Indiana Jones And The Last Crusade

The prologue depicts a young Indiana Jones in 1912 as a Boy Scout in Utah, battling grave robbers for the Cross of Coronado (an ornamental cross belonging to Francisco Vásquez de Coronado). As they give chase, Indiana hides in a circus train, in the process using a whip, scarring his chin, and gaining a fear of snakes. Although he rescues the cross, the robbers tell the Sheriff that Indiana was the thief, and he is forced to return it, while his oblivious father Henry is working on his research. The leader of the hired robbers, dressed very similarly to the future Indiana, gives him his fedora with some encouraging words. In 1938, an adult Indiana is on the robbers' ship, the Coronado, off the Portuguese coast, finally retrieving the Cross and donating it to Marcus Brody's museum.

Indiana meets the wealthy Walter Donovan, who informs him that Indy's father vanished while searching for a clue to the location of the Holy Grail, using an incomplete stone tablet as his guide. Indy receives a package which turns out to be his father's Grail diary in which he recorded all his findings and clues towards the Holy Grail. Understanding that his father would not have sent the Grail Diary, his father's life's work, to him unless he was in trouble, Indiana and Marcus travel to Venice. There they meet the beautiful and mysterious Dr. Elsa Schneider who had been working with Indiana's father. Using clues in Henry's diary, Indiana and Elsa search the ancient catacombs underneath the library where Henry was last seen. The catacombs are filled with oil slicked water several feet deep and infested with rats. Inside is the tomb of Sir Richard, a knight of the First Crusade, whose shield holds a complete version of the half-tablet which Henry Jones had found.

The Brotherhood of the Cruciform Sword, a secretive and fanatical religious cult that protects the Holy Grail, sets fire to the oil in the catacombs to kill Indiana and Elsa. Indiana overturns Richard's sarcophagus so that he and Elsa can take refuge underneath it from the flames, and emerge from a sewer grate in Venice outside the library. Indiana and Elsa commandeer a motorboat to escape, managing to fight off all but the cult's leader, Kazim, during the ensuing chase. Jones convinces Kazim that he is looking for his father, not the Grail, and Kazim reveals that his father is being held in a castle near the Austrian-German border. Indiana finds his father, but they are betrayed by Elsa and Donovan, who worked with the Nazis to stage Henry's kidnapping, so that Indiana would solve the mystery of the Grail for them. Meanwhile, in %u0130skenderun, Hatay, the Nazis capture Brody, to whom Indiana had given the map for safekeeping.

Indiana and Henry are tied up, but escape and travel to Berlin to retrieve Henry's diary, which contains the clues to evade three booby traps guarding the Grail. At a Nazi book burning rally, a disguised Indiana corners Elsa and forces her to return the diary to him. Indiana and Henry travel on a Zeppelin, but Indy realizes the Nazis have caught up to them when the Zeppelin changes course. They escape the ship by taking an attached fighter plane, evading Nazi dogfighters. Henry accidentally shoots out the tailfin, and they crash land. They steal a car, causing one Nazi plane to be destroyed when it follows them through a tunnel. On a beach, Henry uses his umbrella to stir up a flock of seagulls, which strike the second plane, crashing it. The Joneses meet up with Sallah and confront the Nazis, who have captured Brody. The Brotherhood of the Cruciform Sword also appears, attacking the Nazi caravan, but are defeated. Henry attempts to rescue Brody from the tank wherein he is being held, but is himself captured. Indiana jumps onto the tank and rescues the captives before it drives off a cliff. The others believe Indiana is dead until he climbs back up the cliff, where he emotionally reunites with his father.

The Joneses, Sallah, and Brody reach the Canyon of the Crescent Moon, the site of the temple housing the Grail. The Nazis capture them in the temple, and Donovan shoots Henry, forcing Indiana to retrieve the Grail, so as to heal his father's fatal wounds. Guided by the diary, Indiana circumvents the deadly booby traps, reaching a room where a knight of the First Crusade, kept alive by the power of the Grail, has hidden it among many false cups, while Donovan and Elsa follow. The knight informs them that, if they wish for the Grail, they must choose wisely for it, for while drinking from the true Grail will bring them everlasting life, a false Grail will take it from them. Elsa identifies a golden, bejeweled cup as the Grail, and Donovan impatiently drinks from it. Realizing the Grail is false, Donovan dies, aging rapidly into dust.

Indiana picks out the true Grail, a plain cup with a gold interior, worthy of a humble carpenter (Jesus), and drinks from it, whereupon the knight advises him that he has chosen "wisely". Indiana fills the Grail with water and uses it to heal Henry. Despite a warning from the knight not to let the Grail go past the Great Seal in accordance with the Law of God, Elsa tries to leave with the Grail and the interior starts to collapse. She loses her balance at the edge of a newly-formed crevasse; despite Indiana's attempts to lift her, she greedily reaches for the Grail and falls into the abyss. Indiana loses his footing and finds himself in the same situation, with his father keeping him from following the same fate as Elsa. He also tries to get the Grail, until Henry says simply, "Indiana, let it go."

Realizing that this is the first time his father has properly referred to him as an individual (rather than condescendingly calling him Junior), and that his father valued his son over the Grail, Indiana reaches up and holds on. The Grail and the old knight are left in the ruins as the Joneses, Brody, and Sallah escape the crumbling temple. Afterward, Henry reveals that Indiana was the family dog's name, much to Sallah's amusement, and that Indiana's real name is Henry Jones Jr. All four then ride off into the sunset.