George Lucas is rarely a man of small ideas. In 1992, Lucas decided to transfer the character of Indiana Jones, popularized in three mega-successful films, to the small screen. Conceived as The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles, the series began as an hour-long drama but surprisingly poor ratings forced George Lucas to revamp his idea into a series of periodic movies instead.
When The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles began, our hero was a young child. As the series moved along, Indy was shown as an archaeologist in his late teens and early adulthood. While the Indiana Jones movies focus on an older man fighting off countless enemies, The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles show him learning various skills and meeting countless historical figures.
The second DVD set of the series now arrives as The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones Vol. 2: The War Years. Some of the hour-long shows have been edited together to create 90-minute films. Some fans of the series will be disappointed that the scenes featuring George Hall as Dr. Henry “Indiana” Jones, Jr. have been edited out of the set. Viewers don’t get the same title sequence that originally played before each episode. Instead, each “film” has a new title sequence that bills the joined episodes as a chapter that fits somewhere within the Harrison Ford vehicles. My sense is it was similar to what Lucas did with renumbering the Star Wars series, although not as dramatic because The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones Vol. 2: The War Years was originally done on the small screen.
The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones Vol. 2: The War Years finds Indiana Jones (Sean Patrick Flannery) in the Belgian army during World War I. This nine-disc set spans the years 1914-1918 and is packed with extra features. Each disc contains documentaries and features designed to give the viewer information about the battle and the historical figures presented in that episode. The episodes are as follows:
Disc one is titled “The Trenches of Hell.” As a young, inexperienced soldier in the Belgian army, Indy experiences the bloody savagery of warfare as a participant in the Battle of the Somme. Distraught and depressed, he is exposed to endless gunfire barrages, bombings, and nerve gas attacks. Surrounded by the dead bodies of his fellow soldiers, Indy becomes increasingly convinced that death is only a matter of time. Eventually, he is captured by the Germans and sent to a P.O.W. camp. While there, Indy meets prisoner Charles de Gaulle (future Prime Minister and President of France), who hatches a daring escape plan.
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