Young Indy and Continuity

bob

New member
Is Young Indy Cannon?

'allooooo

This forum has been pretty dead recently, so im injecting a little controversy.

Who here doesnt regard YIJ as genuine Indy Continuity?, i mean who disregards it as part of Indy lore?

For me i like Young Indy but for me it is simply not Indy, and it fits in awkwardly into a more realistic vision of Young Indy in LC. First and foremost Indy is an archaeologist/adventurer not a Soldier who is a semi-aristocrat.
Criticsim of YIJ has reached boiling point and i think that this is a choice that must be made once and for all, IS YOUNG INDY PART OF CONTINIUITY?
 

Attila the Professor

Moderator
Staff member
Sure it does!

Young Indy is great. It fits, and the thing is, he wanted to be an archaeologist, but his morals got in the way and he joined the war. It explains where his philosophy comes from, and has him going to a lot more places as well. I also like him meeting the people.
 

Col. Musgrove

New member
I believe the word you are looking for is "canon," not "continuity."

For me, there are different levels of canon. Raiders of the Lost Ark is THE Indiana Jones. Sure, the sequels were good, just not as good and slightly diminished the whole idea. Raiders exists above the others, and I think about it by itself. Its two sequels come in a close second.

Young Indy comes in last. It wasn't the best thing in the world, but it had some things going for it. So I don't flatly reject it.

As far as continuity, I thought it had some great moments, such as the alienation between Indy and dad and the adventure at the University of Chigago. I liked these parts and I feel too much of it had nothing to do with Indy. I've heard rumors about cancelled episodes featuring a young Belloq betraying his friend Indy and a young Abner Ravenwood searching for the Ark of the Covenant. How much better it would have been with these sorts of things. And Young Indy did get some things just plain wrong, like a nine year old Indy being afraid of snakes. Watch Last Crusade, scriptwriters. Come on.
 

bob

New member
I think that we all have our own view of Indys formative years, and i really find some (although not all) of YIJ information on his childhood and adolesance as contary to my view of his life....in YIJ Henry seems an aristocrat while in LC they are living in a very ordinary house it seemed to me far more likely that Henry was a simple professor rather than someone who was travelling the world.

Also they tried to make everything so blatent in Indys interest in archaeology (what little they had), such as him in Egypt with Howard Carter
 

Aaron H

Moderator Emeritus
Well I consider YIJ as a good TV show, but nothing more. Only a few things add up to the man that we know as Indy.
It is implied that Henry, Jr. was called just that up until he was away from his father for a long time. Plus there are other things about YIJC that bother me:
Indy takes off and lands a plane.
Indy (as mentioned before) is afraid of snakes at the age of 9.
Indy met nearly everyone important that was alive in his era, most by accident, surly his name would have become far better known. (this may be fiction, but it has to stay "real")
I have other problems with series, but one can only complain so much.:)

(Hey Russ![Col. Musgrove] Good to see you!)
 

bob

New member
I think that behind all of this the only issue is our interpretation of Indy. I always saw Indy as fundementally a self made man, and not of blue blood.
The POV of other characters in the trilogy changes when you think that his name is probably fairly well known, he becomes an aristocratic renegade, going on adventures as a sport.
 

bob

New member
We must remember that there is a great deal of difference between WWI biplanes and planes of the 30's.
 

Attila the Professor

Moderator
Staff member
Well, I don't know much about planes, but the one in LC seemed like a WWI biplane to me anyway. I'm still wondering when he flew a plane though, like the rest of you.
 

Whipper

New member
Trust me, he never Flew or Landed a plane in the entire series or in the telefilms. He was a Passenger on each terrifying occasion. From wing-walking to being shot down to being dumped out over enemy territory.

The soldier years were intense, where he went from trying to be the too-perfect soldier to realizing the evil and uselessness of the war and devoting himself to doing anything he could to help End it. Good stuff.

I really dug the overall continuity and thought it was a very interesting fleshing out of Indy's backstory.. We get to see where his values came from and also where he gets all his cynicism. As a young man he was far more idealistic than the hard-bitten Ford Indy would be. You could really see character development each week as the war and the real world really beat his ideals to hell at times. He was an old-fashioned Romantic as well--every love affair was really a huge deal to him at first, but by the time Ford's years came around, he'd become the kinda guy who'd tell Marion something like, "I did what I did, you don't have to be happy about it..."

And with his various young-loves, every time he got into it, I'd hear the echo of Ford's voice in the back of my mind..."Years of field work..." Oh man, wasn't it great to see him try to be Smooth in the London, 1916 episode? Remember the older woman on the bus, the War Widow? Hilarious. "I could come home with you!" And then years later, as he's starting to hit his stride came the Scandals Of 1920, also a winner, with the Three Girls at Once thing. And a great look at the Broadway of the time. "When it was really Broadway" as Old Indy said.

I always wished they'd bring in a young Belloq, and I think it would've happened if the show had lasted beyond it's first season. I always thought it'd be great to bring him in as a young rival. They could've started out as good friends, but then the rivalry would kick in and you'd have Belloq stealing the girls, the artifacts, the glory, someone who always had an edge over Indy. And the whole Abner/Marion thing could've been fun in passing as well. I thought they'd introduce Marion in a cameo as this pesky 15-year old with a crush.

I was sad that the show had to end where it did...at least there came a few 2-hour specials on the Family channel that carried him a little further. At least they finally got him home from the war and to a cold reception from his father. I wanted to see more of the college years, because there's still a large gap in the story here: Just how DID Indy ever wind up becoming a Professor of Archaeology? I wanted to see them bridge that gap, show us where and how that became a plausible outcome. He didn't seem all that devoted to his studies at that age, ya know...when did he go from slacker to member of the faculty? Oh, and before I forget...once back in America and at University, I'd hoped we might meet a younger Marcus Brody. He may've been at a different college altogether I suppose, but a cameo would've been nice, since he and Henry Jones were such old friends and said that he'd seen Indy grow up and the two Henry's grow apart.

I wanted them to reach a point in the Young Indy story where we could've seen Sean Patrick Flannery don the complete Indy Outfit for the First Time...the jacket, hat, whip and pistol...and go out on that first Mercenary sort of archaeological adventure. Somewhere along the way his idealism slipped a notch there too...going from the sentiment of "It Belongs In a Museum!" in Curse Of The Jackal, to "Fortune and Glory, kid, Fortune and Glory..." in Temple Of Doom. Like Belloq said, "We have both fallen from the pure faith..." I would've been fascinated to watch that development on screen.
 

Indy 4

New member
Without a doubt Young Indy fits into the Indiana Jones continuity. IT HAS TOO! To reject Young Indy is like rejecting Star Wars Episode I-III. Some have raised cain about Young Indy because he is not an archeaologist. Think about it, he CAN'T be an archeaologist in his teen years. But the episodes do make plenty of references to Indy's interest in archeaology, Treasure of the Peacock's Eye is a prime example. Henry Sr is also shown and they have a bad relationship during his teen years, as they had at the beginning of Last Crusade.
When it comes down to it, you hate or you like Young Indy. But it does indeed fit in with the story of Indiana Jones.
 

Raffey

Member
I think the great thing about Indiana Jones is that you can choose what medium/stories/whatever you want to associate Jones with and disregard others and yet not lose the essence of the character.

I think the continuity of the YIJC should surely be taken into consideration of Jones. Although, the movies will always come first in my book.

However, I tend to disregard the printed novels and comics or the video games. They are GREAT fun but they aren't essential IJ to me...maybe more like a parallel universe....

:D :D
 

bob

New member
There is one thing that i dont buy in Young Indy that i have been thinking about: Indy spent quite a while in the army and he often served on the front line he must have been a fairly competant soldier in order to survive so long:

So why in the trilogy does he not think up a realistic plan to storm the Truck? In ToD why doesnt he remember about the gun shouldnt that be second nature? and surely he would try and use better weapons (i.e get out and then summon helP) as he has had the sense to survive the Great War. In LC he goes into Germany with very little ammo at all which is idiotic to any Soldier and to storm a whole convoy he does not pick up some grendes or something and create an ambush he takes it on head on he has no concept of planning.

This is not a criticism of Indy in the movies i think they fit well into his character but knowing that he served for 3 years in the war he has no logic that would show to me that he had been in the Military.
 

Attila the Professor

Moderator
Staff member
Hmm, interesting thoughts there bob.

I guess his way of thinking sort of evolved over the years, and being one man against all of them, perhaps he was going for stealth instead of running in there with grenades. After all, he was a spy more recently than he was a soldier.
 

Whipper

New member
Attila the Professor said:
Hmm, interesting thoughts there bob.

I guess his way of thinking sort of evolved over the years, and being one man against all of them, perhaps he was going for stealth instead of running in there with grenades. After all, he was a spy more recently than he was a soldier.

Yeah, he only spent a few months as a soldier, 20 years prior, and it was demonstrated then that clear military thinking was never exactly his Forte...he's too rashly emotional and impulsive. Granted, he Tried to be a good soldier for awhile, obeying orders at all costs and so forth, but he found he did better using his own imagination and initiatives and "making it up as he goes."

Not to mention that he's always been extremely Lucky, too. :) Who Else could take on an entire convoy of nazi goons with nothing but a horse and raging adrenaline the way he did, and come away with only a few bruises and a mild bulletwound?

[Edited by Whipper on 12-01-2002 at 03:52 am]
 

bob

New member
Indy was a soldier on the Western Front though! he was tenously involved in the battle of the Somme and Verdun as well as the war in the middle East to survive that he must have had some sort of savvy it is not like individuality would keep you alive on the Western Front!.
 

Gregoire Defence

New member
Not really.

He was a soldier in the Somme.
A courier in Verdun.
A soldier in Africa (But was involved in one battle, and was lucky).
For the rest of the war he was a spy.
 

Whipper

New member
bob said:
Indy was a soldier on the Western Front though! he was tenously involved in the battle of the Somme and Verdun as well as the war in the middle East to survive that he must have had some sort of savvy it is not like individuality would keep you alive on the Western Front!.

Only dumb luck kept anyone alive in trench warfare, not savvy. They blew the whistle and sent you running straight into enemy bullets to be massacared. Tens of thousands of casualties every day at Verdun, and they never gained a yard of territory. Nearly a million men died at Verdun alone. Indy's savvy was understanding he needed to get the hell out of the war as a soldier and into the spy game where he might actually make a difference. Indy's talents and instincts were much better suited to his spy role.
 
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