Hawaii.
1977.
In the shadow of the Mauna Kea Beach Hotel, George Lucas and Steven Spielberg build a sandcastle, each trying to think of anything but tomorrow. The former is hiding as far away as he can from the premiere of his weirdo sci-fi pet project, Star Wars. The latter is grieving in advance for his hotly anticipated Jaws follow-up, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, which the cash-strapped studio will be releasing as-is with unfinished special effects.
In respective self-defense, they talk about the day after tomorrow.
Spielberg dreams aloud about directing a James Bond movie.
Lucas counters that he has something better than James Bond.
“Are you interested?” he asks after his pitch.
With little hesitation, Spielberg says, “I want to direct it.”
With even less, “It’s yours.”
Indiana Jones is born.
Not that Indiana Smith hadn’t already been gathering dust for a while.
After the successful release his ‘50s period piece, American Graffiti, in 1973, George Lucas couldn’t shake his nostalgia. He vividly captured the sound and fuel-injected fury of his teenage years, but none of the fantasy or imagination that made him a filmmaker long before he got his license. The next project would harken back to the low-rent, high-concept spirit of ‘50s cliffhangers. He considered a rough-and-tumble adventure picture but couldn’t ignore the siren song of Flash Gordon. Though the rights holders turned him down for a direct adaptation, they couldn’t stop him from making his own soapy space opera.
In 1975, around the third draft of The Star Wars From the Adventures of Luke Starkiller, Lucas called up friend and filmmaker Philip Kaufman to talk shop about that rough-and-tumble adventure picture. Before long, they had a MacGuffin – the Ark of the Covenant – and a hero – Indiana Smith. What they didn’t have was time. Lucas wanted Kaufman to direct it, but he was already signed on for The Outlaw Josey Wales. Any consideration of directing it himself was curtailed by 20th Century-Fox giving The Star Wars the greenlight. Smith would have to wait two more years until that fateful day on the beach.
Though Indiana Jones finally existed in theory, he would get his name the following January, in a three-day marathon meeting between Lucas, Spielberg, and screenwriter Lawrence Kasdan. Across those discussions, thankfully recorded and transcribed, the three hashed out an icon and his grand debut.
Reasonably grand, at least.
With the release of 1941, Spielberg earned his third strike. Three blockbusters over budget and over schedule. It was a forgivable sin when the results broke records and saved studios, but 1941 did neither. The golden boy had finally lost some luster. Even Lucas, mastermind of the movie that speared Jaws, couldn’t get him hired. The only executive in Hollywood that took their meeting with a straight face was Michael Eisner, chairman of Paramount. He was convinced, with conditions – the pair would have to make their globe-trotting adventure for $18 million, half of 1941. Eisner knew what they were trying to do.
It was Spielberg who made the fateful comparison in the transcripts:
“What we’re doing here, really, is designing a ride at Disneyland.”
Raiders of the Lost Ark released on June 12, 1981 and quickly became the highest-grossing film of the year. In fact, it played so long, it also became the 12th highest-grossing film of 1982. The numbers cemented George Lucas as a creative force outside of that galaxy far, far away and restored Steven Spielberg’s reputation as the blockbuster king.
The numbers also promised a sequel, which was not nearly as written as Lucas had let on.
He’d assured Spielberg early that there was a trilogy already laid out in his head and the director would not need to be as involved in developing the next one. When Harrison Ford landed the role, he signed for three movies on Lucas’s word that the others were already on paper somewhere.
They were not, but with his informal retirement from directing, Lucas had time to think about them. He had time to think about a lot of things.
Tomorrowland, for instance.
“I thought that was a portion of the park that had always been a little less than what it could’ve been,” said Lucas on the Star Tours press kit. He’d lobbied Disney more than once to collaborate, but it took a fortuitous change in management to get a call back.
In 1984, Michael Eisner and Frank Wells took the reins of a financially precarious Walt Disney Company. They were the first CEO and president, respectively, with no relation to the name over the door. Instead, they were Hollywood, and that’s exactly what Disney needed.
Tomorrowland was a corporate problem in miniature. The last addition was Space Mountain seven years prior. It still wore the bleach-white optimism of opening day, 1955. In a post-Star Wars, post-Tron present, that particular future was looking awfully old.
One of the last major additions on the chopping block was an experimental motion simulator tie-in to The Black Hole, the studio’s disastrous Star Wars answer. During a meeting with then-president Ron Miller, Imagineer Tony Baxter humbly suggested looking beyond Disney’s science fiction catalog. Specifically, he suggested looking to Lucas and Spielberg: “These films that George Lucas and Steven Spielberg have created captivated the world the way Walt Disney did and they will also tell you, immediately, that Walt Disney was their hero.”
It was promising enough for a sit down. Baxter met Lucas at Miller’s California vineyard, not far from Skywalker Ranch, and the three talked. It was clear, before Eisner and Wells were even a possibility, that Star Wars was closer to a when than an if.
The first plan – a multiple-choice roller coaster – was dropped because of the massive real estate required. The back-up plan was already on the books and rolling around Baxter’s head.
Then came the change in management and, in September 1985, judgement day. To better understand the theme park business, Eisner and Wells asked Imagineers to pitch every idea they had, in-progress and otherwise. It was allegedly an opportunity to educate their new bosses, but Baxter and his colleagues didn’t see it that way. The unspoken objective was to justify their continued employment and prove they knew what guests wanted.
The judge was neither president nor CEO, however, but the latter’s 14-year-old son, Breck Eisner. If an idea passed his taste test, it was good enough for the grown-ups.
Baxter presented his Star Wars simulator. To nobody’s surprise, Breck loved it. To Baxter’s surprise, his dad loved it so much that he demanded another Lucas project open in Tomorrowland in the summer of 1986, a full year ahead of the so-called Star Tours.
Captain EO missed the mark by a month, but in mid-September of 1986, opened in Disney parks on both coasts. It was, in every way, of its time. A top-to-bottom Michael Jackson vanity project, co-starring all manner of gonzo creature, about saving the universe with a few good pop songs. With Lucas producing and buddy Francis Ford Coppola directing, the short film became, minute-for-minute, the most expensive film ever made at $1.76 million per.
The lasting popularity of Captain EO thereafter is up for debate, but the immediate effect was unmistakable. Disney found the pulse. Anyone still skeptical wouldn’t have to wait long for further proof.
On January 9th, 1987, Star Tours opened and stayed open for a sustained 60 hours just to handle the crowds. Baxter was right about motion simulators. Lucas was ecstatic about the partnership. So ecstatic, he just had to needle Spielberg, who’d been consulting in a similar fashion with Universal.
“You screwed up going with Universal,” he told his Indiana Jones cohort, “They could never do a Star Tours.”
Without realizing it, Lucas had poured gasoline on a fire. Spielberg believed in Universal’s theme park bonafides since its designers built a seven-ton King Kong in 1986. There had been talks soon after about a Back to the Future attraction, but no ride system seemed fit for it. After an early ride on Star Tours at his friendly rival’s request, Spielberg told Universal’s team to start messing with motion simulators. The promise of Back to the Future: The Ride was enough to resurrect the company’s plans for Universal Studios Florida.
For the first time since Star Wars and Close Encounters of the Third Kind, the old pals were going head-to-head, this time in Hollywood East.
In the Star Tours video press kit, Lucas fielded a question about what might be next for him and the Mouse with a trademark poker face. “I’m working on four or five other projects that will be coming out,” he said ambiguously enough, before dropping the magic words, “Some of them Indiana Jones rides.”
Alongside Star Tours, The Indiana Jones Epic Stunt Spectacular was intended to be part of the day-one line-up at the Disney-MGM Studios. That sort of rock-‘em-sock-‘em demonstration had been Universal’s stock in trade for decades, and the new Florida park would include updates of Hollywood’s Wild, Wild, Wild West Stunt Show and Miami Vice Action Spectacular.
The $20 million Epic aimed to beat them both in a single show, with more educational content and the largest movable stages in the world to boot.
The story goes that park guests are watching Raiders of the Lost Ark as it’s shot. But the jig is only up after a live recreation of that film’s iconic opening sequence. Once Harrison Ford, or rather his stunt double, is pancaked by the boulder, the film’s second unit comes out to applaud. The stunt double walks out, miraculously three-dimensional, and emphasizes just how heavy the ball is as two grips effortlessly roll it back into place. That spectacle and its resulting punchline set the tone before anyone says, “Action!”
Directed by Jerry Rees of The Brave Little Toaster and staged by actual Raiders stunt coordinator Glenn Randall, Jr., The Indiana Jones Epic Stunt Spectacular would prove an enduring hit with audiences, key word would.
Both of Lucas’s attractions overshot opening day by months, with Star Tours stretching into December. Instead of leaving the 2,150-seat amphitheater empty for the park’s first summer, Lucas and Eisner allowed guests to sit in on technical rehearsals until it was ready in August.
If the day was too hot or the viewer too antsy, they could also pay Indy a visit in The Great Movie Ride. Animatronics of Harrison Ford and John Rhys-Davies lifted, but never quite carried their prize out of a stunning recreation of the Well of Souls, accurate down to the C-3PO and R2-D2 hieroglyphics.
Between that robotic cameo, the stunt show, the Adventure Outpost gift shop beside it, and the collection of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade vehicles beside that, Indiana Jones was a cornerstone of the Disney-MGM Studios.
Epic’s particular popularity wasn’t lost on Eisner or Lucas and neither were the grosses from Last Crusade, released just three weeks after the park opened.
The stunt show and the film presented two halves of a solution to what was fast becoming a problem at Disneyland – space. The infamously landlocked park had very little room to maneuver and, with the new pace of expansion set by Captain EO and Star Tours, very little time to do it. One of the only major parcels of underutilized real estate left was Big Thunder Ranch in Frontierland. Whatever replaced it had to be relatively compact, but also consistent with the Western theme.
Young Indiana Jones and the Adventure Spectacular threaded that needle by sticking to the 1912 Utah prologue from the third film.
Guests would enter a candy-striped circus tent presumably run by the same outfit whose train young Indy flees across in the film. Whose train, it was intended, he would be fleeing across in the show. The Disneyland Railroad was both the selling and sticking point. Every performance, young Indy’s stunt double would jump onto the roof of the actual train, full of actual passengers, and hit whatever marks came next.
For reasons many and obvious, this plan was a non-starter. Despite artwork and even scripts being produced, the Last Crusade take on the Epic Stunt Spectacular was thrown out. But not everybody walked away empty-handed. Lucas kept toying with the idea of his adolescent adventurer and brought him to television two years later in The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles. There was also a particular Imagineer none too upset that the show fell apart.
He hadn’t told anyone during his Star Tours pitch, but Tony Baxter always preferred Indiana Jones to Han Solo. To him, the real prize of the Lucas partnership was getting the archaeologist in the deal.
As design ended and construction began on the ill-fated Euro Disney Resort, original Disneyland illustrator Herb Ryman finished up his concept paintings and asked executive producer Baxter if he had anything else to throw at him. “Well,” said Baxter, “we’re really hoping we can get something going with Indiana Jones.”
Ryman’s renderings for the project are among his last for Disney before his death in 1989. The most elaborate piece imagines an entire land with the romantic, almost subliminal detail of his EPCOT Center work. Three temple-mountains on loan from Angkor Wat hide in the shade of a setting, orange sun. A stone face, possibly a duplicate of the Jayavarman VII carving seen on the Jungle Cruise, smiles serenely over base camp. Pythons mingle with the vines until there’s no telling one from the other.
The painting soon became the basis for Indiana Jones and the Lost Expedition.
Theme park concepts start big, sometimes impossibly so, and shrink as budgets demand. The earliest talks with Lucas, for instance, involved a complete Tomorrowland overhaul dubbed “Lucasport.” In the case of Indy, this meant two attractions instead of one for Disneyland and a similarly exhaustive overhaul of Adventureland.
Lost Expedition referred to the entirety of this new complex, none of its individual, tangled occupants. The Jeep Attraction was always the crown jewel and survived, more or less, as the Indiana Jones Adventure. The supplementary thrill ride, Ore Cart Attraction, was like it said on the tin, a roller coaster adaptation of the famous chase from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. These new additions would intertwine in a shared temple structure that also included the Jungle Cruise and Disneyland Railroad. The Cruise would receive new indoor scenes showing off sprung traps that Dr. Jones had already thwarted. There were even plans, however brief, to use the Cruise to shuttle guests into the temple.
Renowned landscape artist Bryan Jowers captured this colossal pitch in what has become the only lasting proof of it. All four attractions are presented and accounted for, each teetering precariously over the same incandescent lava flow. Weather eyes can even spot some child slaves from the second film, but in Jowers’s defense, they weren’t his idea.
To distill what Indiana Jones meant to the public, Baxter and co. asked Disneyland guests directly. Besides a lone father answering, “enslaved children,” the results were constructive. Caves. Snake pits. Horrible things. Several hundred mentions of a big ball. It helped the team narrow their sprawling expansion into a single, $50 million adventure. Unlike with Star Wars, they didn’t need to worry about a ride system. Then again, this one would be just as experimental.
In 1991, inside a nondescript warehouse in Valencia, Imagineers built the first full-scale mock-up track for the Enhanced Motion Vehicle. The principle was as simple as it was fragile – take a motion simulator, remove the screen, and put it on wheels. There was so little confidence in the EMV that Baxter coined a codename so Lucas and Indiana Jones would remain unscathed if it was an abject failure. All the “Thor” vehicle had to do was follow a white line on the floor and shake as programmed. No theming. Certainly no plot. Just the sensation.
The powers that be rode the barren attraction blindfolded, listening to recorded panic from Sallah. As soon as they got off, the Indiana Jones Adventure was approved. All it needed was, well, an adventure.
From the attraction’s earliest incarnations, the Fountain of Youth was the agreed-upon treasure at the end of the temple. But the EMVs proved their versatility, ultimately capable of delivering a slightly different ride every time. Why shouldn’t the story be as spontaneous?
One MacGuffin became three – eternal youth, earthly riches, prophetic visions – all of them possible gifts of the fickle god Mara, waiting deep within the Temple of the Forbidden Eye. The only condition for receiving such blessings is an averted gaze. Lock eyes with the deity, in any possible depiction, and pay a much graver price than admission.
As soon as Dr. Jones discovered the long-buried temple in 1935, before the events of Temple of Doom, he was naturally skeptical of its power. So, when grant money ran low, he saw little issue with old chum Sallah running guided tours to keep the lights on. In his defense, it worked. Famous travelers from around the world flew in to try their luck and most of them flew home again. Based on the notes of his late mentor, Abner Ravenwood, Jones attempted to find the “Jewel of Power” that makes these divine and damned gifts possible, as well as the tourists that never came back. Then he disappeared, too. At Marcus Brody’s urging, a very concerned Sallah kept the tour business booming in hopes the paying customers might find Indy within.
Disneyland guests don’t need to know any of that, really, and they’d be forgiven for missing most of it. The exposition is split between radio broadcasts, newsreels, and memorandum left open on the good doctor’s desk. They’re easy enough to study, especially on a long wait in the half-mile queue, but the beauty of the Indiana Jones Adventure is its white-knuckle simplicity – as soon as anybody steps into the first antechamber, they know exactly what they’re in for.
That kind of recognition made the franchise a universal language and plans were quickly drafted for a similarly monumental Indiana Jones attraction for the brand-new Euro Disneyland. An Adventure clone was considered, but the park was a Space Mountain short and the other half of the Lost Expedition plans satisfied those missing thrills.
At first, Ore Cart Attraction 2.0 would’ve been just as grandly appointed as Jeep Attraction 2.0. Cavernous temples, overgrown jungles, ancient curses, etc. Then the park opened and everybody sobered up. Euro Disney Resort’s underperformance tanked projects company-wide, the domino effect eventually felling entire parks, but it still desperately needed another coaster. The only difference was that now the ordinary kind would suffice.
Indiana Jones et le Temple du Péril opened on July 30, 1993. It no longer entered a temple so much as swerved around the remains of one. The custom-built ride still managed to make Disney history as the first to go upside down. Beyond this distinction, Péril served its purpose and continues to rattle guests to this day. It just wasn’t what the Imagineers had hoped for.
Less than a month after the compromised attraction opened in Paris, ground broke in Anaheim for Adventure. It was too far along to suffer much from the Euro Disney fallout. With the Eeyore parking lot already cratered, the only way out was through.
A sign was staked in the planter out front, both promise and fair warning – The Adventure Begins… in so many months.
Anybody who couldn’t afford to keep time at the Happiest Place on Earth just had to watch Super Bowl XXIX. The halftime show saw Indy chasing his toughest prize yet – the Vince Lombardi Trophy. Stage punches were thrown. The Eye of Mara was ignored. Patti LaBelle and Tony Bennett joined forces on “Can You Feel The Love Tonight.” It was the biggest possible advertisement on the biggest possible billboard and still not enough.
The grand opening was heralded by not one, but two television specials. The first, a fictionalized making-of, followed John Rhys-Davies and Karen Allen as themselves entering the Temple of the Forbidden Eye and discovering there was nothing fictional about the curse of Mara. The second was a newsier montage of media day festivities hosted by Wil Shriner. Every star in Hollywood seemed to survive the Adventure, even those with admittedly dubious intentions. Before entering the temple, Arnold Schwarzenegger admitted on the record, “I’m just basically here to check out what kind of movie memorabilia I should take with me to Planet Hollywood.” Dean Cain. Fran Drescher. Elliott Gould. Jodie Sweetin. Dennis Miller. All the reviews rhymed, even Arnold’s: “It was fabulous!”
“Once again,” said George Lucas, presiding over a stone cobra, “we’ve turned an action movie into a live-action extravaganza.” As Indiana Jones himself – not Harrison Ford, who had no involvement with the ride due to contract disputes over a fourth film – presented the Jewel of Power, Lucas and Michael Eisner touched the sacred gem and made it official.
On March 4, 1995, the boulder was ready to roll.
The Indiana Jones Adventure: Temple of the Forbidden Eye channeled the spirit of the films in ways even unnoticed. The randomized programming allowed for 160,000 different on-ride experiences. Imagineer and illustrator Chuck Ballew invented an entire alphabet, “Maraglyphics,” to keep all the ancient warnings consistent. The truck that Indy slides under in Raiders is permanently parked out front. Just past the exit, a mine cart from Temple of Doom rusts gracefully. Willard Huyck and Gloria Katz, screenwriters on that sequel, looked over the ride script. Legendary painter Drew Struzan crafted the attraction poster, as he did for the films. It composer Richard Bellis arranged the legendary themes of John Williams into an unmistakable, but seemingly original score. The Jungle Cruise, ultimately shortened instead of extended, received a 1930s makeover along with the rest of Adventureland to make the new explorer in town feel right at home.
In every possible way, it was the ultimate Indiana Jones adventure. Disney even dedicated the 40th anniversary celebration to it, borrowing a familiar font for the new park slogan, “Celebrate 40 Years of Adventure.”
That’s likely why Imagineering didn’t fix much for Indiana Jones Adventure: Temple of the Crystal Skull when it opened with the rest of Tokyo DisneySea in 2001.
The Indo-Asian mythology of its California counterpart is replaced with Mesoamerican, befitting its Lost River Delta surroundings. Instead of a Hindu temple, wayward travelers entera Mayan pyramid. Instead of Sallah running tours, Indy’s here-to-fore unseen coworker Paco handles the finances. Instead of Mara guarding riches three, a massive crystal skull protects the originally intended prize, the Fountain of Youth.
Beat for beat, the ride proper is identical to the original Adventure, though some of the finer points have changed. Without John Rhys-Davies giving his all in the preshow films, the setup is quieter and the resulting tone more severe. The giant snake that attacks riders has been promoted to a giant snake god, Quetzalcoatl to be precise, that attacks riders. The only new major effect is a blown fire ring (fog lit orange) right before the dart corridor.
More substantial, however, is the ride’s belated neighbor, Raging Spirits. As Crystal Skull is to Adventure, Spirits is to Temple du Péril, albeit stripped of any overt Indiana Jones theming. Upon the coaster’s opening in 2005, the two attractions together, Jeep Attraction 2.0 and Ore Cart Attraction 2.0, formed what remains the closest thing yet constructed to the original Lost Expedition plan.
Emphasis on yet.
Since the opening of Temple of the Crystal Skull, no new Indiana Jones experience has been added to any Disney park anywhere. To commemorate the release of the unrelated Kingdom of the Crystal Skull in 2008, Disneyland launched the Indiana Jones Summer of Hidden Mysteries. A new temporary show, Secret of the Stone Tiger, took over Aladdin’s Oasis and filled in the narrative gap leading up to Indy’s discovery of the Temple of Mara. On the rooftops overhead and in the midst of bustling crowds, Random Acts of Indy would break out, allowing passersby an up-close look at Jones doing what he does best – mostly punching. Although, it was not up-close enough for a meet-and-greet, something forbidden by Lucas at the time.
Not that he was on bad terms with the company.
At Star Wars Celebration III in 2005, his first convention appearance in 18 years, Lucas revealed that a Star Tours sequel was in the works. The result – Star Tours – The Adventures Continue – would open in 2011 to a second round of effusive praise. Riders no longer had to settle for a flight to Endor. The new and improved attraction randomly combined opening scenes, destination planets, and more for a possible 700 unique experiences. The original was deemed The Ultimate Adventure, but now there was no contest.
There was also no Indiana Jones.
Rumors of updates involving the other films in the series have haunted the Epic Stunt Spectacular since opening day. To date, minus some painted-over swastikas, it survives unscathed. Hopes for an Adventure clone somewhere at Walt Disney World were complicated, if not dashed by Animal Kingdom’s Dinosaur, a turn-for-turn copy of the track ambushed by apatosaurs instead of skeletons.
And then the unthinkable happened.
A year-and-a-half after Lucas cut the ribbon on Star Tours: The Adventures Continue, he sold Lucasfilm to Disney for $4 billion, the cost of about 80 Indiana Jones Adventures.
“For the past 35 years, one of my greatest pleasures has been to see Star Wars passed from one generation to the next,” he said in the official release, “It’s now time for me to pass Star Wars onto a new generation of filmmakers.”
Disney would spend another year in negotiations with franchise distributor Paramount, but Indy’s absence from the initial announcement is hard to miss.
That galaxy far, far away is just that – a galaxy. The synergistic possibilities are not quite so endless with an ornery grave robber who decks Nazis in his spare time. But Indy didn’t come up in the news around the first Lucas-Disney partnership, either. There was no reason to believe he wouldn’t be making a bigger splash in the parks soon enough.
Nine years later, with cameras finally rolling on Indiana Jones 5, the franchise has lost ground in the parks.
The Great Movie Ride closed. The Last Crusade motorcade could be mistaken for reclaimed art. The Epic Stunt Spectacular closed with everything else during the pandemic but remains closed.
At least the Indiana Jones Adventure is still going strong, plus or minus a few of its most troublesome effects. The ice machine that exploded “rocks” from the ceiling rusted to death six weeks after opening. The structurally unwieldy trick that turned one chamber into three – a hanging turntable that pivoted three doorframes in front of a single door – is now handled with projection mapping. But beyond the simplest mechanical sense, it all still works. It’s still a benchmark of entertainment design.
There’s a reason forums and Facebook groups wish for one more Adventure. And where there’s smoke, usually Indiana Jones isn’t far behind.
In 2015, Jock Lindsey’s Hangar Bar opened at Disney Springs. In the spirit and spectacular décor of Trader Sam’s, the watering hole is dedicated to another world-class globetrotter, the pilot who introduces Jones to his pet snake in Raiders. Faithful fans can toast his heroism as well as that other guy’s with a Cool-Headed Monkey and chase it with a plate of Tanis Tacos. The true diehards might even spot some artifacts from Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, that most beloved of Indy video games. According to the recent DisneylandForward conference, Jock might even be in the market for a second hangar in Anaheim.
That same year, Disney announced the first two steps in reimagining Hollywood Studios, née MGM. Star Wars and Toy Story would get their own lands and, eventually, something else would. No further details have slipped out since, but all it takes is a map to notice who already owns a corner of the park.
Then again, Jones is crafty.
In 2018, qualified rumors slid the possible Indiana Jones land over to Animal Kingdom, specifically to replace Dinoland, the land that has a near-duplicate of the Adventure infrastructure already. Just as fast, that trail went cold and word was he’d be moving back to Hollywood. Then the pandemic wiped the entire drawing board clean.
Tony Baxter is retired, though he does consult on projects involving his past work. George Lucas can only offer friendly advice about his soapy space opera and rough-and-tumble action pictures. Steven Spielberg has ceded the director’s chair for Indy’s last adventure, content to executive produce.
The Indiana Jones legacy will endure, but short of a Ford-less reboot in the foreseeable future, it can only truly thrive in theme parks.
Fundamentally, more even than Star Wars, Indiana Jones was made for them. In those initial talks between Lucas, Spielberg, and Kasdan, they hashed out what would become the mine cart chase in Temple of Doom. When the effects team on that film needed inspiration for the proper movement, they went to Disneyland and rode the Matterhorn Bobsleds and Big Thunder Mountain. As much as the design of the Indiana Jones Adventure made it great, what makes it transcendent is that uncanny thrill, right there in the fossil record from the start.
In case moviegoers missed the first half of Temple of Doom’s title, the tagline spelled it out for them – If adventure has a name, it must be Indiana Jones.
The beauty of any Indiana Jones attraction is that, for those three or four fleeting minutes, maybe it isn’t.
Maybe it’s yours.
Cue the Raiders March.
