Ever since Lucas announced
the creation of the Young
Indy Chronicles he cleared out that the
series would have nothing to do with the feature
films. Instead, he refused to adopt an unadulterated
action formula that would have insured a long
and prosperous run for the series and declared
his intention to get young people interested in
history. Unfortunately, the final result was not
exactly like that. Certainly, the Verdun
1916 and Somme
1916 episodes managed to create a great
atmosphere and illustrate the horrors of warfare
marvelously, but the way some of the historical
figures were treated was inexcusable. Especially,
in first season's episodes, the presentations
of Franz Kafka, Pablo Picasso and Sergei Pavlovich
Diaghilev, for example, had nothing educational
about them, but, in favor of creating comedic
episodes these wonderful personalities were shown
as caricatures. At the end of each episode the
audience couldn't remember who these people
were and why they should remember them.
Another thing that troubled viewers
was the anti-chronological presentation of each
episode. Although Lucas had created a storyline
for the entire show by naming each episode by
the time and city it took place, the episodes
were shown randomly, therefore creating confusion
among viewers. Nobody knew if this week's
episode was going to take place right after last
week's or five years before.
The idea of bringing in a new director
for each episode was another crucial factor to
the limited success of the Young
Indy Chronicles. The idea worked perfectly
in the case of scriptwriters and that's
because the writers had the chance to work together
and develop all the stories altogether. Directors
don't work this way. Each director stepped
in, did his episode and took off, never really
understanding what the show was all about. Some
of them did a wonderful job while some others
had their own specific ideas about the character
that made it difficult to connect with the rest
of the show. Rick McCallum, who was Lucas'
man-in-the-field and tried to keep his vision
for the show, tried hard to keep the directors
in Lucas' guidelines without rising creative
limitations.
Sean Patrick
Flanery |
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The very first person to find such
a hard case to break was poor Flanery. In an interview
he gave to Starlog
magazine in October 1998 the frustrated actor
explained his point of view. "We had so many
directors. One wanted me to do pratfalls the other
one wanted me to be very dark. That was eerie.
Some of the shows I really loved and some of them
I thought were nonsense. The audience varied from
week to week because of that. One episode would
plug into 13-year-old boys, then another would
get 60-year-old women writing me letters. Some
of them were just different altogether. They had
the same character, Indiana Jones, but some directors
had me do completely different line readings.
I would be like, ‘That's not the character.
That's this absurd farce.' Some of
the directors just resigned themselves to setting
up a scene. ‘OK, we have 40 feet of track,
let's track in out of focus, then go in
focus. OK, bring in the actors and have them say
their things.' They didn't even know
what the dialogue was. Mike Newell is an actors'
director. He says things like, ‘Thespians,
gather around.' We would all do this huddle.
It was like theater. That was great."
Of course, the points that deprived
the series' success should not cloud the
good ones. First of all, Lucas managed to develop
the character of Indiana Jones and even dared
to show him as an old man, freeing him from the
1930s time frame established from the films. Sure
he could have been less preachy, but Lucas decided
to be realistic and present him just like an average
man would have turn to at the same age. Has anyone
ever wonder what ever happened to Bruce Wayne,
Clark Kent or Peter Parker? Haven't they
got old? No, they are stuck in their age, fighting
enemy after enemy because their creators feared
of destroying their image. Lucas didn't
fear, he opted for his hero to have a whole life
and through the Chronicles
he gave viewers the chance to see it.
Flanery with
Liz Hurley
in the London,
May
1916
episode. |
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The series had a great cast lead
by Flanery who was so convincing as Young Indy.
Though not successful as Phoenix, Flanery was
charming, funny and well up to both action and
drama. You could believe that he would grow up
to be Harrison Ford. Supported by a wonderful
cast of veteran actors like Vanessa Redgrave,
Douglas Hen shall, Christopher Lee, Max Von Sydow,
Paul Freeman, Michael Kitchen, Bob Peck, Friedrich
von Thun, Jennifer Ehle and Joss Ackland Chronicles
offered subtle performances and became the starting
point of then unknown Anne Heche, Catherine Zeta
Jones and Liz Hurley.
Another asset that Chronicles
had was its ability to incorporate different styles.
The constant change in tone from romantic love
story to action adventure to comedy to drama became
a common feature on US television, but at the
year 1992 was something new to the sitcom-based
television and this is evidence that the series
was ahead of its time.
At some point in 1996 Lucas made
the decision to comprehensively re-edit the entire
series into 23 TV movies of about an hour and
a half in length, and arrange them in chronological
sequence. For a very short time the series was
renamed The Adventures
of Indiana Jones as a Young Man only to
be re-renamed into The
Adventures of Young Indiana Jones. Still,
new titles were invented for each TV movie, the
Old Indy bookends were removed, and, where necessary,
new footage was shot to make the material run
smoothly in its new format. The new linear approach
to the series' chronology presented particular
problems with the Curse
of the Jackal which jumps forward, in mid-plot,
from 1909 to 1916. In the end a large amount of
new footage was shot, the story split into two
movie-length installments, and tagged as Episode
One and Six
in the series' new numbering system. In
a frankly astonishing bit of technical legerdemain,
new scenes shot with actor Corey Carrier as the
pre-teen Indy were matched with film from five
years before by digitally shrinking the actor
to make him appear the right size in relation
to other performers. Once the new editing was
complete, the series was aired on the USA cable
channel and BBC1.
Flanery in uniform. |
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The marrying of two episodes, similar
in tone in order to create a 90-minute movie was
not always successful. The
Curse of the Jackal worked wonderful because
it was conceived that way while the Masks
of Evil, for example, had two different
stories with the only common thing being the main
character and the dark mood. Many of the weaker
episodes were improved while others that worked
perfectly as single episodes lost their original
impact, not to mention that in some the switch
between two entirely separate segments was laughably
easy to notice.
In 2000, Lucasfilm
released on video sell-through The
Complete Adventures of Indiana Jones, which
consisted of 12 of the newly editing Young Indy
TV movies plus the three feature films. To accommodate
the theatrical films under the general new title
Raiders of the Lost Ark
was renamed Indiana Jones
and the Raiders of the Lost Ark, causing
even more confusion to hard core fans. The series
wasn't a financial success on video either
and the remaining tapes never saw the daylight.
At the dawn of the DVD age Rick McCallum announced
that the entire Young Indy series would come on
DVD with behind the scenes material and documentaries
on the historical figures appearing in each episode.
The development of such a project was considered
very time-consuming and McCallum set a release
date sometime in 2007.
The Young
Indiana Jones Chronicles was one of the
most overlooked properties of 90s television,
despite its flaws. It was Lucas' choice
to change its form that hurt the series more than
bad ratings. Let's all hope that the expected
DVD release will restore the "spirit"
of Lucas' initial dream.
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