Scene of the Week: Young Indiana Jones
It is my belief that Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade is nothing short of a masterpiece. The third film in the franchise gave us more of Indy’s backstory than the previous films. This was achieved in two ways… 1) Introducing the character of Indiana’s father Professor Henry Jones (played brilliantly by Sean Connery) and 2) The opening scene where the world got to see Young Indiana Jones for the very first time…
In this week’s Scene of the Week we take a look at the opening scene from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, where River Phoenix proved why he was considered a star on the rise in Hollywood at the time with his memorable performance as Young Indy. The talented Phoenix captured all the Harrison Ford/Indiana Jones nuances perfectly.
The sequence of events in this scene includes Young Indy procuring an artifact from some glorified grave robbers and then leading them on a chase that involves a circus train. Like all Indiana Jones films, the action is punctuated by John Williams’ fantastic score. Another point of interest for this scene is that Phoenix got to do battle with his real life friend Bradley Gregg (Class of 1999) as Young Indy and Roscoe duke it out on top of one of the circus train cars while avoiding castration by a rhino!
