Indiana Jones And The Last Crusade: How The Climactic Three Challenges Were Made
34 years ago, Indiana Jones took a leap of faith.
One of the key themes of the Indy franchise has been the clash between science and the supernatural, and in 1989, director Steven Spielberg and writers George Lucas, Menno Meyjes, Jeffrey Boam, and an uncredited Tom Stoppard made that theme more personal than ever in the thrilling climax of "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade." In a hidden temple, Indy's father, Henry Jones Sr. (Sean Connery), has been shot by Nazi sympathizer Walter Donovan (Julian Glover) and lies bleeding out on the floor. The only way for Indy to save his father is to obtain the holy grail. But first, he must face three challenges.
The character's traversal of those challenges, the ensuing encounter with an ancient grail knight, and the subsequent selection of the proper grail among a host of options results in some of the most iconic moments in the entire franchise and arguably the best encapsulation of the father-son dynamic Spielberg frequently explores in his movies.
With "Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny" arriving in theaters this week, let's take a look back at that legendary climax and conclusion of "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade" through the eyes of several people who worked on it.
Working with a legend
Steven Spielberg's run in the 1980s was nothing short of legendary. His feature directing credits in that decade included "Raiders of the Lost Ark," "E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial," a segment of "The Twilight Zone: The Movie," "The Color Purple," and "Empire of the Sun," and his reputation preceded him as he headed into production on "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade."
Steve Beck (Visual Effects Art Director, Industrial Light & Magic): If you do anything for Steven, that's the most important part: You don't want to get anything wrong. He had a very specific vision, as he always does, and so it always got top-notch attention. Steven being probably ILM biggest client during my tenure there — it wasn't George [Lucas], certainly, it was Steven. He was the one who supplied film after film after film. Well, Steven and Amblin, I guess I should say, supplied film after film that really made, during my time at ILM, it such a special place. So he was client number one and was attended to in that regard and respected in that regard as well.
Was that the real sweet spot of his career? I'd like to think so. He certainly had a lot of fun with the pictures he was doing at the time, but Steven always loved to make movies. I was on a couple of projects of his ... where he was just a kid in a candy store, just having fun doing what he wanted. We had one big meeting — it had nothing to do with any film project, it was a ride film for "Back to the Future" for Universal [Studios theme park]. We didn't actually get the job, but we had this great meeting with him and he showed up on a bicycle on the backlot at Sony when he was shooting "Hook," and he would just have a great day filming and there's nothing but a grin on his face when he arrived. So [when] you see somebody who enjoys his job as much as Steven did, the work was infectious.
Nick Dudman (Chief Prosthetics Makeup Artist): He was very easy and approachable to deal with. And I mean, he came up to the workshop, we were assembling the skeleton, and he had lots to say about what we were doing. He seemed quite amused by the stuff we do. I mean, let's face it, the stuff we do is silly. It is. It's not like a real job. It's kids having fun and he appreciated that, absolutely, and building skeletons and stuff. Well, what's not to like? He was always very easy and approachable because he knew how to shoot something to its best effect. That's the beauty of working with somebody who's that experienced and that skilled at what they do, is that you could probably take a tomato on the set and he'd make it interesting. "What's its best side?" He would be able to tell you. So yeah, my memories of it are actually, it was a very slick shoot because it was so well organized.
David Worley (Camera Operator): The first week, I was the A camera operator, so I was feeling the tension of that a bit because I hadn't done an A camera with Steven before. Mike Roberts was late coming in from "Mississippi Burning," which he was just finishing off, so it was that situation.
Steve Beck: The role of the visual effects art director was to make sure that those boards were being adhered to, and to the point where you would get the plate information, the plates from the practical photography, and then you would take the plates and then you would put the boards with the animated bits over the plate so people could see how the plate interacted with the effects on top of it. It was constantly rechecking and checking and rechecking to make sure you were adhering to the director's vision. Because he was always ahead of you anyways.
David Worley: [Spielberg was] not particularly collaborative. I might suggest a lens. For example, say the main camera was on a 50 [millimeter] and then I'd be doing a tighter angle. Steven would say, "Well, put a 75 on," and I'd say, "Well, wouldn't it be better maybe to put a hundred on to get the difference?" He said, "No, no, 75." Then maybe half an hour later, it'd be like, "Just try the hundred and see what..." [laughs] One of those, you know?
Steve Beck: [Spielberg] was God, so you didn't question what God wanted. And if God wants it to look like that, then God gets it. Okay.
David Worley: During the temple scenes, Spielberg asked me to set up a shot over Harrison's shoulder onto Alison Doody, so I spent a few minutes with Harrison lining it up. When it was offered up to Spielberg, he said, "No — that's not what I want!" Deflated, I turned to Harrison and apologized for wasting his time. "Don't worry," he said, "I guess it was just your turn for a bollocking!"
Barry Wilkinson (Property Master): We only had one or two meetings with Steven because you never got him for very long. That's why his time was so important to each department. He was such a busy man.
Challenge 1: Only the penitent man will pass
In the first challenge, Indy walks through a spooky corridor covered with cobwebs, having seen a hapless minion decapitated while trying to pass through moments earlier. Thanks to his father's journal, he's able to ascertain the way through: If only the "penitent man will pass," the penitent man is humble before God, so Indy kneels at the last second, rolls forward, and avoids two giant spinning razor blades that emerge from the walls.
Nick Dudman: We were doing chopped off heads for when those blades come through and the guy goes forward and suddenly the wind comes and thump, another beheading ... When you want to take life cast of actors with an expression — and there was an expression there — any actor can hold an expression unless they're being live cast and they have no frame of reference. So when you say to somebody, "Okay, twist your face up and open your mouth and do this thing," and they hold it, and you go, "Yeah, just like that. And if you want to just keep an eye on the mirror, that's what we want and we'll go as quick as we can," and that's what you do. Of course when you fill it with plaster and you get the head out, it's usually a very, very pale imitation of that [expression] because nobody can hold that, especially without a frame of reference. And of course, once the alginate goes over their eyes, they can't see. But I remember the live cast was very straightforward. This sounds dreadful, really, but making severed heads is fun. And then it was just rolling severed heads down flights of stairs, which is the thing you can spend a morning doing perfectly happily.
That was a foam rubber head in the end skinned, I think, but we used to go through different materials for different things, and also weights. This sounds again dreadful, but if you want to roll the severed head, you really have to get a weight placed on one side of it so that it will get a cadence going and roll because it's not a sphere. So obviously you do many takes, but if the director has said, "I wish it to land there," then you're going to be there a while and you try all sorts of things, because every little bump in the ground and the fact there's a nose is going to change things. Nowadays we find we've run pretty much everything in silicone and it's much more forgiving. But again, you've still got to weight it right, because if it's too light, it will boing and jump. This is why you find yourself going, "Okay, so how much does a severed head weigh?" You probably end up asking a trainee to lay their head on the scales and try to compensate and figure it out, and that kind of thing's fun.
David Worley: There was one instance when the guard is walking up prior to getting beheaded, and then Indy walks up the steps. The day before we did that, Steven said to me, "I'd like you to do a Steadicam shot for me tomorrow." I said, "Well, I don't do Steadicam." He said, "But you did one on 'Empire of the Sun' for me." I said, "Well, I didn't even work on 'Empire of the Sun.'" [laughs] Anyway, we got somebody in to do it. But I thought, "There's no way I'm going to do a Steadicam walking backwards up those steps." There was just a phone call. And then someone came in that we knew, that we'd worked with before.
Steve Beck: We put the blades in [digitally], basically. I always had a problem with the blades because they didn't have any kind of — they looked like just flat discs. It's what Steven wanted. He wanted them to look like swords, but circular swords. It was like, "Eh, okay." So we sketched it up and that's what he wanted, so that's what we did.
Challenge 2: The word of God
In the second challenge, Indy notes that "only in the footsteps of God" will it be possible to proceed. When he comes across a vast section of floor with individual letters carved into irregularly shaped blocks, he realizes he must spell out the name of God — Jehovah — in order to make it to the other side. But he forgets that in the Latin alphabet, Jehovah begins with an "I"; when he steps on the "J," he falls through the floor and nearly plunges to his death. After a shaky recovery, he realizes his mistake and quickly makes it through.
David Worley: One thing I remember about that was obviously that was quite a delicate set. It was very easy to step on the wrong stone — not for Harrison, but for the crew. One of the camera assistants ran a tape out and trod on one of the breakaways. That caused a bit of a delay because then that had to be reset.
Steve Beck: The only portion of that shot that [ILM] had anything to do with was the wide shot from underneath when he falls through the floor. And we shot that bit over on the main stage with Rocky Capella as Indy, who fell through the floor. Everything else was done on stage. That was one of the more straightforward bits of that whole thing.
Challenge 3: The leap of faith
The final challenge is perhaps the most memorable. Indy steps to the edge of a giant chasm and sees that the path continues on the other side, but there's far too big a gap for anyone to be able to jump or even swing across. With his father near death, he understands he must make a leap of faith and step out into this seemingly uncrossable abyss. He takes a deep breath, lifts his leg, steps out into the void, and lands on ... something. As the camera swings out to the side, Indy realizes there was actually a hidden bridge there the whole time — one designed as an optical illusion to confuse would-be adventurers.
David Worley: The "leap of faith" sequence is the only one from the temple scene to have been storyboarded and is more or less as shot.
Steve Beck: The one that had the most difficulty was the [leap of faith], because you just went, like, "Are people going to really believe this?" Everybody was like, "Really? Really?" Because you have to deal with the logistics of atmospheric perspective and if there's any kind of haze in the air. And Steven insisted on doing it that way. That was his vision. So, okay ... there was a huge matte painting for the [final trial], that aspect, stepping across that abyss. There were several matte paintings that were done for that, and that I think went through a couple of different revisions. [The prevailing sentiment for the crew was] "don't touch anything." [laughs] Paul Huston was the matte painter on that project. It was like, you'd just go to check on it, and he was like, "What are you doing in here? Get out of here! Don't touch anything!"
The grail knight
After besting the three challenges, Indy emerges into a fire-lit room and meets a knight who has been there for 700 years waiting for someone to try to find the holy grail. The knight explains his backstory, but Donovan and Elsa (Allison Doody) have followed Indy into the room and interrupt the conversation.
Barry Wilkinson: You used to have a meeting with Steven around the table and he'd be off, and then when he came back, the next time you'd see him and present him with the props — it was like on "The Temple of Doom." He came over and we had him for about four hours one morning, and we had to go through everything with him. And in the whole film, he only changed one prop that we had made, and that was Short Round's knife. Everything else went through. It was very much the same on "The Last Crusade."
Patricia Carr (Production Supervisor, UK): Whilst I was overseeing the clear up after the shooting period at Elstree, organizing ADR sessions for UK-based cast and waiting to organize the music sessions, word came from the cutting rooms in the US that some of the dialogue in the grail knight's cavern needed to be changed. [Producer] Robert Watts, who was in California at the time, explained that it was more than just a question of ADR, as it had to do with a plot point, and that we would need to rebuild part of the set and reshoot the new dialogue. The original cave had been part of a much bigger set. So the production designer, Elliot Scott, came up with the clever idea of the scenic artist doing a painted backdrop, and therefore [minimizing] the amount of set built — although we did of course need to hire a stage plus some construction crew, props dressers and their workshops, et cetera, and a very basic crew to shoot the scene. It photographed beautifully and you really hardly see any difference from the look of the original, if at all.
Donovan's demise
A myriad of possible holy grails lay before our characters, and the knight explains that while the real one will provide eternal life, a false grail will take it away. Elsa selects a golden goblet, which Donovan drinks from ... only for him to suddenly age so rapidly that he decomposes in terrifying fashion in front of her eyes and eventually turns to dust. ("He chose poorly," the knight quips.) With his father's life on the line, as well as his own, Indy chooses the exact opposite vessel, one totally unadorned with jewels or gold — a simple thing he refers to as "the cup of a carpenter." He chooses wisely.
Barry Wilkinson: Everyone thought it was going to be a big fancy golden goblet, but it was just a little stone cup, really, wasn't it? That was the wheeze of it, I think, where everyone thought the grail was this special jeweled, big expensive cup and things. It wasn't. It was just a very plain sort of stone little goblet thing that Jesus [drank] out of.
Steve Beck: "Donovan's Demise," I think is what the sequence was called. That was all done with, I don't want to say it was a miniature, because it was actually full-scale. It was a guy who had sculpted several different versions of his demise, and literally all the effects and all the decay happened practically. So it was just then taking that and then condensing it into a singular shot through opticals, because there wasn't any computer graphics available to do it any other way. So we really had to do it practically. That was weeks and weeks and weeks of doing that sequence.
Nick Dudman: It was great because you read it and go, "Well, this will be cool. This is a fun thing, [a] challenge." I had to fly out to Spain where they were filming to take a life cast of Julian Glover, and I used a completely new dental alginate that had been recommended to me and it was awful, and I had no alternatives. I remember life casting him. He's a lovely man. He was very helpful, but I wanted a whole head because we needed to do a whole head thing [for] him, and I needed the life cast for all the various bits. I remember that I did this on my own in a hotel room somewhere there and put a bald cap on him and then did the whole thing, covered him in it — a plaster bandage front, plaster bandage back. I took the back off, went to slice this alginate up the back of the head so I could then spring it off him, and it just started falling apart. It was exactly like the leaves of a cabbage ... And as I was going, I was thinking, "This is okay, because I can re-sculpt the back of his head. I've got all his measurements, fine, I can do that." And I got to the backs of his ears and I still had nothing. It was just falling apart. And I got it so that just the backs of the ears came away and crumbled, and then I just managed to get his face out of it and I then filled that with plaster. But I just remember going, "Okay, lesson one: Never use a product you haven't tested." That was pretty high on my list when I'd stopped swearing. But I got the cast in, but I had to rebuild the whole back [of it] and then went back to Elstree.
Steve Beck: There was a very particular makeup and miniature effects artist that was brought in specifically for that sequence to ILM, who was just fantastic. Stephan Dupuis was his name. But you had to reverse stuff and he reversed the hair out and he reversed the decay. He was just a phenomenal guy, but it was one of those sequences, again, it was parked in a part of the shop that was just that sequence, and they focused on it 24/7 until they got all the elements right. Then it went into optical. It was kind of a stop-motion sort of approach ... but they did mechanize aspects of it to where they included everything. That was the beauty about ILM during those days is that everything that came through the front door was impossible, or it wouldn't have come to ILM at the time. So all that stuff was, you were having to reinvent the wheel, almost, with every show that came through the door. Which was great because at the end of the day, everything was different. Unlike today where everything is on a computer, so it's all contained and you can fix it, finish it, fix it, whatever you want to do digitally. Back then, it was a more exciting time because there's just the shock of, "What are we going to do? How are we going to do this? How are we going to pull this off?" Some rather clever people got involved in some amazing stuff.
'It was a complete nightmare to do'
Nick Dudman: The shot that actually gave us the most entertainment was, there is an over Donovan's shoulder shot onto Elsa, where his hair just springs out of his head and goes all along, which was purely so that we could have long, flowy hair on the dummy for the next bit. The way we did that, we'd done something similar years ago on "Willow" pulling feathers and things through. The whole thing's in reverse, but basically, we took a metal sieve, the kind of thing you would drain water out of spaghetti, so it's just a mesh. And we cut the outside off and we replaced the back of the skull of a fiberglass version of his head with that. We then put a bald cap over that and worked it all in, but then all the hair is nylon that's about two and a half feet long, say. And it was really interesting because we had to test this loads of times.
Basically, we inserted the hairs one at a time through this bald cap and therefore through the mesh, and then we got it all together inside the head and attached it to a plunger. So on the other side, there's one of my crew who's stuffed between Elsa and Donovan holding a massive syringe that he's slowly pulling through, and it's filmed in reverse so it's long and it all gets pulled in. The trick was you have to be able to dress the hair so it looks interesting when it's out, but it can't be so dressed that it tangles, because anything tangling will just lock the whole thing solid. What we discovered was if you did it with pure hair, it just tangled up. If you did it with just nylon, fake hair, it went electrostatic and just went into a great halo.
So we had to basically come up with an exact percentage of mix of the two where one contradicted the other, and then the whole thing was greased and we had to use a silicon oil so that it could literally travel through. And it had to be done very slowly so that the hair had a chance to unravel as it went rather than knotting up. It was a complete nightmare to do ... I think we probably did about three takes because we worked out that you had to put silicon oil through the hair because if you didn't, how do you get the hair back through the head for take two? The only way you could do that was by literally starting to pull it and comb it very, very slowly, going around everywhere until you teased the whole lot back out. And the only way it would do that without tangling up was if there was absolutely no chance of static from nylon or the hair building up and causing tangling.
'Indiana ... let it go'
The grail heals Indy's father's wound, but when Elsa carries it past a seal on the ground to take it out of the temple, the whole structure begins to shake and the ground splits open. Elsa falls to her doom trying to get the grail, and when Indy finds himself just a fingertip away from being able to grab it himself, he looks up into the eyes of his father, who calls him "Indiana" for the first time and begs him to "let it go." Indy, understanding the emotional and personal significance of a reunion with his absentee father, abandons the grail, and the survivors ride off into the sunset in one of the best endings in all of blockbuster cinema.
David Worley: Harrison was generally easygoing, but Sean could be quite [irascible]. I was setting a shot of John Rhys-Davies with Sean and Harrison in the foreground. Sean was holding the goblet and said, "Do you see it?" Preoccupied, instead of saying "No, I don't," I said, "I don't, no." Quick as a flash, Sean bellowed, "Well, if you don't f***ing know, no one else does!" and proceeded to launch a tirade against the English generally and me in particular, which left Harrison looking quite bemused. Eleven years later, when Sean came to visit Pierce Brosnan on the Bond set at Pinewood, I think I was only one of two or three people he said hello to.
Barry Wilkinson: We had [the grails] sculpted and made. I think we had rubber ones that were made as well, for when it slid across. That was where all the floor opened up, wasn't it? We had the original one, a couple made, and then we had rubber ones made, soft ones made of it. Because if I remember, they were sliding across the floor in an earthquake.
David Worley: There was a certain anticipation because I mean, when the temple starts to break up, obviously that was quite a big number, really, for George Gibbs' team of special effects. We did our own camera shake and everything, which you can probably see from the film. It does vary a bit from camera to camera, but in the heat of the moment, you wouldn't really be able to analyze it.
Nick Dudman: [I remember] the severe lecture we were given about the fact that the entire floor was on hydraulics and huge amounts of stuff in the room, the area where the seal was, and nobody should touch anything, and it was all lots of hazard tape. Because it was an enclosing set, it's very much a "coming round you" set, I think everyone really appreciates those kind of sets when you work on them because you really feel like you are somewhere, you've been taken somewhere else. Whereas if nowadays, sorry, but if you're surrounded by three walls of green screen, I defy you to feel the same thing you feel when you walk on a set and suddenly you think, "Oh my god, I'm in Bolivia, or I'm in outer space or the Batcave," or whatever the hell it is. I think that process of things was lovely because it was shot towards the end of the shoot, so everyone was in a nice feeling that we were getting towards the end. And it was always nice working at Elstree. I liked Elstree. It was a nice studio to be in.
David Worley: I should also like to pay tribute to Douglas Slocombe, our DoP. He photographed the first three Indy films — nominated for "Raiders" — and he was responsible for "the look." He would quietly get on with lighting and produce breathtaking work. Steven Spielberg had great respect for him. "The Last Crusade" would be his last film; he was then 75 years old and lived to be 103. One of the greats.
Steve Beck: I think I'm just proud to have been associated with it, frankly.
David Worley: Obviously that was quite a big, complicated production. When you complete something like that, well, you do feel proud, although you're actually pretty tired, really, by the end of it.
Nick Dudman: I thought it held up remarkably well. It's very funny, but very entertaining and it still produces the magic it produced back then in me. I was just transported away and thoroughly enjoyed it. And it was poignant because Norman Reynolds, the production designer, died very recently. I knew him and his daughter worked for me a lot. [Note: Norman Reynolds was the production designer of "Raiders of the Lost Ark," but Elliot Scott was the production designer of "Last Crusade."] So there was a connection and I was just looking at it and thinking about the fact that those sets were so fabulous and looking at — they built a tank, for God's sake, and all of this sort of thing. And I came out thinking, "I'm really happy with that." I feel it's part of a golden age of filmmaking in Britain where some lovely movies were made where you come off them and you have a warm feeling and you look at them later and you think, "I've still got that warm feeling."
"Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade" is currently streaming on Paramount+. "Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny" arrives in theaters on June 30, 2023.