From Russia with Love (1963)

Director: Terence Young

James Bond willingly falls into an assassination plot involving a naive Russian beauty in order to retrieve a Soviet encryption device that was stolen by the organization Spectre. (IMDB)

Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989)

Director: Steven Spielberg

In 1938, after his father goes missing while pursuing the Holy Grail, Indiana Jones finds himself up against the Nazis again to stop them from obtaining its powers. (IMDB)

 If you are an Indiana Jones fan, you are probably familiar with the story of its conception on a Hawaiian beach by George Lucas and Steven Spielberg. George Lucas, vacationing there to celebrate and rest form creating Star Wars, of course had the idea of this character on his mind a few years now but when his friend Steven told him about his desire to direct a James Bond film, he immediately pitched the concept to him. A similar globe trotting adventurer, an archaeologist, a grave robber and also more conveniently an American with no book rights attached to him. Spielberg loved it immediately, except the name. So, Indiana Smith originally, became Jones and the rest is history.

A movie that is usually referenced in connection with the famous now movie franchise, and rightfully so, is the Secret of the Incas (1954) with Charlton Heston playing an eerily similar character with Indiana. Besides the leather jacket, hat and attitude of the main character, there are a number of scenes that this movie shares with the Indiana Jones films. The opening sequence of Raiders and the yellow raft scene form Temple of Doom can be traced to Secret of the Incas but I want to make another connection here that is definitely not as famous but probably more impactful to Indy’s franchise.

It is established that James Bond was what the creating duo was going for as a style, a globe trotting action adventure with a different villain and plenty of women for the hero in every other film. I mean, Indy ‘closing’ an adventure before the main one as the titles roll, is what Bond was and still is doing to this day. Bond is just doing it before the main song. But besides general stylistic choices, what film can we look at for some specific influences on that matter?

In my opinion From Russia with Love (1963), directed by Terence Young, probably had an undetermined impact on Spielberg so that when he made his third Dr. Jones film he at least unconsciously included some parts from the movie, a thing that maybe he tried to avoid with the first two. Lets get the first and most important and conscious connection out of the way. He cast Sean Connery, James Bond himself, as Indy’s father, which can be viewed as quite meta to be honest. Without him, at least for Spielberg, there wouldn’t be any Indiana Jones. It’s another ‘I am your father’ moment for a Lucas related film.

So what happens in the James Bond film that we see reflected in The Last Crusade (1989)? The Bond movie begins in Venice and while it quickly moves away from there, the setting has been… well, set! The next location is not so different, 007 visits Istanbul which is of course Constantinople, the ancient capital of the Eastern Roman Empire, an environment very close to the first one and to the aesthetics of the Jones Trilogy -at the time.

The whole film plays like a Jones prequel but what happens in the underbelly of the city is where it starts to remind us of the newer film. Our protagonist along with a young blonde woman -Romanova, the Russian spy- is fleeing a scene through the ancient underground cistern built by Emperor Constantine. We briefly see rats in the water and they quickly emerge through an opening in a market to the level of the city, with the help of a third person.

This of course is dialed up to a hundred in the escape scene after Indy discovers the knight’s tomb in the catacombs of Venice. The rats are countless and everywhere, even on our protagonists, the water is ever present -no cistern here but it’s Venice after all- they not only travel through it but go in it, there are explosions, grave destruction and of course the resurfacing in an idyllic Venetian plaza. Here Indy is the hero of the scene, he has more agency than James Bond who is just shown through the cistern to escape the previous scene, he saves the girl -Elsa Schneider, the German spy-, himself and the knight’s inscription. It is, at least how I see it, a scene maybe remembered by a young Steven Spielberg and many years later translated and exaggerated into another script for a hero with a different name and more fitting to a faster era.

Another scene that possibly hovered in Spielberg’s mind and exploded in Crusade is the speeder boat chase from the ending of Bond. That scene happens on James Bond’s and Romanova’s way to Venice form close by Istria, the second one happens in Venice herself. They are both hunted by mysterious groups, SPECTRE and Brotherhood of the Cruciform Sword respectively and both the scenes are ‘explosive’ to say the least. Spielberg being him though, he elevates the tension to a level not comparable to the low budget second instalment of the Bond franchise that merely uses explosions as an escape for our heroes. In Last Crusade, narrowly passing through giant ships at the last minute, gunfights, propellers crushing the speedboats with our protagonists on them, explosions and antagonists we recognize and believe make for a more satisfying chase scene in the waters of Venice.

In another meta-commentary connection which could be coincidental or deliberate Sean Connery gets the blonde girl in both films. But James Bond uses the blonde girl as she falls for him while Henry Jones Senior gets used by the blonde girl as she falls for the younger version of him, Junior.

While a comparison of the two might seem called for it would be a little unfair to the Bond movie because in an action adventure film, budget counts more than in other genres possibly and From Russia with Love is a small film compared to the economics of the Indiana Jones one. Also 1963 to 1989 are twenty-six years that are really important to the evolution of film-making, in the fields of photography, editing, sound and visual effects amazing leaps took place and changed cinema forever. It would be like comparing the first with a 1938 adventure film, funnily enough the year Crusade is set in. Its another world, the world of the original serials that so inspired Lucas to create Indiana Jones and Star Wars for that matter.

Parissis Panos