Twenty-five years ago today, the film Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade opened nationwide. It was the third movie in the Indiana Jones series, which makes it all the harder to believe it’s been that long. It was in this installment that we learned about Indiana’s family and upbringing, and met his father, Henry Jones, Sr. And there’s a lot more you can learn about the film, all these years later.
1. The original story involved a haunted castle. George Lucas’ original story for the third Indiana Jones film involved a haunted castle. Spielberg had just finished Poltergeist though and didn’t want to do another ghost story. Lucas suggested a storyline built around the Holy Grail, but Spielberg didn’t think the idea was strong enough and wanted a father and son story. As Spielberg tells it, the compromise was a father and son story about chasing down the Holy Grail.
“The dad thing was my idea. The Grail doesn’t offer a lot of special effects and doesn’t promise a huge physical climax. I just thought that the Grail that everybody seeks could be a metaphor for a son seeking reconciliation with a father and a father seeking reconciliation with a son.”
10. The tank chase scene was supposed to be much shorter. It was George Lucas who wanted to have an old tank somewhere in the movie, so Steven Spielberg set about writing a short storyboard with it to be shot over two days. According to Sean Connery, the two days soon stretched to eight because Lucas and Spielberg kept finding new action sequences and comedy scenes they wanted to incorporate in with the tank.
Mark the anniversary by reading the rest of this Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade trivia list from Uproxx.