of these elements and the introduction of humorous beats not present in the script -- Indy shooting the Arab swordsman, the unintentionally painful love scene between Indy and Marion aboard the Bantu Wind, and Indy's difficulty in securing a well-tailored Nazi uniform—lightens the film's tone and establishs the playful blend of action and comedy that will reach its apex in the third installment. Despite these touches, Raiders of the Lost Ark keeps its protagonist firmly rooted in realism. He may be extremely lucky, but in this movie, Indiana Jones is a fallible human being.

How does he save the Ark of the Covenant from the Nazis? He doesn't. He just has the good sense to close his eyes and let the wrath of God do all the heavy lifting. Indy just finds the sacred chest, loses it, recovers it, loses it again, threatens to destroy it, then chickens out and surrenders. Unlike Rocky Balboa, he doesn't even really go the distance with the bad guys—God just happens to be on his side. Contrast this to the climax of 1984's Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, where our hero unleashes the somewhat vague power of the Sankara Stones to send Mola Ram (Amrish Puri), high priest of the evil Thugee cult, plummeting to his (forgive me) doom. Sure, it's never made clear exactly what the three stones do—aside from providing good fortune to the Indian village from which one was stolen—but Indy seems to know the magic words that activate them.

This brings up a quandary that none of the films ever address. Clearly, Indy has witnessed the work of the Ark and conjured the powers of the Sankara, and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade sees him saving his father with a sip from the cup of Christ. Three religions provide the MacGuffins for these films. In each case, Indy witnesses their supernatural power, but he never seems fazed by these brushes with the unknown. His knowledge of each object can be attributed to his education, and one might surmise that Henry Jones, Sr. (Sean Connery), a devout seeker of the Holy Grail, would have raised his son in a Christian faith, but the films never provide any insight into the principle character's personal beliefs.

The closest thing to a creed we get is "fortune and glory" in Temple. The movie, set one year before Raiders, opens in Shanghai, where Indy attempts to trade the remains of an ancient Chinese emperor for an extremely large diamond. When he's double-crossed by his client Lao Che (Roy Chiao), Indy has no problem threatening the life of Che's vocalist girlfriend Willie Scott (Kate Capshaw). Though Indy could be bluffing, the darker tone of Willard Huyck and Gloria Katz's screenplay could easily allow Indy to make good on his threats. Indeed, the film finds our hero at his most villainous as he succumbs to the cult of Kali and must be brought back to his senses by his 11-year-old sidekick, "Short Round" (Ke Huy Kwan). Where, one might ask, did Indy acquire such an associate? He caught him picking his pocket. What happened to Short Round in the intervening year between the Indian adventure and Jones' search for the Ark? Good question, but there's no answer. Though the character never recurs, he adds another perspective on Indy by casting the archaeologist as a father figure. It's Short Round's love of his paternal surrogate that restores Indy to his senses, just as Indy's own estranged father will do in the following feature.

Jeffrey Boam's screenplay for Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade is simultaneously the most reductive and emotionally charged episode in the original trilogy. On one hand, the movie banishes the realism with which Raiders imbued Indy and metamorphoses the character into an archetype. The process begins with the movie's opening, wherein a 13-year-old Indy (River Phoenix) is transformed from a civic-minded Boy Scout into the Indiana Jones we know in the course of an afternoon. Discovering a sinister dig while on an outing in Utah, Jones steals the Cross of Coronado from a gang of mercenary fortune hunters with the expressed purpose of donating it to a museum. During the chase that follows, Indy develops his intense fear of snakes (he's happily handled one moments earlier), his affinity for the bullwhip (giving him Ford's famous chin scar), a predilection for suicidal methods to secure his goal (the train was certainly a cinematic escape, but hardly a practical one), and even the fedora bestowed upon him by the rugged leader (Richard Young) of the excavation. If only everyone's persona could be so quickly defined…

Though amusing, this introductory sequence is indicative of Boam's treatment of the character. Everyone knows that Indiana Jones never loses his hat. In fact, that bit of trivia is so ingrained in viewers' minds that Last Crusade's teaser trailer featured Ford stapling the hat to his head after it repeatedly falls off during a scene set on horseback. It's common knowledge that Indy is never sans headgear. Take a look back at the third act of Raiders. Indy ditches the hat before swimming to the Nazi submarine that seizes the Ark. That fedora is sitting somewhere in the Bantu Wind, likely atop the head of a stylish African pirate. Last Crusade would suggest that the hat was given to the teenaged Indy by the man who recovered the cross, but this is a bit of retroactive mythologizing on behalf of Crusade's script. It's evidence of Indiana Jones as a caricature -- he's the hero who never loses his hat rather than a bumbling adventurer who muddles through by the grace of God.

While Last Crusade's script simplifies Indy from a fully fledged character to a short-handed cinematic icon, the third film still builds upon the emotional life established in the earlier films. We know Indy loved Marion and Short Round, but the onscreen introduction of Henry Jones, Sr. brings the character a new level of emotional depth. The same sequence that robs a young Indy of his realism by defining his character in an afternoon also gives us a well-crafted insight into another aspect of the hero's psychology. Indy's approach to "archaeology" (let's be fair to folks like Howard Carter and deploy the quotation marks) is clearly a reaction to his father's studious approach to his work. Indy is all action because his dad favors contemplation.

The Last Crusade's MacGuffin, the Holy Grail, is easily the weakest of the bunch, but as a metaphor for Indy's reunion with his father, it succeeds as the strongest on an emotional level. The cup's power of restoration is the driving force of both text and subtext and, as femme fatale actress Alison Doody points out in a DVD interview, her role as Indy's love interest was usurped by the father-and-son love story that does more to define the character of Indiana Jones than all the foregoing adventures put together. In Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, we see an origin story far more effective than the cartoonish opening sequence. We see a man who believes very much what his father has taught him, yet acts out the rejection of that philosophy in the means by which he pursues it. The dichotomous film defines the character for the unsophisticated viewer who needs something solid to grab onto while also servicing the audience that can decode the subtleties hidden within the script.

In any case, the Indiana Jones who rides off alongside his father at the end of the trilogy is a long way from the rogue lurking in the pages of Kasdan's early drafts. The character would undergo further revisions in the ABC series The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles before returning to the big screen this weekend in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, but as the character remarks in Raiders, "It's not the years… it's the mileage."

Jason Davis has been the DVD Manager for CS Weekly, a contributing editor for Creative Screenwriting Magazine, and has written for Cinescape.com, MSN.com, and created the TV series Studio 13, which ran on Lorne Michaels' Burly TV network. He lives in the small space left over by his ever-expanding library of books, movies, and music.

Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Raiders of the Lost Ark
courtesy Paramount Home Video

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