Young Indiana Jones and the Treasure of the Peacock's Eye: A review of the Adventures of Young Indiana Jones TV movie

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In March of 1992, almost three years after the premiere of Steven Spielberg's Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade and 16 years before the release of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, George Lucas, Amblin Entertainment, and the ABC television network attempted to create a 70-episode television series that would explore the childhood, adolescence, and young adulthood of the globe-trotting archaeologist/adventurer best known for being an "obtainer of rare antiquities" imbued with supernatural properties. 

The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles was a collection of one-hour episodes that skipped back and forth in the chronology of Indy's formative years, some featuring a very young "Junior" (Corey Carrier), with most starring Sean Patrick Flanery as Indiana Jones between the ages of 16 and 21. 

Part Indy prequel, part history lesson, this was one of the rare television projects personally overseen by Lucas, and it was intended to entertain fans of the archaeologist/adventurer while at the same time introducing many of them to important persons with whom a young Indy might have interacted with as he followed his father, Professor Henry Jones, Sr., and mother Anna on a global lecture tour as a ten-year-old, then later getting into more Indy-like situations during World War I and the post-war Jazz Age. 

Lucas assembled a creative team that included top-notch writers (Frank Darabont, who wrote five episodes), directors (Mike Newell, Nicolas Roeg, Simon Wincer), and a crew that would later be better known for its work on the Star Wars trilogy of prequels - designer Gavin Bocquet, cinematographer David Tattersall, editor Ben Burtt, and producer Rick McCallum, plus a small army of actors, extras, and technicians and sent them to various locations in the United States, Europe, Asia, and Africa. 

The series earned decent but not spectacular ratings during its first season, but either ABC didn't give it good support or the viewers didn't take a shine to the mix of history lesson and entertainment, and The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles limped off the air with just 31 aired episodes, not even half of Lucas' hoped-for 70-show-run. (Sadly, not even a rare TV appearance by Harrison Ford as 50-year-old Indy could save the series from cancellation.) 

Over the years, Lucasfilm managed to keep the young Indy series in video's equivalent of life support. In the late 1990s, Paramount Home Video re-released the Chronicles in tandem with re-issues of the feature films, going as far giving the Harrison Ford flicks "chapter numbers" on the boxes' spines to make them fit into the series' timeline.

Additionally, Lucas and his creative team made at least three "feature-length" TV movies for the series' final "home" (the Family Channel), including such as Young Indiana Jones and the Treasure of the Peacock's Eye.

A Tale of Friendship, Obsession


Indy: Remy, this could be just a wild goose chase. It might not amount to anything.
Remy: I don't think so. Indy, you're my best friend. Let's do it together. One last adventure.


Young Indiana Jones and the Treasure of the Peacock's Eye. - which is Chapter 18 in the entire Indiana Jones saga which includes the four Steven Spielberg-directed movies - begins on November 11, 1918, the very day on which the First World War comes to an end.  Young Indiana Jones (Sean Patrick Flannery) and his Belgian buddy Remy Baudouin (Ronny Coutteure) are back in the trenches of the Western Front as officers in the Belgian Army, and though an armistice has been negotiated between the Allies and Germany, the shooting will not stop until 11 AM (the famous "eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month").

Amidst this bizarre (but true) backdrop, Indy and Remy see that an Indian soldier attached to a British unit has run into "no-man's land" and toward the German lines in what looks like an act of last-minute desertion. Incensed by this totally mindless act of cowardice, Indy runs out to where the soldier, Rajendra Sing (Riz Abbasi) is seen briefly talking to a German soldier (Adrian Edmonson) before he is shot and mortally wounded by a last-minute machine gun burst.

Before Sing dies, however, he hands Indy a wrinkled piece of paper and utters his last words: The eye of the peacock. You must stop him. Stop him! The eye of the peacock...

The first act of this 1995 TV movie follows the recently-discharged Indy and Remy to London, where Remy's wife Suzette (Colleen Passard) and her kids from her previous marriage are waiting to be repatriated to Belgium.  In the Badouins' apartment, Indy and Remy make a fateful decision: they will go off on one last adventure together - to seek out the legendary Eye of the Peacock, a huge diamond once owned by Alexander the Great and now rumored to be stashed somewhere in India.

Remy believes that finding the Eye of the Peacock will make a fortune for both Indy and himself, and although his American friend is anxious to get back home and begin his college education to become an archaeologist, the Belgian's enthusiasm is contagious.  Indy agrees to go on this last quest before taking on the challenges and responsibilities of a young adult.

But before the two buddies go off to Cairo, Egypt on the first leg of their long journey, Indy takes a detour to Oxford to see his childhood tutor, Miss Helen Seymour (Margaret Tyzack - voice only), only to find that she died several weeks earlier, a victim of the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918-19.

Saddened by this latest loss, Indy throws himself - figuratively as well as literally - into the search for Alexander's diamond, a quest that will take him and Remy on a long and danger-filled journey to Egypt, the Dutch East Indies and the islands of the South Pacific.

And in the tradition of the Indiana Jones features, the two friends will face many dangers, including an attractive but shady female fortune hunter/confidence woman (Jayne Ashbourne), tenacious adversaries, ruthless pirates, a long voyage by sea on a lifeboat and being stranded on a remote island, all the while pursuing a mysterious metal container which may - or may not - contain the infamous Eye of the Peacock.

My Take:  Like all the other "movies" derived from the Young Indiana Jones Chronicles and its Family Channel follow-on features, Young Indiana Jones and the Treasure of the Peacock's Eye mixes some elements of the Lucas/Spielberg/Harrison Ford features (set-piece action sequences, a quest for a legendary relic) with some educational ones which involve setting (the end of World War I and the flu pandemic) and Indy's interactions with important people of the day, including author E.M. Forster (William Osborne), archaeologist Howard Carter (Pip Torrens) and sociologist Bronislaw Malinowski (Tom Courtenay).

Writer Jule Selbo (Cinderella II, Hercules and the Amazon Women) may not be on the same writing levels asRaiders of the Lost Ark's Lawrence Kasdan or David Koepp, who wrote the final screenplay for Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, but his work on several other Young Indy adventures earned him the chops to turn in a teleplay that is exciting, poignant and gives viewers insights on human nature.  Here, Indy faces many trials - some of which are purely adventure-driven like those of his "future" Harrison Ford incarnation, but others are of the mind and spirit.

Bronislaw Malinowski: What will you do when you find your diamond and the riches in your dreams?
 Indy: Go back home, become an archaeologist 
Bronislaw Malinowski: That's what you were going to do if you didn't find your treasure.
 Indy: That's what I want to do. 
Bronislaw Malinowski: So you don't need this diamond to fulfill your dreams. How long will you put off your dream looking for this diamond you don't need? Time, Indy, is the most precious thing we own.

Director Carl Schultz - who is the only other person to have directed Harrison Ford as Indiana Jones besides Steven Spielberg (The Mystery of the Blues) - applies his experiences with the series and gives us a riveting, well-paced TV movie which echoes the thrills and chills of the theatrical films.  Sure, the educational bits do seem, well, educational, but Young Indiana Jones and the Treasure of the Peacock's Eye  keeps even the most restless of viewers interested, especially during Indy and Remy's run-ins with the film's assorted baddies.

Recommended: Yes

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