Producer George Lucas revisits the early years of his bold hero Indiana Jones.

"The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones: Volume One" arrives on DVD on Tuesday in the United States, the first of three boxed sets gathering all of the character's youthful exploits from the 1990s TV series.

Along with seven feature-length adventures, the 12-disc set packs 38 documentary segments offering historical insight into the eras, events and illustrious figures Indy encounters, including Theodore Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, Thomas Edison, T.E. Lawrence and Sigmund Freud.

"If Indy just touches on it, sees it or hears about a major historical character, there's a full half-hour documentary on every one of those people," said Rick McCallum, Lucas' producing partner on "Young Indiana Jones."

"History for most kids starts with the release of `Transformers.' There's just no concept of the last century whatsoever," McCallum said. "Kids aren't even aware of World War II. They think the Germans were our allies and Martians were the bad guys."

Along with historians, archaeologists and other scholars, noted politicians, statesmen, military leaders, filmmakers and cultural commentators are interviewed for the documentaries, among them Colin Powell, Henry Kissinger, Gloria Steinem, Barbara Boxer and Martin Scorsese.

The academic approach is fitting, given that Harrison Ford's adult Indiana Jones is an archaeology professor who becomes a globe-trotting adventurer in 1981's "Raiders of the Lost Ark" and the sequels "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom" and "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade."

The DVD set includes a documentary primer about the realities of Indy's profession, in which archaeologists stress that their work involves painstaking research and excavation, and rarely wild adventure or treasure hunts.

"There's a significant difference between the life of Indiana Jones and what most Egyptologists or other archaeologists do," Kent Weeks, an Egyptologist at American University in Cairo, said in the documentary. "You can't go in there and say, `Today, I'm going to come back with gold and jewels beyond the dreams of avarice."'

Volume Two of "The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones" comes to DVD on Dec. 18, and Volume Three debuts next spring, serving as a buildup to the May 22 release of "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull," the first Indy film in 19 years. // Pravda.Ru


Publication date: 23 October 2007   

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