Indiana Jones films are all about the location. Photo / Getty Images
Indiana Jones films are all about the location. Photo / Getty Images
Harrison Ford may have gone on his Last Crusade 35 years ago but that hasn’t stopped him from undertaking two further adventures as the world’s favourite archaeologist: Indiana Jones.
Four decades on and he is still outrunning the boulder.
The square-jawed, all-American explorer always saves the day and whatever artefact he is after. It’s a film franchise that some argue belongs in a museum but somehow keeps rolling along.
There are, of course, “movie MacGuffins” galore. The focus is always on the historical knick-knacks, from crystal skulls to the Ark of the Covenant. Though, nobody really gives a monkey’s paw about them.
The real successes of Jones’ remarkable career are the locations. They are films about travel.
When George Lucas pitched Stephen Spielberg the idea for a globetrotting archaeologist in 1978, emphasis was on this point. Jones is their answer to James Bond - an international man of mystery - and the transcript of their first “story conference” for Raiders of The Lost Ark shows that they were thinking about where to film the scenes. From the start it was location, location, location.
The longevity of the films is in large part because of their most cinematic locations.
Thirty years on, the movies still inspire a desire for adventure travel. Petra, Jordan’s 2000-year-old red cliffside city, owes much of its tourism industry to Indy.
Of course, a few scenes substitute one location for another, more convenient location - Hawaii for the Amazon rainforest - but the movies are a celebration of the art of location scouting.
While many films resort to travel by greenscreen or soundstage backdrops, Indiana Jones appreciates the value of filming on location.
Here are the five Indiana Jones films ranked by ability to inspire travel lust.
The Iguazu Waterfalls, on the border of Argentina and Brazil, were popularised in the Crystal Skull. Photo / Unsplash
5. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008)
After taking a 20-year break between films, the fourth Indiana Jones film got back up to speed with travel in the film, which is set across South America. It even featured a motorbike chase through Yale University’s Marshall College.
Other filming locations included the Iguazu Waterfalls, on the border of Argentina and Brazil and Ghost Ranch, New Mexico - close to the test site of the atomic bomb.
The Amer Fort in Jaipur, India, was the original backdrop for Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. Photo / Unsplash
4. Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984)
Jaipur’s Amer Fort in India was the backdrop and most recognisable setting in the Temple of Doom. However the production never stepped foot in the North Indian castle after local officials took exception to the script. The heart-eating Thuggee cult was not what Jaipur wanted to be associated with and today is a bit jarring.
Instead, the movie used the streets of Kandy and Bogambara Lake in Sri Lanka as a double.
The opening in 1930s Hong Kong and a trans-Himalayan cargo-flight are also inspirational settings, but sadly were mostly filmed on soundstages.
Lindisfarne Castle in northeast England was a filming location for Indiana Jones. Photo / Unsplash
3. Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (2023)
For the latest instalment, the production headed to Northeast England and Scotland for rugged mediaeval castles. This included a trip to Lindisfarne Castle, a fortified monastery on an island off the Northumberland coast.
The adventurers also took in the sights in Sicily, Italy, which served as a stand-in for Greece, and to Morocco.
Kairouan in Tunisia was the stand-in for 1930s Cairo, in Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark. Photo / Unsplash
2. Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)
Raiders is the original Indiana Jones. It won over audiences following the adventurer around the map, by way of dotted red line. It also has the scene where Jones makes his way through stone death traps in Incan ruins. The rolling boulder opener was not filmed in Peru but Hawaii, in the Huleia National Wildlife Refuge.
The stand-in for 1930s Cairo is Kairouan in Tunisia. The city in the desert of northern Tunisia is full of 9th-century sandstone buildings and offers a spectacular backdrop to the search for the Ark of the Covenant.
The red city of Petra became a blockbuster tourism destination since Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. Photo / Unsplash
1. Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989)
With Sean Connery in tow, the 1989 movie swashbuckles across Europe, from Italy to the Kingdom of Jordan.
With speedboat chases across the Grand Canal in Venice, to riding a giant airship across Germany, it’s full of vintage travel options.
The Joneses even drop into Schloss Burresheim, in Germany’s Rhineland-Palatinate, which makes the perfect bombastic lair for Nazi treasure looters.
Ultimately the holy grail of on-location filming is discovered in Petra. Before the film it was a legendary site that T.E. Lawrence described riding through as “vast, echoing and Godlike”. After the Last Crusade it became a tourism blockbuster.
