Indiana Jones Has One of Cinema's Greatest Origins

Indiana Jones changed the adventure genre for the better with its many movies. On top of that, it also featured cinema's greatest origin story.

The Indiana Jones franchise has the unique luxury of each movie covering different points in Indiana Jones' life. Whether it's 1925 or just after the moon landing, he's seen the growth of the world in ways few have. But even still, not much was known about the iconic adventurer until Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. In the final movie of the trilogy, audiences finally got some backstory on Indy by offering an origin that has become the best one of the genre and cinema as a whole.

Origin stories have been around for as long as franchises, and while some stories may not have seemed like origins at first, like Universal Picture's The Wolf Man, they served as the beginning of a larger journey. The Last Crusade chose to instead break the mold of the origin story, and rather than tell the story throughout the movie, it did so in its opening minutes. But the best part of this method was that audiences weren't aware that Indy's first real adventure set the stage for the rest of his life.

Indiana Jones' Origin Set a Precedent For His Morals

The Last Crusade opened on Indy, a boy scout, leaving his troop to sneak into an excavation site where he believed he had encountered grave robbers. In reality, they were hired for a job to discover an ancient cross and deliver it to their benefactor. But being that Indy was more focused on doing the right thing, he stole the cross, which started a chase that led to a train car filled with circus animals and ultimately back to his home where audiences also met his strict but intelligent father, Henry Jones Sr. Famously, the scene ended with the leader of the men Indy stole from giving him his fedora.

Indy's origin was so special because, in the prologue, audiences were introduced to how Indy learned to use a whip, giving him the scar on his chin, and his fear of snakes, which he got from falling into a snake pit. Doing so also set up a line he had in Raiders of the Lost Ark, where he stated he was making things up as he went along. But most importantly, it established that he did so because he believed in the importance of history and that artifacts deserved to be viewed by all in a museum and not used for profit. These core values and traits had already followed Indy for two movies and would continue in The Last Crusade and beyond. Even still, the context of the backstory made all past and future events more important.

The Last Crusade's Sneaky Origin Changed the Franchise Forever

When Indy had the fedora placed on his hat as a child, the transition to adulthood perfectly set up his origin and established that Indy never forgot about the cross he lost as a child. Instead, he tracked the man who bought it and stole it back while on a ship in the middle of a storm. While this was still the start of the movie, it showed how everything about his life started with the loss he was dealt as a child. As a result, taking it back only moments after witnessing said loss became a full circle moment while showing that Indy never forgot about what may be the most important relic in his life.

Not only did the origin change the context of Indiana Jones as a character, being that it explored how one fateful loss changed his life forever, but it also changed the franchise. From the moment he appeared, Indy's personal life was something of a mystery, and each adventure was just a glimpse into a world audiences knew very little about. But from the start of the origin to the end, everything becomes clear without it having to take an entire movie to explain it. The best part was the origin's conclusion only raised the momentum as fans saw Indy finally rectify a mistake from his childhood. Since then, origins have become something of a repellant, with superhero movies even outgrowing them. But even still, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade's origin was something special and worth revisiting as it proved to be classic and would be filmmakers that an origin can be fun and transformative when used cleverly.