The Original Trilogy · Spielberg
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
Set in 1938. Sean Connery as Indy's father, and the best of the sequels.
Availability changes by country and by week, so this searches JustWatch rather than guessing.
Can you skip Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade?
Not really, though nothing here has to be watched in order. It is one of the main Indiana Jones titles rather than a side story, and it stands on its own. See the full Indiana Jones order.
No, and it is the one sequel that belongs beside Raiders rather than below it. It is also where the series should have stopped, and the ending knows it: four characters ride out of frame into a sunset, which is about as final as a film can signal.
The decision that rescues it after Temple of Doom is to make it a comedy about a father and son. Connery plays Henry Jones Senior as a fussy, bookish man entirely unimpressed by his son's competence, and the film gets its biggest laughs from Indy being reduced to a sulking teenager by somebody who keeps calling him Junior. The grail plot is thin on purpose. The relationship carries it.
The prologue is the other famous piece: a young Indy on a circus train acquires the hat, the whip, the scar and the fear of snakes inside twelve minutes. It over-explains a character who did not need explaining, and it is so well made that almost nobody minds. River Phoenix plays Ford's mannerisms rather than a younger man.
The set pieces are the best in the series after Raiders. The Venice catacombs, the motorcycle chase, the tank sequence shot largely with a real tank in Spain, and the three trials, which are the only genuinely clever puzzle the franchise has written. If you watch two of these films, watch this one and Raiders.
Indiana Jones guides
Where it sits in the Indiana Jones order
- Release order
- #3 of 6
- Chronological order
- #4 of 6
- Released
- 24 May 1989
- In-universe era
- The 1930s
What to watch next
In release order
In chronological order