The third movie in the Indiana Jones franchise is titled Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. In 1989, the film won one Oscar for Best Effects in Sound Effects Editing (Ben Burtt, Richard Hymns). It was nominated for two more: Best Sound (Ben Burtt, Gary Summers, Shawn Murphy, Tony Dawe) and Best Music-Original Score (John Williams). It accumulated a total of 8 wins from 1990-2015. In 2015, George Lucas of Lucasfilm won the award for Highest Box-Office Gross for a Screenwriter for his work on the Star Wars and Indiana Jones franchises. Speaking of George Lucas, he created the Indiana Jones character as a tribute to the heroes of his favorite matinée series of the 1930s. He was also equally inspired by the real-life Indiana Jones of the 20th century: Hiram Bingham, Roy Chapman Andrews, and Sir Leonard Woolley. Like the other Indiana Jones movies, The Last Crusade was directed by superstar Steven Spielberg. He, surprisingly, was initially unimpressed with the original script. Upon Spielberg's suggestion to add the role of Jones's father, Henry Jones Senior, as an extended metaphor in Indiana's search for the Holy Grail. The movie's filming was more diverse than the first movie of the franchise, taking place in the Tabernas Desert in Spain's Almería province, Cabo de Gata-Níjar Natural Park, and at Bürresheim Castle in West Germany and Elstree Studios in Borehamwood, England. The film was also shot at North Weald Airfield and Stowe School, Stowe, Buckinghamshire.
It is rated at a comfortable 150 in the IMDb Top 250 movies list, with Harrison Ford returning in the title role, while Sean Connery portrays his father. Other cast members include Alison Doody, Denholm Elliott, Julian Glover, the late River Phoenix, and John Rhys-Davies. In the film, set in 1938, Indiana searches for his father, a medieval archaeology scholar and renowned professor. The latter has been captured by Nazis while on a journey to find the mythical Holy Grail. If you've watched the movie, you know that the Joneses are about as similar as fire and ice. So, how does the film present different aspects of masculinity, and is Henry Jones's "manliness" ever questioned?
Indiana Jones is the poster child for all things manly: leather jacket, fedora, bullwhip, flirty, educated, rugged, and witty. His father, on the other hand, is more classic. He's bookish, refined, sports a bow tie/waistcoat combination, a tweed hat, and a delicate pair of spectacles. Where Indiana is impulsive, Henry's logical. Indiana makes it up as he goes, while Henry would prefer to read a book about it first. Throughout the film, Indiana is weighed down by Henry's inexperience with active fieldwork; however, Henry does whatever he can to alleviate pressure from Indiana's shoulders. Unfortunately, they get caught, Henry gets shot, which puts Indiana in a world of pain retrieving the Grail from the cave and letting Henry drink out of it. These two are not the only male characters in the movie. In fact, it's harder to find female characters. The only female character is a Nazi. Alongside rugged Indiana and bookish Henry, there's the lost Marcus Brody (my favorite character), the rather sadistic Walter Donovan, the frail old knight, and Sallah. Sallah's another kind of masculine that I just can't find an adjective for. Through the writing and characterization of these different men, you can see that they are not portrayed as "less masculine" just because they cannot flaunt the bullwhip as Indiana can.
Indiana and Henry's journey to find the Holy Grail is a winding allegory for a man who wants to repair the jagged relationship with his father. At the very beginning of the movie, we see a young Indiana Jones (River Phoenix) grab a golden crucifix belonging to Francisco Vázquez de Coronado and steal it from cave robbers, hoping to donate it to a museum. When he gets home to his father to show him his great discovery, Henry dismisses him, telling him to count to twenty in Greek. While this is happening, the cave robbers and the sheriff find Indiana and give him the crucifix back. This was the introduction to their rocky relationship. Indiana is grown up in the next scene and finally gets the crucifix back from the thieves and donates it to the museum. This is the first indication that Indiana is ready to "take the next step" to recover his father's relationship. The journey Indiana takes to find Henry shows that Henry was most likely the reason that Indiana got into archaeology in the first place. The passion is translated when Indiana saves Henry from the Nazis and again in Petra when Henry is shot by Donovan.
In conclusion, Henry is not like Indiana. He takes his time, reads, and carries an umbrella in the middle of the desert. This makes him a liability to Indiana, which Henry is aware of. To make up for it, he puts his smarts to good use, like in the scene where they run away from the Nazis. The plane is coming right for them, threatening to kill them on a beach where there are seagulls. Using his umbrella, Henry scares the seagulls towards the plane, making it crash into a mountain. That thought process was far more effective than Indiana's, which was either "run" or "die." Therefore, throughout the movie, his masculinity is never questioned, showing the audience that there is no "right" way to be masculine. In my opinion, Indiana's representation of masculinity is outdated while Henry's academic approach isn't. The audience needs to understand now, in today's day and age, that this movie is telling them that there is no wrong way to be masculine and that it's good to repair your relationship with your father. But you guys don't need Indiana Jones to tell you that.
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