SOURCE: Aronstein, Susan. “‘Not Exactly a Knight’: Arthurian Narrative and Recuperative Politics in the Indiana Jones Trilogy.” Cinema Journal 34, no. 4 (summer 1995): 3-30.

In the following essay, Aronstein argues that the Indiana Jones trilogy uses the traditions of “medieval chivalric romances” to construct a film hero who represents a modern American knight.

Steven Spielberg and George Lucas's [Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade] culminates as the trilogy's much-belabored hero succeeds in his quest for the Holy Grail. Although Indiana informs the Grail's chivalric guardian that he is “not exactly” a knight, his achievement of the Grail makes him just that—and not just any knight, but the best knight in the world. Indiana Jones's triumph over the Grail Temple, a triumph that, in the words of earlier Grail legends, “brings his adventures to a close,” exposes the generic roots of all three films.¹ The tales of Indiana Jones are...