Whether being sprayed with bullets or punched in the face by a muscular foe, Indiana Jones and crew always manage to find the humor. As Indy casually remarks in "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade," he is not easily dissuaded, since "I'm like a bad penny, I always turn up." Even under tense circumstances, he is able to remain a gentleman. When a question is raised at a royal dinner party in India, "Dr Jones, wasn't it the Sultan of Madagascar who threatened to cut off your hands if you ever returned to his country?" Jones delicately replies, "No, it wasn't my hands..." while glancing down at his groin, "it was my . . . my misunderstanding." Actor Sean Connery, who played Indy's father, Professor Henry Jones, appreciatively remarked that "the nice thing about Indiana Jones is the humor, and the fact that it's back to an older age, not an age of hardware and spacecraft, but cars and airplanes and trains and horses." Indeed, Indy's grace under pressure is often exhibited through his predilection for wry moments of humor.
Every Indiana Jones movie is filled with from 15 to 30 deadly situations. As soon as Indy escapes one crisis, he usually encounters another one, undoubtedly more troublesome than the last. In "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade," Indy refers to his adventurous lifestyle, remarking, "Since I've met you I've nearly been incinerated, drowned, shot at, and chopped into fish bait." Still, Indy does not shy away from adventure just to avoid the risk of death. Rather, he pauses to counsel a bookworm that "If you wanna be a good archaeologist, you gotta get out of the library!" Still, even in the midst of adventure, Indy recoils in fear from his phobia of snakes, staring into a well where the prized Ark of the Covenant sits only to see a seething floor of snakes. Paralyzed with fear, he despairingly muses, "Snakes . . . why'd it have to be snakes?" Quickly, his sidekick Sallah sizes up the situation, commenting, "Asps--very dangerous," adding, "You go first." In the films of the Indiana Jones franchise, there is no master plan. Rather, the plan is always mutable, according to the needs of the action. Thus, when asked how he intends to carry out his objective, Indy replies, "I don't know, I'm making this up as I go!"
Resting quietly at the heart of each film is a tender tale of relationship. When Marion, Indy's one-time love interest reunites with him later in life, she observes, "You're not the man I knew ten years ago." His reply to her, "It's not the years, honey, it's the mileage," not only implies that he's lived an adrenaline-laced existence but also suggests that he is not completely satisfied with where he has ended up emotionally. A similar emotional theme runs through the third installment in the series, as Indy's resentment over his father's failure to nurture him in his youth is vented in the truculent directive "Don't call me Junior!" Coming full circle in "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull," Indy advises an indecisive young man that working on motorcycles instead of attending college is nothing to be ashamed of "if that's what you love doing," and "don't let anybody tell you any different." Shortly afterward, upon learning that the young man is actually his own son, Indy reneges on his statement and pressures the young man to establish solid academic goals.
Although they were primarily designed to conform to the conventions of escapist popcorn flicks, each of the adventures of Indiana Jones considers matters of philosophical significance. In the course of Indy's adventures, his moral fiber is often drawn into question. Despite the fact that he searches for archaeological relics of inestimable spiritual worth, Indy kills countless people in the process of achieving his aims. Furthermore, Indy's heart is not always pure, as noted by one of his rivals, who supposes, "It would take only a nudge to make you like me."
Part of Indy's problem is that he belongs to a skeptical society, unwilling to openly embrace spiritual truths. As explained by Jerold J. Abrams, in his article "Space, Time, and Subjectivity in Neo-Noir Cinema," Indy cannot decide whether he is a man of faith or a man of science, and he is only able to find his answer "in the end--in a moment, with just the slightest shred of scientific evidence for God." Indiana Jones movies discretely emphasize faith, recognizing that even worse-than-life-and-death dilemmas are dilemmas grounded in spiritual concerns, which if not resolved may threaten to make a person's soul worse for the wear. In "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade," Indy is counseled by his father to give up his greedy quest for the Holy Grail, as he will surely perish if he does not elevate his desire. Similarly, Indy orders Marion to resist the temptation of seeing what is inside the Ark of the Covenant, commanding her, "Don't look at it, no matter what happens!" In Indy's world, temporal gains are often offset by spiritual loses, and action is purposeless if it is informed by little more than primitive, acquisitive desire.