The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles
(
The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones)
is an American television series that ran from 1992 to 1996. The
series explores the childhood and youth of the fictional character
Indiana Jones. The series primarily
stars
Sean Patrick Flanery and
Corey Carrier as the title character,
and
George Hall played an
elderly version of the character for the bookends of most episodes,
though
Harrison Ford bookended one
episode. The show was created and executive produced by
George Lucas, who also created, co-wrote and
executive produced the Indiana Jones feature films. Following the
series' cancellation, four TV movies were produced from 1994 to
1996 which were based on the series.
Production
Development
During the production of the Indiana Jones feature films, the cast
and crew frequently questioned creator George Lucas about the
Indiana Jones character's life growing up. During the concept
stages of
Indiana
Jones and the Last Crusade, Lucas and director
Steven Spielberg decided to reveal some of
this backstory in the film's opening scenes. For these scenes,
Lucas chose
River Phoenix to portray
the character, as Harrison Ford believed that Phoenix most
resembled Ford as a young man (Phoenix had appeared as Ford's son
in
The Mosquito Coast).
This decision to reveal an adventure of a young Indiana led Lucas
and crew to the idea of creating the series.
Writing
Lucas wrote an extensive time-line detailing the life of Indiana
Jones, assembling the elements for about 70 episodes, starting in
1905 and leading all the way up to the feature films. Each outline
included the place, date and the historical persons Indy would meet
in that episode, and would then be turned over to one of the series
writers. When the series came to an end about 31 of the 70 stories
had been filmed. Had the series been renewed for a third season,
Young Indy would have been introduced to younger versions of
characters from
Raiders of
the Lost Ark: Abner Ravenwood ("Jerusalem, June 1909") and
René Belloq ("Honduras, December 1920"). Other episodes would have
filled in the blanks between existing ones ("Le Havre, June 1916",
"Berlin, Late August, 1916"), and there would even have been some
adventures starring a five year old Indy (including "Princeton, May
1905").
During production of the series, Lucas became interested in the
crystal skulls. He originally called
for an episode which would have been part of the third season
involving Jones and his friend Belloq searching for one of the
skulls. The episode was never produced, and the idea ultimately
evolved into the 2008 feature film
Indiana Jones
and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.
Casting
Ford appeared as a middle-aged Indy (age 50) in the episode "Young
Indiana Jones and the Mystery of the Blues", which aired in March
1993.
Paul Freeman, who played Rene
Belloq in
Raiders of the
Lost Ark, portrayed
Frederick
Selous in a couple of episodes. Additionally, the late
William Hootkins (Major Eaton from
Raiders of the Lost Ark) played Russian ballet producer
Sergei Diaghilev in "Barcelona, May
1917". In the episode
Attack of the Hawkmen, Star Wars veteran
Anthony Daniels played Francois, a French
Intelligence scientist (in the mode of James Bond's "Q") who gives
Indy a special suitcase filled with gadgets for a special mission
in Germany.
Filming
A variety of filmmakers wrote and directed many episodes of the
series, including
Frank Darabont,
Nicolas Roeg,
Mike Newell,
Deepa Mehta,
Joe
Johnston,
Jonathan Hensleigh,
Terry Jones,
Simon Wincer,
Carrie
Fisher,
Dick Maas and
Vic Armstrong. Lucas was given a 'Story By'
credit in many episodes, along with his input as a creative
consultant.
The series was unusual in that it was shot on location around the
world. Partly to offset the cost of this, the series was shot on
16mm film, rather than
35. The series was designed so that each pair of
episodes could either be broadcast separately, or as a 2-hour
film-length episode. Each episode cost about $1.5 million and the
filming with Young Indy usually took around 3 weeks. The first
production filming alternated between "Sean" and "Corey" episodes.
The segments with old Indy were referred to as "bookends." Filming
a pair of them typically took a day and most were shot at Carolco
Studios in Wilmington, North Carolina and on location in
Wilmington. The show also featured footage from other films spliced
into several episodes.
The series was shot in three stages. The first production occurred
from 1991 to 1992, and consisted of sixteen episodes; five with
younger Indy, ten with older Indy, and one with both—for a total of
seventeen television hours. The second production occurred from
1992 to 1993 and consisted of twelve episodes; one with younger
Indy and eleven with older Indy, for a total of fifteen television
hours. The third and final production occurred from 1994 to 1995,
and consisted of four made-for-television movies, for a total of
eight television hours. In 1996, additional filming was done in
order to re-edit the entire series into twenty-two feature
films.
Music
The series' main theme was composed by
Laurence Rosenthal, who wrote much of the
music for the series.
Joel McNeely also
wrote music for many episodes ; he received an Emmy in 1993 for the
Episode "Scandals of 1920". French composer
Frédéric Talgorn composed some
music for the episode set in World War I France ("Somme, Early
August 1916", "Verdun, September 1916"). Music for "Transylvania,
September 1918" was composed by
Curt
Sobel.
Plot
Map of countries Indiana Jones visits
in the series
The series was designed as an educational program for children and
teenagers, spotlighting historical figures and important events,
using the concept of a prequel to the films as a draw.
Most episodes feature
a standard formula of an elderly (93-year-old) Indiana Jones
(played by George Hall) in
present day (1993) New York
City
encountering people who spur him to reminisce and
tell stories about his past adventures. These stories would
either involve him as a young boy (10, played by
Corey Carrier) or as a teenager (16 to 21,
played by
Sean Patrick
Flanery). In one episode, a fifty-year-old Indy (played by
Harrison Ford) is seen reminiscing.
Initially, the plan was for the series to alternate between the
adventures of Indy as a child (
Corey
Carrier) and as a teenager (
Sean Patrick Flanery), but eventually
the episodes featuring Flanery's version of the character dominated
the series. The series' bookends revealed that the elderly Jones
has a daughter, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. There is no
mention of a son, however, though he was revealed to have one in
the movie
Indiana Jones
and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.
Many of the episodes involve Indiana meeting and working with
famous historical figures.
Historical figures featured on the show
include Leo Tolstoy, Howard Carter, Charles de Gaulle, and John Ford, in such diverse locations as Egypt
, Austria-Hungary, India
, China
, and the
whole of Europe. For example,
Curse of the Jackal prominently involves Indy in the
adventures of
T. E. Lawrence and
Pancho Villa. Indy also encounters (in
no particular order)
Edgar Degas,
George Patton,
Pablo Picasso,
Eliot
Ness,
Charles de Gaulle,
Al Capone,
Manfred Von Richthofen,
Norman Rockwell (same episode as
Picasso)
Louis
Armstrong,
Sean O'Casey,
Siegfried Sassoon,
Winston Churchill, and
Sigmund Freud; At one point, he competes
against a young
Ernest Hemingway
for the affections of a girl, is nursed back to health by
Albert Schweitzer, and goes on a safari
with
Theodore Roosevelt.
The show provided a lot of the back story for the films. His
relationship with his father, first introduced in
Indiana Jones
and the Last Crusade, was further fleshed out with stories
about his travels with his father as a young boy. His original hunt
for the
Eye of the Peacock, a large diamond seen in
Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, was a recurring
element in several stories. The show also chronicled his activities
during
World War I and his first solo
adventures. The series is also referenced in
Indiana Jones
and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, when Indy describes
his adventures with
Pancho Villa
(chronicled in the first episode) to
Mutt Williams.
Cast
Sean Patrick Flanery as the young
adult Indiana Jones
Guest appearances
Notable guest stars include
Catherine Zeta-Jones,
Daniel Craig,
Christopher Lee,
Peter Firth,
Vanessa
Redgrave,
Elizabeth Hurley,
Timothy Spall,
Anne Heche,
Jeffrey Wright,
Jeroen Krabbé,
Jason Flemyng,
Jay
Underwood,
Kevin McNally,
Ian McDiarmid,
Max
von Sydow and
Terry Jones.
Release
Television
An early advertisement for the
show
The pilot
episode was aired by ABC in the United States
in March 1992. The pilot, the feature-length
Young Indiana Jones and the Curse of the Jackal, was later
re-edited as two separate episodes, "Egypt, May 1908" and "Mexico,
March 1916." Eleven further hour-long episodes were aired in 1992
(seven in the first season, four were part of the second season).
Only 16 of the remaining 20 episodes were aired in 1993 when ABC
canceled the show.
USA Network later
broadcast the unaired episodes and also produced eight more
episodes (each part of two-part television movies, making four TV
movies) that were broadcast from
1994 to 1996.
Though Lucas intended to produce episodes leading up to a
24-year-old Jones, the series was cancelled with the character at
age 21.
Home video re-edits
The revised and updated edition of the book
George Lucas: The
Creative Impulse, by Charles Champlin, explains how
The
Young Indiana Jones Chronicles series would be re-edited into
the new structure of twenty-two
Chapter TV films, for the
1999
VHS release. New footage was shot in 1996
to be incorporated with the newly re-edited and re-titled
"chapters" to better help it chronologically and provide smooth
transitions. The newly shot
Tangiers, 1908 was joined with
Egypt, 1908 from the
Curse of the Jackal to form
My First Adventure, and
Morocco, 1917 was joined
with
Northern Italy, 1918 (now re-dated as
1917)
to form
Tales of Innocence. Also included in the home
video release were four unaired episodes made for the ABC network,
Florence, May 1908,
Prague, 1917,
Transylvania, 1918, and
Palestine, 1917. The
series itself was also re-titled as
The Adventures of Young
Indiana Jones.
The 93-year-old Indy bookends for the original series were removed,
as well as Sean Patrick Flanery's bookend for "Travels With
Father". However, the Harrison Ford bookend, set in 1950, from
"Mystery of The Blues" was not cut.
VHS and Laserdisc
The series received its first home video release on April 21, 1993,
when a
Laserdisc box set was released in
Japan containing fifteen of the earlier episodes and a short
documentary on the making of the series. The discs were formatted
in NTSC and presented with English audio in Dolby surround with
Japanese subtitles. In 1994, eight NTSC format VHS tapes with a
total of fifteen episodes from the first two seasons were released
in Japan.
On October 26, 1999, half of the series was released on VHS in the
United States for $14.99 each, along with a box set of the feature
films. The series was labeled as Chapters 1-22, while the feature
films were labeled as Chapters 23-25. In an effort to promote the
series,
Treasure of the Peacock's Eye was included with
the purchase of the movie trilogy box set in the US, In other
countries different chapters were included, for example in the UK
The Phantom Train of Doom was included. The twelve VHS
releases were released worldwide over the course of the year 2000,
including the UK, Netherlands, Hungary, Germany, Mexico, France,
and Japan. The UK, German, French, Hungarian and Netherlands tapes
were in PAL format, while the tapes released in the rest of the
countries were in NTSC format.
DVD
The Adventures of Young Indiana
Jones: Volume One — The Early Years DVD cover
In 2002, series producer Rick McCallum confirmed in an interview
with
Variety that DVDs of the
series were in development, but would not be released for "about
three or four years". At the October 2005 press conference for the
Star Wars
Episode III: Revenge of the Sith DVD, McCallum explained
that he expected the release to consist of 22 DVDs, which would
include around 100 documentaries which would explore the real-life
historical aspects that are fictionalized in the show. For the
DVDs, Lucasfilm upgraded the picture quality of the original
16 mm prints and remastered the soundtracks. This, along with
efforts to get best quality masters and bonus materials on the
sets, delayed the release. It was ultimately decided that the
release would tie into the release of the fourth Indiana Jones
feature film.
Two variations of Volume 1 were released by
CBS
DVD, one simply as "Volume One", and the other as "Volume
One — The Early Years" in order to match the subtitle of
Volume 2.
The History Channel acquired
television rights to all 94 of the DVD historical documentaries.
The airing of the documentaries is meant to bring in ratings for
the history channel and serve as marketing for the DVD release and
the theatrical release of
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the
Crystal Skull. The History Channel and
History International began airing the
series every Saturday morning at 7AM/6C on The History Channel, and
every Sunday morning at 8AM ET/PT on History International. A new
division of History.com was created devoted to the show. As
Paramount and Lucasfilm had already reserved IndianaJones.com
solely for news and updates related to
Indiana Jones and the
Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, StarWars.com temporarily served
as the official site for the DVDs—providing regular updates,
insider looks and promotions related to them. However, Lucasfilm
and Paramount soon set up an official website proper for the
series—YoungIndy.com. Paramount released a press kit for the media
promoting the DVDs, which consists of a .pdf file and several
videos with interviews with Lucas and McCallum, and footage from
the DVDs. A trailer for the DVDs was also published on
YoungIndy.com, with a shorter version being shown on The History
Channel and History International.
Lucas and McCallum hope that the DVDs will be helpful to schools,
as they believe the series is a good way to aid in teaching
history. Lucas explained that the series' DVD release will be
shopped as "films for a modern day high school history class." He
believes the series is a good way to teach high school students
20th Century history. The plan was always to tie the DVD release of
the series to the theatrical release of the fourth
Indiana
Jones feature film,
Indiana Jones
and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, which was released
on May 22, 2008.
| DVD Name |
Region 1 |
Region 2 |
| The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones: Volume One —
The Early Years |
October 23, 2007 |
February 25, 2008 |
| The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones: Volume Two —
The War Years |
December 18, 2007 |
March 24, 2008 |
| The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones: Volume Three —
The Years of Change |
April 29, 2008 |
April 28, 2008 |
Reaction
From 1992 to 1994, the series was nominated for twenty-three
Emmy Awards and won ten. In 1993, Corey
Carrier was nominated for the
Young
Artist Award in the category of "Best Young Actor Starring in a
Television Series". In 1994, David Tattersall was nominated for the
ASC Award in the category of "Outstanding Achievement in
Cinematography in Regular Series". At the 1994 Golden Globes, the
series was nominated for "Best TV-Series — Drama".
Though the series won many awards, it also earned its share of
criticism.
The New York
Times called the pilot "clunky".
Marketing
Five volumes of music from the series were released on CD. The show
also spawned a series of adaptations and spin-off novels, a
NES game
The Young Indiana Jones
Chronicles, a
Sega Genesis game
Instruments of
Chaos starring Young Indiana Jones,
trading cards and other products.
Notes and references
- The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles, On the Set and Behind
the Scenes
- George Lucas: The Creative Impulse
- [114857]
External links
Top topics
Wikis
Quiz
Map
Search
