The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones - Volume II: The War Years

(C) 2007 Lucasfilm Ltd. and Paramount Home Video

In the early 1990s, after the success of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, producer George Lucas came up with an ambitious project: a 70-episode live-action TV series chronicling the adventures of a young Henry (Indiana) Jones, Jr. as a pre-teen boy and a restless adolescent, taking the future archaeologist on a globetrotting journey of self-discovery and preparing him for his raid on the Lost Ark and other "rare antiquities" in the three Steven Spielberg-directed movies. 

Lucas assembled a creative team that included top-notch writers (Frank Darabont, who would later write The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile, 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 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 exotic locations in Europe, Asia, and Africa. 

The resulting series, The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles, premiered on the ABC-TV network in March of 1992 after a brief but splashy publicity campaign, and for a while, it looked like Lucas' high-concept project of mixing the fictional character with real-life historical figures would work. Critics gave the show rave reviews, citing its intelligent scripts, great production values, and good acting, especially on the crucial Teen Indy role by Sean Patrick Flannery, who was hired after River Phoenix - who had played Indy at 13 in The Last Crusade - turned the part down because he didn't want to return to television. 

Whether it was due to the vagaries of television scheduling, lack of interest among viewers, or little support from the network, only 31 of Lucas' 70 story outlines were turned into episodes and aired, and The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles was canceled after only two seasons. Lucasfilm and Paramount Home Video later released the series (along with remastered versions of the three existing films) on sequentially numbered VHS tapes. 

Lucasfilm, not wanting to waste its investment in the series, also went back and re-edited various episodes and "married" several pairs of one-hour shows to make feature length made-for-TV movies which aired in the late 1990s. 

These re-edited made-for-television films have now been remastered and packaged by Lucasfilm Ltd. and Paramount Home Entertainment into three multi-disc DVD sets under the title The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones. 

The first, The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones: Volume One, follows pre-teen Indy (Corey Carrier) through five of the seven chapters in which he travels with Prof. Henry Jones, Sr., his mother Anna, and Miss Helen Seymour, his strict-yet-loving tutor, and ends with two tales that start sending "teen Indy" (Flannery) onto more romantic-and-dangerous tales involving industrial espionage in the U.S., Indy's inadvertent involvement in the Mexican revolution, and his eventual enlistment in the Belgian Army during World War I. 

The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones: Volume Two - The War Years picks up where Volume One left off, with Indy (using the alias "Henri Defense") serving in the Belgian Army alongside his friend Remy (Ronny Coutteure). Caught in the maelstrom of the 20th Century's first global conflict, Indy sees the hellish face of war in many places - from the muddy trenches of the Somme in France, a German POW camp for "troublesome prisoners," the ritzy nightlife (and bedrooms) of wartime Paris in the arms of Mata Hari, and the dangerous wilderness of Africa, just to name a few of the exotic and perilous places where the adventures take place. 

As in Volume One, the format of the eight "features" is still "Indy meets real-life historical figures while on an adventure." And where the first Volume's seven features shed some light into how the "Harrison Ford Indy" learned about other cultures and could speak so many foreign languages, Volume Two's World War I settings and situations further push the character along to his fedora-wearing, whip-wielding, sure-shooting adventurer/scholar destiny. 

Along with several hours' worth of related documentaries about the events and historical figures depicted in the series, The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones - Volume Two: The War Years includes the following re-edited features: 

Trenches of Hell

Demons of Deception

Phantom Train of Doom

Oganga: The Giver and Taker of Life

Attack of the Hawkmen

Adventures in the Secret Service

Espionage Escapades

Daredevils of the Desert 

Fans of the Young Indiana Jones Chronicles will tell you that this isn't the series as it originally aired on TV 15 years ago, and in some ways this is a bit of a disappointment, especially for those of us who didn't mind the series' habit of skipping hither-and-yon along the timeline. 

Gone, too, are the "bookends" that featured a 93-year-old Indy (George Hall), who bore a striking (and intentional) resemblance to the legendary director John Ford. In most cases, they were just there to introduce the stories then wrap them up nicely, but in one of the more poignant chapters (Volume One's Love's Sweet Song, the episode which featured a young Elizabeth Hurley as Indy's romantic interest in 1916 London), the "old Indy" bookends were really nice. 

Nevertheless, if you're a die-hard Indy fan who is looking forward not only to the 2008 release of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull but also to the final volume of the Adventures of Young Indiana Jones, these DVDs are still worth watching and owning. The writing, acting, directing and production values are still evident despite the radical format changes, and history buffs and/or PC gamers will enjoy the extra features. which include more than two dozen in-depth documentaries, an interactive timeline, plus an interactive PC game. 

Product Details 

Rating:Not Rated 

Running Time: 726 Minutes 

Label: Paramount 

Studio: Paramount Home Video 

Release Date: December 18, 2007 

DVD Format: Digipak, Academy , Closed Captioned, Color 

DVD Features: Subtitles: English, Audio Track 1: English, Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo