Synopsis for
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989)

Henry Jones Sr. is the father of Henry "Indiana" Jones Jr. An archeologist, Henry's passion for antiquites has passed on down to his son, a Boy Scout who in 1912 Utah happened upon a site where a party led by a mercenary wearing a fedora and leather jacket found a valuable statue. Indy, believing it belongs in a museum, stole it and was pursued, escaping by boarding a circus train but having to escape a snake pit and also forced to use a bullwhip to hold off a lion. Indy eventually returned home but waiting for him was the area sheriff to return to statue to a burly businessman, known as Panama Hat, who hired the mercenary party. The merc nonetheless showed his respect for Indy by giving him his fedora.....

.....which in 1938 Indy still wears, on board a freighter in a violent Atlantic storm where he has tracked down the statue he found in 1912 and escapes being beaten up by Panama Hat's thugs as he grabs the statue and dives into the ocean scant seconds before a massive wave collapses the ship and it explodes.

After being rescued, Indy returns to his university and gives the statue to Marcus for the museum, then goes to his office, where a phalanx of students request study help and his secretary Irene gives him a ream of papers to be graded as well as phone messages and mail. The mail item is a brown paper package from Venice, which he puts in his pocket. After completing as much work as he can that afternoon, he neaks out through his window but is greeted by two men who ask him to the mansion of Walter Donovan, who has been a generous donator to the museum. Donovan has hired two archeologists to a drilling site near Ankara to examine a stone marker dating to the beginning of recorded time. The marker is read by Indy, and to his surprise it details "the cup that holds the blood of Jesus Christ" - the Holy Grail, whose waters can grant men immortality. Donovan's project leader has deduced that a second marker, left behind by a knight who had found the Grail, is somewhere in Venice, but a major snag has occurred, as the project leader and all his research have vanished, to the concern of his assistant, Doctor Elsa Schneider.

To Indy's surprise, his father is Donovan's project leader, and when Indy and Marcus find Henry's house ransacked and his mail opened, Indy suddenly remembers the package he got from Venice - his dad's diary, in which is every scrap of information that exists about the Grail.

Indy and Marcus fly to Venice, where Donovan has arranged apartments for them, and they meet with Schneider. She gives them a written note by Henry that contains only the Roman numerals for three, seven, and ten, then the group goes to where Henry disappeared, the Venice library, which was once a church in ancient Roman times. A glass painting dating from the sacking of Byzantium gives Indy a clue that the library is the tomb of the knight. Indy pries open the floor and finds a network of tunnels containing oil. Exploring the tunnel with Elsa - and in the process passing a wall painting of ancient antiquities such as The Ark Of The Covenant - Indy finds an ancient casket and a knight's shield, the second marker.

However, Marcus is slugged by members of a cult sworn to preventing discovery of the Grail, and who have followed Indy from the States; the cult sets fire to the oil in the tunnels but Indy and Elsa escape through the city sewers. Indy and Elsa are pursued by the cultists on speedboats before Indy dispatches one boat and corners the group's leader and learns from him that Henry is held in a castle in Germany.

Later, after drying out, Indy arranges for Marcus to meet Sallah to begin finding the Grail while he and Elsa go after Henry. He finds that his room and Elsa's have been ransacked by men looking for the Grail diary, making him all the more determined to find Henry and also the Grail. The two fly to the German castle and Indy finds Henry, but both are doublecrossed by Elsa, and to both men's horror they find that the string-puller in this whole affair is Walter Donovan, who wants the ancient cup to give him immortality. Indy and Henry are bound in the castle but Indy manages to break out, in the process setting off a fire. He and Henry commandeer a Nazi motorcyle and escape pursuing German soldiers, but Henry stops Indy's trek of escape to make him go back to Berlin, where Donovan and Elsa have taken his diary for Hitler. When Indy demands to know why the diary is so important, Henry explains that it details traps that protect the grail and keys to defeating them.

Indy treks to Berlin, finds Elsa, and finds the diary, in the process tempted to strangle her in place. But when he and Henry try to escape Germany via a dirigible, they must commandeer a search plane to escape Luftwaffe fighters; they escape one plane that crashes into a tunnel, then Henry "suddenly remembers my Charlemegne" that drives him to send seagulls flying into the path of the second fighter, which flies into the swarm and crashes.

Reaching the desert area of Jordan, Indy and Henry rendezvous with Indy's pal Sallah, where they learn that Marcus was captured by Nazi agents and taken to Donovan. Tracking down Donovan's exploration group, Indy, Henry, and Sallah see it is escorted by a company of Nazi troopers with a World War I-vintage tank. When desert guerrillas led by the group that attacked Indy in Venice ambush the convoy, Henry uses the cover to try and rescue Marcus, but both are seized by the Nazis. Indy pursues the tank and a prolonged fight ensues where Marcus and Henry attack the soldiers inside and by a mixture of clumsiness and force succeed in killing them, then use the tank to blast the convoy. Indy rescues the two of them but the tank drives off a sheer cliff, Indy barely escaping.

The four men soon track down Donovan's remaining group at a cliffside temple in which is the path to the Grail. The traps within have already killed several of Donovan's group, and when Indy and his pals are seized, Donovan sees Indy as his chance. To force Indy to find the Grail, Donovan shoots Henry, leaving the healing power of the Grail as the only chance to save Henry's life. Indy thus enters the dangerous pathway, deducing how to avoid its traps and finding the chamber of the Grail. He succeeds in reaching the grail chamber and must choose the correct grail from many false ones.

However, Donovan and Elsa enter before he can, and Elsa chooses a cup for Donovan. She knows it is an incorrect choice, and Donovan ultimately ages to death for drinking from the wrong grail. Indy then picks the true grail and uses it to heal Henry's wound. All is settled until Elsa decides to leave with the grail, setting off a mammoth quake inside the vast temple. Elsa hits the ground and the grail rolls into a large fissure in the temple. Elsa almost falls in herself, but is saved by Indy at the last moment. Elsa, instead of letting Indy lift her up, pulls one of her hands free to try and reach the grail resting below her. She can almost touch it, and so she keeps on reaching, despite Indy's pleads to give him both her hands. He cannot maintain his grip on Elsa's slippery leather gloved hand, and before Elsa can grasp the cup, her hand slips out of its leather glove. Elsa falls to her death and Indy near does too, but his father catches him. Indy tries to reach the grail himself, but Henry gets through to him and the two ultimately escape the temple. The remaining four then ride off on horseback into the sunset.