I can see an X-games exploitation, The Grail Climb, a rock wall-climb with assorted Grails on top. Climbers reaching the top, those who haven’t fallen into Peredition, must choose a Grail. Some choose… unwisely…
The immortality granted by the Grail was a function of its healing properties. It doesn’t just heal gunshots. Arteries getting a little occluded? Cleared. Pre-cancerous spot on your lung? Gone. Kidney function a bit on the decline? Grail gets it back up to speed. You keep smoking, drinking, and eating red meat, all of those conditions could eventually come back - but if you’re taking a sip from the Grail every morning, they get fixed again. That’s the Grail’s immortality. Perfect health, forever, so long as you keep drinking. The Jones boys likely added a decade or more to their lives from their respective sips, just clearing up any incipient conditions that might have killed them further down the road.
The seal was just a security system. It didn’t have anything to do with immortality, except in so far as it made it impossible to take the Grail and be immortal in the comfort of your own home.
Makes you wonder why they even bothered guarding it?
“The Frogurt is also cursed!”
Here’s what the Knight says:
I took it to mean “You have to keep drinking from the Grail to stay alive, but you can’t take the Grail with you.”
The question then becomes why that was the case. My impression is that it was the three knights who created the seal in some way or another. Had they not gotten a hold of the grail, the grail would probably have continued it’s wanderings without any issues.
I may be wrong here (probably) but I thought the knight told Indy that he was the first to find him. If so, then I think the other cups were collected by the three brothers when they searched for the grail and finally found it). Then the knight who was left set them all up like that.
The book I’ve been reading – Nicholas J. Higham’s King Arthur – The Making of the Legend cites a source that throws some light on the questions asked. I assume that Spielberg or Locas or one of their researchers dug up this nugget of information.* In Chretien de Troyes’ final Arthgurian poem, The Story of the Grail states:
(page 106 in Highan
The Fisher KIng, like the Knight in the Indiana Jones movie, stays within his castle and does not (cannot) leave, so the parallel is pretty close.
- Lucas was a big fan of mythology, acknowledging his debt to mythologist Joseph Campbell. Bill Moyers devoted one of his shows to discussing mythology and Star Wars with Lucas.
** The Consecrated Host (as, for instance, the Communion Wafer), which transubstatiates to the Body of Christ.
Which is another way of saying “I’m too lazy to come up with my own plot beats, so I’ll just rip off ‘Hero With A Thousand Faces’ from Sophomore Anthropology.” 
I kind of figured Old Indy in The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles was hale and healthy in his old age (eye patch and all) due to drinking from the Grail. He did kick young punk butt in one of the intro sequences.
I’m not saying trans-dimensional crystal-skulled aliens, but trans-dimensional crystal-skulled aliens.
I thought it neat that the first film (Raiders of the Lost Ark) centered around a Jewish artifact, while the third film centered around a Christian artifact (the less said about the second film, the better). So I thought the next film should have centered around an Islamic artifact, to complete the Abrahamic faith trilogy.
Next come searches for 1) the Maltese Falcon, 2) Cthulhu, and 3) an Oscar. That last may never appear.
A lot of people liked the plot of the video game Indiana Jones and the Treasure of Atlantis, which got turned into a limited run comic book series, and many hoped might be the basis for another movie. It would be an Indiana Jones movie with a McGuffin that had NO religious significance whatsoever.
The natives in Raiders may have been maintaining those traps, although that is admittedly a stretch.
I don’t remember traps in Temple, but there were lots of acolytes so maintenance would not be a problem there.
The Crusades traps were built by the brother knights, so there is no reason to think the remaining guy didn’t keep them working. It’s not like he had a lot else to do.
Me, I’ve always wondered about the nature of those stone-age-level-of-technology light-activated sliding spear-doors worked.
The only thing I could figure was that they hired teenage boys on their summer vacation for the job – you had to look through the spyhole and see if anyone was standing in the light; if so, you pulled the lever that sent the Wall of Spears sliding toward them. Then you had to get out and crank the whole thing back into place (with the body still on it) so you could spear whoever was the next guy to step into the light.
These guys got paid minimum wage, because you spent most of your time just looking through the spyhole at nothing. Guys who goofed off, or pulled the door lever just for kicks had to be disciplined.
Either that, or they had a surprisingly sophisticated knowledge of how to work selenium.
In any event, pulling “Beak the light/Wall of Spears Door” Duty was still better than having to crouch behind the Big Stone Wall and blow through the blow gun tube if someone stepped on the floor button. Those guys were crowded really close together.
I always wondered how nobody at the museum noticed how Jones was supplying them with looted artifacts, “no questions asked”. Sure, Brody was facilitating it, but nobody in the administration noticed anything? Nor anybody at the college wonder how he could afford that house? I mean, Malraux was totally busted.
One more question: How long did he have to hold his breath when that submarine took the Ark to that little island??? And how did he manage to hang on to is hat???
- The U-boat never submerged. 2. Pop-Rivets.
The U-boat thing makes historical sense.
They travel faster on the surface and the crew preferred the fresh air. They’d submerge for stealth on torpedo runs or to escape enemy vessels but staying on the surface would have been a standard practice at the time, especially before war. Especially in 1936 before open hostilities were declared.
A more interesting question is just how did the Nazis operate so openly and brazenly in Egypt, which was held by the British until a republic was established in the 50s.