As fans eagerly await the arrival of Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny at their local multiplex, Cinema Paradiso takes a look at how archaeologists have been depicted on screen.
Archaeologists have a love-hate relationship with Dr Henry Walton Jones, Jr. They're delighted that one of their own is a household name. But it frustrates them that he doesn't behave like a professional archaeologist and has, therefore, given people a false impression of their vocation. Film producers, however, know that blockbuster audiences wouldn't want to sit through two hours of someone hunched over a trench painstakingly removing dirt particles from fragile artefacts with a soft-bristle brush before making copious notes about the excavation and filing classification reports. They want bullwhips and booby traps, hissable villains and marauding monsters.
In movies, archaeological expeditions tend to revolve around either the search for an object of desire or the unleashing of an ancient and often evil entity. Consequently, the stories fall mostly into the adventure or horror genres and film-makers seek to avoid making the core tropes feel overly formulaic by inventing new quandaries and curses to inflict upon a leader who is as much a man of action (and the vast majority of screen archaeologists are male) as he is a respected scholar.
Despite the best efforts of Hollywood scribes, films about archaeology feel a bit samey. The exotic location may change, as might the historical period from which the quested item hails. Accomplices and scoundrels may vary, as may the nature of the problems to be overcome. But the focus inevitably falls on some sort of what Alfed Hitchcock would have called a 'MacGuffin', which is worth expending a degree of risk and effort to secure.
In a seminal article on films about archaeology, Mark A. Hall wrote, 'Archaeology is about people; who they were, what their lives were like...It asks where we have been, where we are going.' Making this feel relevant to moviegoers of different ages and backgrounds is a tricky task and it has recently been made all the more difficult by the ongoing debate about cultural appropriation and the morality of museum collections. Furthermore, it makes for distinctly uncomfortably viewing when outsiders who consider themselves to be culturally and intellectually superior lay claim to the treasures of an indigenous civilisation that is dismissed as primitive and/or dangerous.
In addition to shifts in post-colonial attitudes, advances in field methodology have also changed the way in which archaeology is viewed. In the eyes of many current practitioners, the travails that Indiana Jones had to endure were brought upon himself because they were 'caused in large part by dismal project planning'. But not all archaeologists work in the same way. Some are based in laboratories or museums and most specialise in particular civilisations rather than being generalists. As a result, it's no longer so easy to echo Willie Scott (Kate Capshaw) at the start of Steven Spielberg's Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984), when she opines, 'I thought archaeologists were always funny little men searching for their mommies.'
Egyptomania
Given the significance to Egyptology - for better or worse - of Napoleon Bonaparte, it's surprising that only a couple of French tele-documenaries have been dedicated to the archaeological aspect of his 1798 military campaign, which helped bring Ancient Egypt to the attention of Western Europe. As regular readers of these Cinema Paradiso articles might expect, Georges Méliès was the first film-maker to exploit the mysteries of Egypt, as he plays a man who shreds a mummy in order to create a living woman (Jeanne d'Alcy) in the sadly lost short, Robbing Cleopatra's Tomb (1899).
But it was the 1922 expedition to the Valley of the Kings sponsored by Lord Carnarvon and led by Howard Carter that sparked the cinema's fascination with Egyptian burial customs. In fact, Tannhauser's The Mummy (1911) and George D. Baker's The Dust of Egypt (1915) had broached the topic before Carter made any substantial discovery. The former centred on a young man trying to curry favour with his sweetheart's Egyptologist father by presenting him with a mummy, while the latter showed how Geoffrey Lascelles (Antonio Moreno) agrees to look after an Egyptian sarcophagus for his English archaeologist pal, Simpson (Charles Brown), only to come face to face with the reanimated mummy of 3000-year old Princess Ameuset (Edith Storey). Only fragments of this comedy survive, but Ernst Lubitsch's The Eyes of the Mummy Ma (1918) is wholly extant and it's a shame it's not available on disc, as it demonstrated that it was possible to base a story on a mummy without the need to involve an archaeologist. Perhaps to compensate, compatriot Adolf Gärtner added several to The Riddle of the Sphinx (1921), including one from the British Museum.
Film-makers became so obsessed with the exotic and supernatural elements of Egyptomania, however, that Carter was ignored until Robin Ellis played him in Philip Leacock's The Curse of King Tut's Tomb (1980). He has since been portrayed by Mark Kingston in Franklin J. Schaffner's Sphinx (1981); Pip Torrens in Young Indiana Jones and the Curse of the Jackal (1992) and Young Indiana Jones and the Treasure of the Peacock's Eye (1995); Giles Watling in The Tutankhamun Conspiracy (2001); Stuart Graham in Ferdinand Fairfax's Egypt (2005); and Max Irons in Peter Webber's Tutankhamun (2016). Carter was also voiced by Benedict Cumberbatch in the Doctor Who radio drama, Forty-Five (2008),
Such was the media's obsession with the curse of Tutankhamun's tomb that Universal decided to follow the success of Tod Browning's Dracula and James Whale's Frankenstein (both 1931) with Karl Freund's The Mummy (1932). Clearly modelled on Carnarvon and Carter, Sir Joseph Whemple (Arthur Byron) and Dr Muller (Edward Van Sloan) accidentally reanimate the mummified high priest, Imhotep (Boris Karloff), who passes himself off as historian Ardeth Bey in order to find the reincarnated Princess Ankh-esen-amun (Zita Johann).
Setting the trend for ageing archaeologists to be depicted as arrogant meddlers in things they don't fully understand, this creepy yarn didn't have the same cultural impact as its predecessors. But it's popular with real-life archaeologists because of Whemple's utterance: 'Much more is learned from studying bits of broken pottery than from all the sensational finds. Our job is to increase the sum of human knowledge of the past' Nevertheless, Universal tweaked the formula in Christy Cabanne's The Mummy's Hand (1940) so that senior archaeologist Dr Petrie (Charles Trowbridge) fell victim to the rampaging Kharis (Tom Tyler) and it's left to hunky assistant Steve Banning (Dick Foran) to save the girl (Peggy Moran) and defeat the scheming Egyptians controlling the mummy (Eduardo Ciannelli and George Zucco) for their own ends.
Three decades later, Banning, Andoheb the high priest (Zucco), and Kharis (Lon Chaney, Jr.) meet again in New England in Harold Young's sequel, The Mummy's Tomb (1942). And Mapleton would also be the scene for Reginald Le Borg's The Mummy's Ghost (1944), as Andoheb instructs Youssef Bey (John Carradine) to return Kharis to Egypt. However, in seeking to lure the mummy with tana leaves, Youssef puts Amina Mansori (Ramsay Ames) into a trance and archaeology student Tom Hervey (Robert Lowery) has to come to the rescue.
In his final appearance in the role, Chaney's Kharis is still searching for his beloved, Princess Ananka (Virginia Christine) in Leslie Goodwins's The Mummy's Curse (1944), which brings Dr James Halsey (Dennis Moore) and Dr Ilzor Zandaab (Peter Coe) from the Scripps Museum to retrieve the mummy, which had supposedly drowned in a New England swamp that's about to be drained. Reliant on recycled footage, this was a disappointing way for the cycle to end, with future director Joe Dante dubbing it one of the worst ever horror films. Of course, this makes it a must-see for Cinema Paradiso users, who can rent all four sequels on a pair of double-bill DVDs.
Such was the vogue for bandaged rampagers that menacing characters were slotted into whodunits like Louis King's Charlie Chan in Egypt (1935) and Norman Foster's Mr Moto Takes a Vacation (1939), as well as comedies like Fred Guiol's Mummy's Boys (1936), which starred the underrated duo of Bert Wheeler and Robert Woolsey, and Charles Lamont's Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy (1955), which brought at end to Bud and Lou's association with Universal after 28 pictures. Kurt Katch played the archaeologist on the trail of Klaris (Eddie Parker), while the wonderful Marie Windsor essays the opportunist hoping to steal the treasure from Princess Ara's tomb.
Hammer Time
Until the mid-1950s, archaeology movies had exclusively been made in black and white. But Robert Pirosh's Valley of the Kings (1954) changed all that. Indeed, this Technicolor adventure even cast Eleanor Parker as the daughter of a noted archaeologist who believes that Robert Taylor's dig will unearth the tomb of Joseph (of Technicolor Dreamcoat fame). Richard H. Landau's low-budget Pharaoh's Curse (1956) followed. However, no horrors put colour to better use than those produced by Hammer.
Taking his cues from the Universal sequels, Jimmy Sangster's script for Terence Fisher's The Mummy (1959) sees Stephen Banning (Felix Aylmer) and Joseph Whemple (Raymond Huntley) venture into the tomb of Princes Anananka (Yvonne Furneaux) and reanimate Kharis (Christopher Lee) after Whemple reads aloud from the Scroll of Life. As Aylmer's son, Peter Cushing is left to clear up the mess, although Nina Wilcox Putnam, the co-writer of the 1932 original, was less than impressed with this 'disgusting English remake'.
Hammer were stung more by the mixed reviews. But, with the box-office tills ringing, the studio returned to the fray with Michael Carreras's The Curse of the Mummy's Tomb (1964), which warned of the dangers of disrespecting ancient artefacts, as Ra-Antef (Dickie Owen) runs amok after American showman Alexander King (Fred Clark) exhibits the items found by Egyptologists John Bray (Ronald Howard), Sir Giles Dalrymple (Jack Gwillim), and Professor Eugene Dubois (Bernard Rebel).
Undaunted by the lukewarm response, Hammer bade farewell to Bray Studios with John Gilling's The Mummy's Shroud (1967), which cast stuntman Eddie Powell as the bandaged marauder, who is awoken during a 1920s expedition by Sir Basil Walden (André Morell) and backer Stanley Preston (John Phillips). However, Seth Holt's Blood From the Mummy's Tomb (1971) was a significant improvement, as it drew on Bram Stoker's The Jewel of Seven Stars in sending Professor Julian Fuchs (Andrew Keir, a late replacement for an indisposed Peter Cushing) to recover the mummy of Queen Tera (Valerie Leon) in order to recreate her tomb beneath his home. Holt's death five weeks into the shoot cast a pall and Michael Carreras had to take over. But James Villiers makes a splendid villain as Corbeck, the expedition leader who dupes Fuchs's daughter (also Leon) into helping him bring Tera back to life.
Stoker's tome also informed Mike Newell's The Awakening (1980), which brings the story forward to 1961. Matthew Corbeck (Charlton Heston) and assistant Jane Turner (Susannah York) discover the tomb of Queen Kara just as Anne Corbeck (Jill Townsend) goes into labour. Eighteen years later, daughter Margaret (Stephanie Zimbalist) is possessed by the manipulative mummy. A Robin Cook novel provided the impetus for Franklin J. Schaffner's Sphinx (1981), which was unusual in making the Egyptologist a woman, Erica Baron (Lesley Anne Down). Frustratingly, her encounter with black marketeers and a mummy's curse isn't currently available on disc.
Hollywood's interest in all things Egypt dissipated for two decades, although Woody Allen put an amusing spin on cinematic archaeology in The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985), when Tom Baxter (Jeff Daniels) steps through the screen at a mid-30s New Jersey theatre after becoming obsessed with Cecilia (Mia Farrow), whom he keeps noticing in the audience. In addition to earning Allen an Oscar nomination for his screenplay, this Depression comedy also won the BAFTA for Best Film.
Despite the success of the first three Indiana Jones features, writer-director Stephen Sommers decided to make adventurer Rick O'Connell (Brendan Fraser) the hero of The Mummy (1999), a reworking of the 1932 plotline that brings librarian and amateur Egyptologist Evelyn Carnahan (Rachel Weisz) to Hamunaptra with her brother, Jonathan (John Hannah). However, by reading from the Book of the Dead, Evelyn succeeds in awaking Imhotep (Arnold Vosloo). While it might have been fascinating to see how George A. Romero, Clive Barker, or Joe Dante might have handled the material (especially as the latter planned to cast Daniel Day-Lewis as the mummy), this a rattling good yarn that earned an Oscar nomination for its sound design.
It came as no surprise, therefore, when the principals were reunited in The Mummy Returns (2001), which saw Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson make his acting debut as the Scorpion King. Indeed, he made such an impact that he was given his own spin-off prequel, Chuck Russell's The Scorpion King (2001), which spawned Russell Mulcahy's The Scorpion King 2: Rise of a Warrior (2008), Roel René's The Scorpion King 3: Battle For Redemption (2012), and Mike Elliot's The Scorpion King 4: Quest For Power (2015), as well as Don Michael Paul's reboot, The Scorpion King: Book of Souls (2018).
Yet, there have since been complaints about the Sommers dualogy that the Egyptians curating the antiquities in the museums in Cairo and London are outdated caricatures who reinforce the colonial myth that only Western archaeologists truly appreciate the country's past. Perhaps that's why Rob Cohen's The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor (2008) was set in 1940s China and focussed on the discovery of the Terracotta Warriors. That said, Anthony Wong's rogue Kuomintang general can hardly be said to right many cultural wrongs. Note the difference of approach taken to Egypt's heritage in Shadi Abdel Salam's The Night of Counting the Years (1969), which tells the true story of the 1880s Horabat tribesmen who alerted the authorities in Cairo to the grave-robbing activities of the Abd el-Rassuls. Produced by Roberto Rossellini, this neo-realist masterpiece really should have been released on disc by now. It's a masterpiece.
Very much available from Cinema Paradiso on high-quality DVD and Blu-ray, however, is Roland Emmerich's Stargate (1994). This rather ingenious fantasy has archaeologist Daniel Jackson (James Spader) realise that some hieroglyphics discovered in 1928 by the father of Dr Catherine Langford (Viveca Lindfors) provide clues to the existence of a wormhole that enables the pair to accompany Colonel Jack O'Neil (Kurt Russell) on a mission to the planet, Abydos. Also on offer with a single click are the sequels, Martin Wood's Stargate Continuum and Robert C. Cooper's Stargate: The Ark of Truth (both 2008), and the small-screen spin-offs, Stargate SG-1 (1997-2007), Stargate Atlantis (2004-08), and Stargate Universe (2009-10).
Despite taking us back to Luxor and starring Jason Scott Lee, Russell Mulcahy's Tale of the Mummy (1998) is not currently on disc. However. we can bring you the same director's The Curse of King Tut's Tomb (2006), which pits archaeologist Danny Freemont (Casper Van Dien) against Morgan Sinclair (Jonathan Hyde), a member of the Hellfire Council intent on finding the four pieces of an emerald tablet that would allow them to summon an ancient Egyptian demon. The threat loosed by Professor Hayden Masterson (John Rhys-Davies) and Doug Adler (David Charvet) in Roger Christian's Dawn of the Mummy (aka Prisoners of the Sun, 2013) are the gods controlled by the mummy, Al Khem Ayut (Cedric Proust). However, this remake is rather tame compared to Frank Agrama's Dawn of the Mummy (1981), whose zombie frenzies were so graphic that it was branded a video nasty and banned under the Obsecene Publications Act.
Found-footage finally made an appearance in the sub-genre with Grégory Lavasseur's debut, The Pyramid (2014), which was produced by Alexandre Aja. The expedition to investigate a subterranean structure is led by the father-and-daughter team of Miles (Denis O'Hare) and Nora Holden (Ashley Hinshaw), who quickly become aware that they are not alone in the labyrinth.
All of which brings us to Alex Kurtzman's The Mummy (2017), which gave Tom Cruise the chance to atone after turning down Stephen Sommers (along with Brad Pitt, Ben Affleck, and Matt Damon). He doesn't play an archaeologist, though. Nick Morton is an opportunistic army sergeant, who accidentally revives the evil Princess Ahmanet (Sofia Boutella) after joining forces with Egyptologist Jennifer Halsey (Annabelle Wallis) in the hope of finding a fabulous ruby. More indebted to CGI effects than its immediate predecessors, this couldn't be more different than Zeina Durra's Luxor (2020), which follows aid worker Hana (Andrea Riseborough), as she heads to Upper Egypt to recover from her experiences on the Syrian border. However, her chance to unwind is complicated when she bumps into archaeologist and old flame, Sultan (Karim Saleh). Lots of emotions, but not a mummy in sight.
Agatha Digs It
Agatha Christie first visited Egypt in 1910 and set her first (and ultimately unpublished) novel, Snow Upon the Desert, in Cairo. Having turned her attention to whodunits, she became caught up in Egyptomania and sent Hercule Poirot in the steps of Howard Carter in the 1923 short story, 'The Adventure of the Egyptian Tomb'. David Suchet would investigate the case on television in a 1993 episode of Agatha Christie's Poirot (1989-2014).
Following the disappearance recreated in Michael Apted's Agatha (1979), Christie arrived at a dig at Ur in 1928 after travelling on the train that would feature in Sidney Lumet's 1974 and Kenneth Branagh's 2017 adaptations of Murder on the Orient Express (a case that Suchet would crack in 2010 ). She returned east two years later and met archaeologist Max Mallowan. After their marriage, she accompanied him on several trips to Syria and Iraq, writing in the morning and photographing and archiving in the afternoon.
The 1936 novel, Murder in Mesopotamia, was reworked for Suchet in 2002, with Ron Berglas playing the archaeologist receiving threatening letters. Suchet would also be on hand for Death on the Nile in 2004, which came between big-screen versions starring Peter Ustinov ( John Guillermin, 1978 ) and Branagh, who directed himself in 2022. At one point in the novel, Poirot compared sleuthing to excavation. 'You take away the loose earth,' he explained, 'and you scrape here and there with a knife until finally your object is there, all alone'. But it's hard to avoid the Orientalist smugness that often spills over from the texts into the films.
Not all of Christie's archaeology-related works have reached the screen, however. Her 1937 play, Akhnaton, about 18th-Dynasty pharaoh Akhenaten, is almost forgotten today, while no one has adapted the 1945 mystery, Death Comes As the End, which is set in Thebes in 2000 BCE. The BBC announced that it was working on the story in 2019, but nothing has been heard since, with the same going for the espionage thriller, They Came to Baghdad, the rights to which were acquired in 2018. This had been dramatised on American television in 1952, but there has yet to be any sort of version of the Morocco-set thriller, Destination Unknown. Of course, Cinema Paradiso has Christies galore to choose from. See our article, Top 10 Agatha Christie Films, to help with your next selection.
In all their years in the Middle East, Christie and Mallowan would never have come across anything like the subterranean Sumerian civilisation discovered beneath a Mesopotamian mountain by archaeologists John Agar and Hugh Beaumont in Virgil W. Vogel's cult classic, The Mole People (1956). But Cinema Paradiso users can catch up with these subjugated wretches and their albino masters, perhaps in a double bill with Jim O'Connolly's underrated British chiller, Tower of Evil (aka Horror of Snape Island, 1972), which joins academic Anthony Valentine on a search for mystic Phoenician treasures that will not be surrendered easily.
Although scenes are set in Cairo, the archaeological expedition in Anthony Minghella's Best Picture-winning adaptation of Michael Ondjate's The English Patient (1996) takes Hungarian cartographer László Almásy (Ralph Fiennes) to the Cave of Swimmers in Libya. Both countries are, of course, in Africa, which also provides the backdrop for Kurt Neumann's Tarzan and the Amazons (1945) and Jack Lee's South of Algiers (1953). The former sends Johnny Weissmuller and explorer Henry Stephenson in search of the lost city of Palmyria, while the latter takes British Museum scholar Eric Portman and curator Van Heflin to the Roman desert tomb that supposedly contains the Golden Mask of Moloch.
The gold stashed on a Confederate ship that's buried somewhere in the desert in modern Mali interests Dirk Pitt (Matthew McConaunghey), one of those maverick explorers Hollywood can't resist, in Breck Eisner's take on Clive Cussler's bestseller, Sahara (2005). There's no scholarship on show here, but the WHO doctor Penélope Cruz's determination to eradicate a deadly disease lends a touch of altruism. Sam Rockwell is an archaeologist in Jared Hess's Don Verdean (2015), but his quest to smuggle biblical relics out of Israel is presented with a canny mix of quirky wit and provocative morality.
We end the section on a more sombre note, however, as Zeva Oelbaum and Sabine Krayenbühl's documentary, Letters From Baghdad (2016), explores Oxford graduate Gertrude Bell's range of achievements as an archaeologist, cartographer, explorer, photographer, writer, and suspected spy. Tilda Swinton reads from her correspondence and reveals how she locked horns with T.E. Lawrence (see David Lean's Lawrence of Arabia, 1962) before becoming Iraq's Honorary Director of Antiquities after the Great War. Try watching this captivating profile with Werner Herzog's Queen of the Desert (2015), in which Bell is portrayed by Nicole Kidman and Lawrence by Robert Pattinson.
Indy and His Ilk
Look away now old school archaeologists, as we're going on a treasure hunt. As it was deemed that archaeologists were dull dogs who couldn't dig themselves out of a hole, film-makers tended to send a macho type on the expedition to perform any necessary heroics. H. Rider Haggard's King Solomon's Mines offered a variation on the theme, as adventurer Allan Quartermain comes to the aid of treasure seeker Patsy O'Brien and his daughter, Kathy. The trio were played by Cedric Hardwicke, Arthur Sinclair, and Anna Lee in Robert Stevenson's 1937 adaptation, which co-starred Paul Robeson as the usurped chief's son, Umbopa.
Stewart Granger hired himself out to Deborah Kerr in Compton Bennett's 1950 remake (another for the 'should be on disc' list) before Richard Chamberlain and Sharon Stone were paired by J. Lee Thompson in 1985. They were reunited in Gary Nelson's Allan Quatermain and the Lost City of Gold (1986) before Steve Boyum went back to basics with Patrick Swayze and Alison Doody in King Solomon's Mines (2004). Two years later, Jonathan Frakes imparted a fresh twist on the scenario in The Librarian: Return to King Solomon's Mines (2006), which had Bob Newhart tag along with Noah Wyle and Gabrielle Anwar after the mild-mannered librarian received a map in the post.
The missing link between Allan Quartermain and Indiana Jones is Henry Smith, a Cambridge archaeologist who uses an expedition to Nazi Germany to liberate prisoners from the concentration camps. Having played the French Revolutionary hero, Sir Percy Blakeney, in Harold Young's The Scarlet Pimpernel (1934), Leslie Howard delighted in directing himself in Pimpernel Smith (1941), which is not only noteworthy on its own merits, but also because it inspired Raoul Wallenberg, the Swedish diplomat whose heroics during the Holocaust were enacted by Richard Chamberlain in Lamont Johnson's Wallenberg: A Hero's Story (1985).
The postwar period saw a number of archaeologists use their fists as well as their wits. Among them was David Redfearn (Trevor Howard) in Ronald Neame's adaptation of Victor Canning's bestseller, Golden Salamander (1950), who runs into some gun smugglers after being dispatched to Tunisia by the British Museum to collect the Etruscan artefacts rescued from a shipwreck. The brain and brawn combination also worked to good effect for Harry Steele (Charlton Heston) in Jerry Hopper's Secret of the Incas (1954) and Dr James Calder (Alan Ladd) in Jean Negulesco's Boy on a Dolphin (1957). The latter needed to be on his mettle to prevent corrupt collector Victor Parmalee (Clifton Webb) from stealing the golden statue found by Greek sponge diver, Phaedra, who was played by Sophia Loren on her English-language debut.
Like Calder, Clark Savage, Jr. (Ron Ely) is a pugnacious scholar who 'rights wrongs and punishes evildoers' in Michael Anderson's Doc Savage: The Man of Bronze (1975). Drawn from a 1933 pulp novel by Kenneth Robeson, this actioner chimed in with serials like Buck Rogers, Zorro's Fighting Legion (both 1939), Spy Smasher, and Don Winslow of the Navy (both 1942), which had inspired George Lucas to create the ultimate all-action archaeologist in 1973.
Eight years passed before Steven Spielberg's Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) hit cinemas and the character of Indiana Smith went through several changes before he got a new surname and Harrison Ford was cast after Tom Selleck was forced to withdraw because he couldn't break his contract for Magnum P.I. (1980-88). Although he looked like a latterday cowboy, Dr Jones's intellectual capabilities were never questioned, as he confounds both rival René Belloq (Paul Freeman) and Gestapo sadist Major Arnold Toht (Ronald Lacey) in seeking the Ark of the Covenant.
Fresh from scooping four Oscars, the Sankara Stones became his quarry in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984), a prequel that pitted Indy, Willie Shaw, and 11 year-old Short Round (Ke Huy Quan) against a vicious Thuggee cult led by Mola Ram (Amrish Puri). Accusations of cultural imperialism and stereotyping were brushed aside, along with complaints about the levels of violence that led to the creation of the PG-13 certificate. Indeed, such was the box-office clamour that Sean Connery was cast as Dr Jones, Sr. in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989), which turned around a quest for the Holy Grail.
Almost two decades passed before Spielberg returned with Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008), which presented Indy with such a formidable Cold War opponent in KGB agent Irina Spalko (Cate Blanchett) that he needed to hook up with old flame Marion Ravenwood (Karen Allen) and their son, Mutt Williams (Shia LaBeouf), in order to keep a telepathic Peruvian skull out of the Kremlin's clutches. There's no Spielberg at the helm for Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (2023), which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival. But James Mangold has been able to call on the 80 year-old Harrison Ford for a last hurrah set in 1969 alongside Karen Allen and John Rhys-Davies (returning as Sallah), as they seek to help goddaughter Helena Shaw (Phoebe Waller-Bridge) stop ex-Nazi-turned-NASA-bigwig Jürgen Voller (Mads Mikkelsen) from obtaining the Antikythera and rewriting the past.
Cashing in on Indy's appeal, Jeff Fahey went in search of the treasures of Alexander the Great in Anwar Kawadri's The Serpent of Death (1989), while the baddies dealt in black market antiquities in Irvin Kershner's Bond movie, Never Say Never Again (1983), and James Cameron's 007 homage, True Lies (1994). The MacGuffin in Peter Berg's Welcome to the Jungle (aka The Rundown, 2003) is a golden idol known as The Devil's Cat and it's kept in a hidden South American chamber protected by booby traps. They prove no deterrent for Beck the bounty hunter (Dwayne Johnson), although he is conflicted because Mariana (Rosario Dawson) wants to sell the item to free the locals from exploitative mine boss, Cornelius Hatcher (Christopher Walken).
Ownership is a topic little discussed in archaeology movies, as it makes it more difficult to recycle stereotypes or put a heroic spin on history. Take the example of Lieutenant Colonel Percy Fawcett, whose story is told in James Gray's The Lost City of Z (2016). Charlie Hunnam plays the British explorer-cum-archaeologist who was joined by Henry Costin (Robert Pattinson) on an Edwardian expedition to find a fabled settlement in the Brazilian jungle. Tom Holland plays son Jack Fawcett and he will shortly essay Indy-inspired video game character Nathan Drake in Ruben Fleischer's Uncharted (2022), which is bound to reopen the debate about the difference between a scholarship-driven archaeologist and a treasure seeker who just happens to have letters after their name.
