Steven Spielberg

Who's Your Daddy?

Let's cut to the chase: two-time Academy Award-winning director Steven Spielberg has daddy issues.

Caustic, detached, and often totally absent fathers are a running theme throughout many of his movies, as both a director and a producer. While they're cool now, he and his own dad had a strained relationship after his parents' divorce, and pops gone AWOL are basically Spielberg's calling card. Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade turns that hallmark on its head.

It takes its time in doing so, though. Sure, Henry's around from the very beginning, unlike, say, Elliott's dad in E.T., one of Spielberg's other famous adventure flicks, but he's totally disengaged from his kid. When we first meet Henry in the film's 1912 prologue, he can't even be bothered to look up from his Grail diary when Indiana runs home with the Cross of Coronado—and the sheriff.

Over the course of the film, Henry becomes more involved and interested in Indiana's life. Hunting the Holy Grail will do that for you, we suppose. That's where Last Crusade breaks from Spielberg tradition. By the end of the movie, when Henry tells Indiana that he found "illumination" on their quest for the Holy Grail, the two men have reconciled, and when they literally ride off into the sunset, you get the sense that they've left their old resentments in the Canyon of the Crescent Moon, along with the Grail.

Little Wrinkly Aliens and Big Friendly Giants

While the character of Henry Jones, Sr., may be a departure from Spielberg's standard bad dad fare, the rest of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade is right up the director's alley. Adventure is his stock in trade. If you were born after 1975 or so, the odds are good that Spielberg directed some of your favorite childhood films. In addition to directing all four Indiana Jones films and E.T., Spielberg was also behind the camera for movies like Hook, Jurassic Park, The Adventures of Tintin, and The BFG.

Last Crusade is arguably the lightest and funniest of the original Indiana Jones trilogy, and this was a conscious choice by Spielberg. According to Den of Geek, Spielberg thought Last Crusade's predecessor, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, was too dark and grisly, what with a dude getting his still-beating heart torn out of his chest and all. "There's not an ounce of my personal feeling in Temple of Doom," he said.

For the third film, Spielberg tried to recapture the sense of playfulness and adventure from the first film, Raiders of the Lost Ark. The result is a bright, energetic adventure that's as full of jokes as it is full of stunts. It's a movie that you can watch with both your 75-year-old grandmother and your jaded older brother who's home from college. In other words, it's totally Spielberg.