The Adventures of Young Indiana JonesWriters: Various
Directors: Various
Cast: Sean Patrick Flanery, Harrison Ford, Anne Heche, Bob Peck, Ronny Coutteure, Margaret Tyzack, Lloyd Owen, Corey Carrier, Ruth de Sosa
Rating: Not Rated
Studio: Paramount
Release Date: April 29, 2008

The final installment of The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones comes out at a time when the torch of adventure is being passed to a new generation, in the newly released Indiana Jones feature film, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. With Harrison Ford aging, it was time for a new generation to get to be a part of the phenomenon those of us who grew up in the 1980s loved so dearly.

It’s an exciting time for Indiana Jones fans because not only is the new movie coming out at the end of May and The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones, Volume Three – The Years of Change DVD is being release, the original three Indiana Jones DVDs are being re-released by Paramount in mid-May. As a longtime fan of the series, I can say that all of these Indiana Jones releases make me feel a bit like a kid in a candy store.

For those who don’t know already, The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones follows both a television series and four made for television movies that were all a part of The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles. The series and movies were later made into 22 feature length episodes. This became The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones. Volume Three is the last of the features and it has Chapter 16-Chapter 22 of the feature length episodes spread out across nine discs, with the final disc a set of bonus features. While this isn’t the best of the series, of which I’ve been lucky enough to own all three volumes, The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones, Volume Three – The Years of Change certainly has many endearing qualities.

Release Information:
The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones, Volume Three – The Years of Change follows a period from 1917-1920 in the series. These episodes didn’t always air in order originally so the episodes included in this box set all aired at some point between September 1992 and July 1993. Additionally, two of the made for TV movies, Young Indiana Jones and the Hollywood Follies and Young Indiana Jones and the Treasure of the Peacock’s Eye are a part of this set. Follies originally aired October 15, 1994, while Treasure of the Peacock’s Eye aired January 15, 1995.

The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones, Volume Three – The Years of Change is set to be released on DVD by Paramount Home Video. The DVD will be available for purchase on April 29, 2008. This box set has a list price of over $100 though you will soon be able to purchase it at Amazon for $49.99. You’ll get the full, ten-DVD box set along with the final episodes in this remarkable television series.

The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones, Volume Three – The Years of Change Plot
The episodes included in The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones, Volume Three – The Years of Change follow the episodes in the original Young Indiana series from 1917 through 1920. The episodes included are:

DISC ONE
Chapter 16: Tales of Innocence – This takes place in Northern Italy and Morocco. The story is set in 1917. Indiana Jones is on assignment in Italy during the war. He falls in love with a girl, who Ernest Hemingway also loves. When he gets injured, he heads to Morocco, where he pretends he’s a French intelligence agent.

DISC TWO
Chapter 17: Masks of Evil – This takes place in Transylvania and Istanbul. The story is set in 1918. Indiana returns as an intelligence agent, only this time he heads to Transylvania where he’ll take on vampires.

DISC THREE
Chapter 18: Treasure of the Peacock’s Eye – This takes place in London, Egypt, and the South Pacific. The story is set in 1919. The war has finally ended so Indiana has time to go off on an adventure to find a new treasure. After finding a map, he heads off across Europe and the South Pacific on a quest to find the diamond of Alexander the Great.

DISC FOUR & DISC FIVE
Chapter 19: Winds of Change – This takes place in Paris and Princeton. The story is set in 1919. As Europe changes after the war, Indiana works as a translator in France. This part and when Jones is in Paris were mainly episodes used to set up the future episodes for Indiana as well as the character of Indiana in the movies.

DISC SIX & DISC SEVEN
Chapter 20: The Mystery of the Blues – This takes place in Chicago. The story is set in 1920. This just happens to contain a cameo by Harrison Ford. In this adventure, Indiana takes on the mob as he comes head to head with Elliot Ness and the great Al Capone.

DISC EIGHT
Chapter 21: The Scandal of 1920 – This takes place in New York. The story is set in 1920. In a not so adventure-like episode, Indiana works with George Gershwin to run a show on Broadway. In the process, he tries his luck at romancing the ladies.

DISC NINE
Chapter 22: The Hollywood Follies – This takes place in Hollywood. The story is set in 1920. After taking on Broadway, Indiana heads to Hollywood, where he gets to make a few movies with some of Hollywood’s greatest including John Ford.

While some of these episodes stray from the original Indiana Jones formula, with adventure and mayhem at every turn, the supplemental episodes give plenty of information that provide insight into the life of Indiana Jones and how he became the man he is in the films that made him famous.

Storyline/Plot: ★★★★☆
Replayability: ★★★★☆
Acting: ★★★★½
Directing: ★★★★½

Audio/Visual:
The video for the episodes on The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones, Volume Three – The Years of Change DVD is presented in 1.33:1 standard full frames. This is pretty typical for a set of episodes that originally aired on television. The visual locations are absolutely stunning as Indiana Jones travels around the world in the various episodes included in this set. Despite being filmed on a 16mm camera, this series turns out looking incredibly fresh and stunning. While the only noticeable problem seems to be occasional grain and a once in a while appearance of a compression artifact, for what this show was filmed on and when it was filmed, all the episodes included in The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones, Volume Three – The Years of Change set look great!

The sound for The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones, Volume Three – The Years of Change is an English Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo mix. It’s not quite as dynamic as a 5.1 track could have been, but sound still manages to come through loud and clear. The sound has its limits and while Paramount didn’t go out of their way to improve the sound the way they did the video, I can’t say that the sound is terrible. Volume toggling isn’t an issue and dialogue is crisp and concise. The sound is just lacking in the sound effects department and it would have and could have been better.

Visual: ★★★★☆
Audio: ★★★☆☆

Bonus Features:

If you’ve purchased previous releases of this series, you know that each set is chocked full of bonus features. The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones, Volume Three – The Years of Change won’t disappoint on this front. The box set has an entire DVD devoted to bonus features and there are features on nearly every DVD available for viewing after watching the episodes.

Since the extras are split up amongst discs, I’ll list them by discs, so you know where to find all of the bonuses and how they relate to the episodes involved.

DISC ONE

-Unhealed Wounds: The Life of Ernest Hemingway
- The French Foreign Legion: The World’s Most Legendary Fighting Force
- The Secret Life of Edith Wharton
- Lowell Thomas: American Storyteller

DISC TWO
- For the People, Despite the People: The Ataturk Revolution
- The Greedy Heart of Halide Edib
- The Ottoman Empire: A World of Difference
- Dracula: Fact and Fiction

DISC THREE
- Bronislaw Malinowski: God Professor
- Anthropology: Looking at the Human Condition
- New Guinea: Paradise in Peril

DISC FIVE
- The Best Intentions: The Paris Peace Conference and the Treaty of Versailles
- Woodrow Wilson: American Idealist
- Gertrude Bell: Iraq’s Uncrowned Queen
- Ho Chi Minh: The Price of Freedom
- Paul Robeson: Scandalize My Name
- Robert Goddard: Mr. Rocket Science

DISC SEVEN
- Jazz: Rhythms of Freedom
- Al “Scarface” Capone: The Original Gangster
- Prohibition: America on the Rocks
- On the Trail of Eliot Ness
- Louis Armstrong: Ambassador of Jazz
- Ben Hecht: The Shakespeare of Hollywood
- Hellfighters: Harlem’s Heroes of World War One

DISC EIGHT
- Tin Pan Alley: Soundtrack of America
- Wonderful Nonsense: The Algonquin Round Table
- Broadway: America Center Stage

DISC NINE
- Erich von Stroheim: The Profligate Genius
- The Rise of the Moguls: The Men Who Built Hollywood
- Irving Thalberg: Hollywood’s Boy Wonder
- The World of John Ford

DISC TEN
- Interactive Timeline
- Historical Lecture: New Gods for Old
- Hunting for Treasure Interactive Game

Since so many historical moments and figures were a major part of The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones these historical commentaries, interviews, lectures and featurettes are an integral part of this set. You really couldn’t ask for a more thorough or eclectic set of features.

Bonus Features: ★★★★★

Bottom Line:
The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones, Volume Three – The Years of Change isn’t the best of this series, but it certainly isn’t bad. If you’re a fan of Indiana Jones, history, or happen to know you’ll like this series already, this is a box set you need to purchase. While there is much you can learn from this series, from a historical sense, since the creators (Including George Lucas) took great care in researching to ensure historical accuracy of the themes and historical elements presented in these episodes, this series is truly fun to watch. The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones, Volume Three – The Years of Change comes highly recommended.

Overall Rating: ★★★★☆

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