The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones: The War Years

Review by DVD Verdict

As The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones: Volume One came to a close, the fedora-wearing teen had left home, met Remy (a Belgian national who'd been fighting with a band of Mexican rebels), and traveled with his new friend to Europe, where the two joined the Belgian army. As Volume Two begins, Remy (Ronny Coutteure) and Indy (Sean Patrick Flanery) are in the trenches of France, fighting the bloody battle of the Somme. Their adventures take them to Paris, East Africa (where Indy meets an A-Team-like band of elderly soldier outcasts), into the heart of disease-infested Congo, and across Europe, Russia, and the Middle East as spies working for French Intelligence.

Like the first volume, Indy's adventures feature many famous faces: He meets political and military luminaries like Charles de Gaulle, T.E. Lawrence, and "The Red Baron" Manfred von Richthofen; cultural figures like Albert Schweitzer and Vladimir Lenin; and artists like author Franz Kafka, poet Siegfried Sassoon, and ballet impresario Sergei Diaghelev. Indy's interaction with these historical figures, though fictionalized to serve the stories, are true enough to provide snapshot overviews of their accomplishments and the ideas they represent. They're the backbone of the series' educational undercurrent. In and among the historical figures, viewers will recognize several well-known actors including Daniel Craig, Catherine Zeta Jones, Christopher Lee, Terry Jones (who directed an episode), and Anthony "C-3PO" Daniels.

One of the major selling points of all three Young Indiana Jones DVD sets are the extensive additional bonus documentaries—made especially for the box sets—that tell the real-life stories of the important people, places, and events introduced by the series. Though there aren't as many documentaries in this volume as the first, they're mostly longer, and amazingly rich compared to your average slate of DVD extras. Unlike the first set, the bonus materials for each of these eight 90-minute episodes—mostly hour-long stories stitched together under Lucas's supervision to create these chronological "movie" chapters—are on the same disc as the episodes. It's nice not having to swap out the discs all the time. The additional ninth disc, like the final disc of the first set, has interactive DVD-ROM content: a timeline, "Special Delivery" game, and a historical lecture entitled "War and Revolution."