Montana Smith said:
It was contrived in that he met so many movers and shakers of the day just so George could introduce them to the kids.
When he met Kafka even the adventure became a surreal exercise, as though stepping into one of the author's novels.
The TV series was more unrealistic, in terms of style, than surviving a fall from an aeroplane in a life raft, because the Indy films were about the pulp serial. But George saw an opportunity to push his growing interest in education. The pulp serials which inspired Indy were cerebrally unchallenging films intended to keep a child's interest from one week to the next. Lucas and Spielberg's motive had been to update them for a modern audience. The education aspect is something unrelated and 'out of character', in that the films were intentionally, and unintentionally, full of so many factual errors.
It was the beginning of the end for Indy, considering the mess that happened in 2008. In the midst of that came the mess that were the SW Prequels.
Hence, as before, keeping these thoughts on topic, Lucas selling Indy and Star Wars is the best thing that could happen to them. There's a chance of seeing something of a more classic nature, rather than something that's the product of a mind no longer in step with the original creations.
The way I see it, for all we know, Indy in his own universe could be something of a famous person. I mean Chatter Lal refers of his name years ago at Oxford, and refers to Indy as imminent.
I don't really find the YIJC to be the beginning of the end for Indy. It's just another chapter in his story.
His surviving all the things we see in the original trilogy (such as the fall from the mountain on the raft) through the fridge are just part of the fun that is Indy.
I find Indy meeting the historical figures he met no more unrealistic than Indy acquiring his hat, the idea of using a whip as a weapon, his future adventure wardrobe, his fear of snakes, along with his desire of being an adventurer, all in a span of fifteen minutes.
This isn't gritty realism, it's Indiana Jones. If he can have his biggest life changing events occur during 15 minute in 1912, happen to find the Sankara Stones, The Ark of the Covenant, the Holy Grail, the Crystal Skull, coming face to face with Adolf Hitler, surviving the events of the truck chase, tank chase, the raft ride, and the fridge, I can buy what we see in the YIJC. If Indy's said to exist in a universe where the Hindu Pantheon, the Old Testament God, the New Testament God, and Aliens all apparently exist, I can buy the YIJC. And Harrison Ford's cameo as an older Indy solidifies the series as canon, at least for me.
As I stated in another thread, the YIJC are Lucas' last great work. I accept them as the story of Indy's youth, and use the Bantam novels to fill in the blanks in his history--And they do help bridge the gap as in the Bantam novels, in the first few Indy is much like he is in the YIJC, and he develops fully into the Indy we meet in Shanghai in 1935.
If the Chronicles were on par with the prequels, we'd have had Indy and Belloq being childhood friends and Henry Sr. having gone to University with Belloq's father; We'd have had an explanation for EVERYTHING. We'd have Indy's vaguely hinted at "knighthood" in LC be validated as being part of a long forgotten Christian prophecy. The YIJC leaves as many questions open as it answers. We don't know when that defining moment is when Indy finally puts on the gear and steps out into the wild for the first time; We have hints of it and experiences which show us how he became so good at surviving and cunningly getting by, and we see where his cynicism begins to develop and how he and Henry fell out. If it was like the prequels, we'd have had young Indy being a totally unlikable, borderline evil brat.