The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones (1994-2008)
Pardon the longer review here, but
I'm encapsulating 22 films!
This is a TV/DV movie series which started after the cancelation of the TV show
The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles. After a few films, they began re-editing previous episodes to make feature-length movies, usually with some additional footage. The final "movies" were eventually released many years later on DVD and Blu-Ray and contained up to 50% new footage in some cases, the last of it having been shot in 1997, four years after the show had been cancelled! This is a demonstration of how much money Lucasfilm sunk into the production of this, and most of the episodes still look and sound far better than anything on TV in the 90s.
As narrative films though, few of these approach anything like the quality of even the worst Indiana Jones movies, even the prologue to
The Last Crusade with River Phoenix (who sadly refused the offer to reprise his role for the series.) I've spent the last year or so filling in the gaps in my childhood memories of this series, and I have to say that what holds up the best is still the World War I soldiering episodes. In particular I'd recommend-
The Trenches of Hell (1999)- harrowing action during the Battle of the Somme
The Demons of Deception (1999)- Indy goes from Verdun to an affair with Mata Hari
The Daredevils of the Desert (1999)- Indy assists the Australian Lighthorsemen in Turkey
I mostly didn't much like the films focusing on child Indy, his nanny, and his doting mother and pompous father. The "EDU" part of edutainment was front and center in these and every episode tended to be more about the historical figure guest stars than Indy himself. That said, if you're going to check one out, maybe try-
The Perils of Cupid (2000)- wherein Indy gets his first crush (directed by Mike Newell) and his mother has a minor affair!
Sadly, some of the most interesting episodes were only
written up as stories by Lucas, but never scripted or produced. If the movies had found a way for Indiana Jones to feel like
Indiana Jones after the War, maybe these would've been made. Somewhere in a parallel universe maybe.
Overall, I can't say it's a great use of time to watch all of these, even though they have a good boxset, were recently added to Disney+, and have been up on Youtube for years! I think the best format was actually the original television episodes, but Lucas has sadly pulled a Lucas and made sure only the new edits are available. What actually is better than the series though (typical Rick McCallum) is the production of all the special features. There are nearly
one hundred short documentaries to flesh out the real history that's the basis of each movie, and those are
all up on Youtube here!
Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984)
Also squeezed in a rewatch of this with my girlfriend, who'd never seen it. My love of Ke Huy Quan overshadows pretty much all criticisms I have of this film, and the entire human sacrifice scene and the subsequent Indy version remains
an all-time cinema high point for me.