After the mixed reception of Temple of Doom, there was a conscience choice from creators Steven Spielberg and George Lucas to improve upon what they had failed previously for the third and final (at the time) instalment of the Indiana Jones franchise. There was a lot of effort put into the creation of this movie as the storyline kept changing, characters kept being rewritten and thrown away, character arcs were brought up and abandoned, and it all still stemmed from the fact that the story for this trilogy wasn’t something that was planned out ahead of time. For such a corny idea based on a bygone genre of media that relied on simplistic quick-to-grasp and meant to ‘’entertain over challenge’’ narratives, it would have been hard writing a story that not only had to be different from both previous movies which prided themselves on being different from the norm as well as each other, but also one that took it to the next level and concluded things on a high note. The Last Crusade tries to do that, but it comes with its own share of faults that finishes this trilogy off in a bit of a messy fashion. After retrieving an artifact from a group of grave robbers, Indiana Jones (played again by Harrison Ford) is again tasked with tracking down an ancient artifact that this time holds the very power of immortality, the Holy Grail. After being asked by American businessman, Walter Donovan (played by Julian Glover) to help track it down, Indy along with Dr. Elsa Schneider (played by Alison Doody) journey across the globe to search for Indy’s father, Henry Jones (played by the late Sean Connery) who spent his life searching for the grail, so that they can retrieve it before it is stolen away by Nazis. However, upon releasing that both Donovan and Elsa are in fact working for the Nazis and only used Indy and his father in order to find the grail, father and son are forced to work together in order to prevent eternal life falling into the wrong hands. As the third movie of the trilogy, the movie doesn’t truly feel like a satisfying conclusion as well as a less than satisfying return to form for the whip-cracking adventurer. The movie’s flaws aren’t as painfully strong as they were in Temple of Doom, but there’s plenty of little annoyances that keep it from being great.

Indiana Jones has always been a goofy idea from its creation and therefore, Raiders of the Lost Ark took a great deal of time trying to find the perfect tonal balance to make people take it seriously while also getting that light-hearted feeling that anyone would have felt reading a 1920s-30s serial comic strip (which is what the idea was based around). Temple of Doom went too far down the dark route and made the first follow up horribly unpleasant, whereas this movie retraced itself so far back that it made the movie kind of annoyingly comical. This isn’t too dissimilar from the first movie which also had its fair share of wacky scenarios and comedic action set pieces, but it was given a sense of leeway for being the first in a brand new franchise and the movie really engrossed itself within the adventure it displayed and the characters rather than focus on any sense of deep plot or conflict (it was mostly just a tool to get the story going, but it was handled well). While Raiders is an adventure movie with comedic levity, this is a comedy with adventure elements attached, a situation where the humor takes front and centre around a series of unfortunate events, which is extremely noticeable given how this story, constructed by Lucas and Menno Meyjes, feels very much like the first film. Everything from its pacing to its structure, to many of its scene, to the villains and their motivation, to even the final conflict, it all rings a little too familiar and with new screenwriter, Jeffrey Boam, at the helm this time, it just doesn’t work in the same way even excluding the similarities. It doesn’t feel copied, rather inspired, and even Temple of Doom (despite its many faults) was completely its own things beginning to end.  This movie feels like it tries to have a sense of progression and depth behind what its talking about and just fails at it; the opening with younger Indy is a nice scene (eve arguably paved way for the eventual series about the character later on) but in the grand scheme of things, it doesn’t add anything to the overall film and just feels like a bait-and-switch opening for the sake of having one. Introducing his father into the story and along him to come along for the journey is also a nice touch, but it also doesn’t really feel like anything is being handled with enough time and care for it to mean anything. If it wanted to tell an engaging story, it needed to have more effort put into building it up or even setting it up in general, instead of just rolling with the punches and providing the familiar formula without too much added to change things up.

The characters have also never been anything special in terms of timeless movie roles. Everybody loves Indiana Jones as a character, but there’s no complexity or depth to him at all, let alone anybody else within this universe, so the idea of giving him more depth could work, but might conflict this genre’s somewhat mindless entertainment roots. It relies more on its sense of fun exploration to grab people and this formula worked better when the movie didn’t call for character or progression. Now that this movie tries, it doesn’t do it to the point where it feels like anything has drastically changed by the end, at least not in a strong enough way. Indy is still the same Indy by the end of the movie and while Harrison is still great, it doesn’t pay off when he’s stuck with his father throughout the whole movie. While the late Sean Connery is a beloved name, he proves to be pretty annoying and useless throughout the movie. Since the twist involving Elsa halfway through provides Jones Sr. the chance to become the number two in the story, it just means that he becomes the damsel in distress who doesn’t provide much outside of comic relief and an occasional helpful hint. He doesn’t really do much that Indy couldn’t do himself, he causes more problems than he solves, the connection between them isn’t really felt because we never get a chance to see it, and the banter between the two has about a 50% chance of being funny and clever, or juvenile and annoying. Elsa is a pretty cool character in spite of her heel turn, providing a more serious, qualified edge than most of the other leading ladies that came before in this franchise, and Alison Doody’s performance is pretty good overall. The problem mainly comes from how the character loses a lot of traction and purpose as the movie goes on, falling to the wayside once the twist happens and more becoming a reluctant hench woman still longing for her man, rather than turning into a probably cold and conniving villain-ness which would’ve been cooler. Donovan is also just a carbon copy of the original villain from Raiders except without the memorable lines, personality, and sense of rivalry between the lead hero, it’s a pretty big letdown.

To the film’s credit, it does feels like making this movie a comedy would be the next logical step to improving things from the past as Raiders worked nicely with its comedic elements and Temple of Doom was criticized for its lack of light-heartedness, yet it doesn’t feel like it’s being used right. One of the key issues with that is the lack of balance with how the comedy is used; Raiders was mostly pretty gritty and brutal, which allowed the lighter moments to be more pronounced and effective, even in Temple of Doom, the lighter moments felt overly stupid because the movie was so needlessly harsh, and they tried to have a balance. Here, the comedy is front and centre on a story that is still very corny and light-hearted, but the movie is lacking in any sense of gritty realism, so it never feels like needed levity, but rather an added does of stupidity in an already wacky world. The movie was reduced a rating from a PG-13 to a PG and that can be felt in the lack of gory or intense imagery (outside of the villain’s eventual fate), and without it, it makes the silly scenes feel a little too overboard. That isn’t to say that the movie can’t be funny as it does still have some humorous moments. There are a few visual gags that work, an occasional clever line and even some of the banter between the actors can sometimes be okay, but if the movie had more stakes and a harsh sense of threat, maybe this overly comical atmosphere could have worked better. Most of the action is pretty fun throughout and takes advantage of vehicles more heavily than some of the other films with most of them taking place on the go, with a train, a plane, boats, and even a tank. While they aren’t very long, they do bring back that right sense of fun back into this environment without it feeling too pronounced.

The Last Crusade is not a bad movie by any merits and is definitely not the movie that people will remember as a bad Indiana Jones movie (the previous one and the next one will have far more haters), but there’s a few things in this movie that not only hold it back from the pedestal that Raiders of the Lost Ark built for itself, but hold it back from being a pretty solid movie overall. The story isn’t engaging, the adventure feels recycled, the characters aren’t interesting, and the comedy can sometimes be a little annoying. But there’s still a lot of great action, performances, and an occasional good funny moment that it can still be watched perfectly fine, but just don’t expect to ever get the full magic back properly. Despite the title, this wouldn’t be the last outing for the Indiana Jones franchise and this one leaves arguably the least amount of impact out of any of them.

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