Character Analysis
Passionate Professor, Distracted Dad
Professor Henry Jones loves the Holy Grail the way Kevin Durant loves basketball, the way Ariana Grande loves ponytails, and the way Garfield loves lasagna. Some might even call it an obsession. Although we don't catch a glimpse of Henry's face at the beginning of the film, when a teenage Indiana races home to tell his dad about the Cross of Coronado, we sure do spy his Grail diary. Tracking down the cup of Christ is this guy's life's work.
It's also the biggest thorn in his relationship with his son. Henry may be tremendously book smart, but he isn't winning any Father of the Year awards. Simply put, he places his studies before his son. When Indiana comes to rescue him from Castle Brunwald, for example, Henry thumps his kid on the head with a vase, mistaking him for a Nazi. Afterward, he's more worried about the potentially priceless artifact than he is about Indiana's noggin:
HENRY: (Examining the vase he just broke over Indiana's head:) Late 14th century Ming Dynasty. Oh, it breaks the heart.
INDIANA: And the head. You hit me, Dad.
HENRY: I'll never forgive myself.
INDIANA: Don't worry. I'm fine.
HENRY: Thank God.
Indiana smiles broadly.
HENRY: (Pointing at the vase:) It's fake. See, you can tell with the cross sections.
Whether it's his Grail diary or a dusty history tome, Henry's nose is perpetually stuck in a book. It's wedged in there so deep he can't see that his intellectual obsessions have distanced him from his son. In fact, Henry thinks he was a pretty rad dad. Check out this exchange Henry and Indiana have over drinks, for example:
INDIANA: Remember the last time we had a quiet drink? Huh?
Henry pages through his Grail diary.
INDIANA: I had a milkshake.
HENRY: (Looking through his diary:) Hmm. What did we talk about?
INDIANA: We didn't talk. We've never talked.
HENRY: (Looking through his diary:) Do I detect a rebuke?
INDIANA: A regret. It was just the two of us, Dad. It was a lonely way to grow up—for you, too. If you'd been an ordinary, average father like the other guys' dads, you'd have understood that.
HENRY: (Looking through his diary) Actually, I was a wonderful father.
INDIANA: When?
Henry finally looks up from his diary.HENRY: Did I ever tell you to eat up, go to bed, wash your ears, do your homework? No, I respected your privacy, and I taught you self-reliance.
INDIANA: What you taught me was that I was less important to you than people who'd been dead for five hundred years in another country, and I learned it so well, that we've hardly spoken for 20 years.
Henry equates being a hands-off dad with being a good dad. He doesn't understand that Indiana wanted a dad that told him to wash his grungy ears and eat his green beans; he wanted a father who was engaged and took interest in what mattered to him. If Henry looked up from his Grail diary every once and a while, maybe he would have noticed that, huh?
Weaponized Nerd
Henry may be wicked smart, but he also fits the absentminded professor mold. He's book smart, not street smart like his son, and at first, Henry's inattentiveness is a burden. Indiana essentially babysits him—or, in video game parlance, drags his hapless dad around like he's on an escort mission for the first half of the film.
When Indiana arrives at Castle Brunwald to rescue Henry, for example, Henry accidentally sets the room on fire. Thanks for the assist, Dad. When father and son try to escape from the Nazis by air, Henry then shoots the tail off their own plane. See? Total liability.
Eventually, though, Henry gets into the swing of things and embraces the adventure, spontaneity, and even violence that are part of his son's job. When that happens, he uses his academic dorkiness as a weapon. He embraces not only his son, but also his son's way of doing things. He crashes a Nazi plane by forcing a flock of seagulls toward it, for example. He blinds another pesky Nazi goon with an ink pen.
Basically, the cautious intellectualism that was once a weakness becomes Henry's greatest asset. He may wield a sensible umbrella instead of a whip, but, when push comes to shove, Henry proves that he can be just as bold and courageous as his son.
Henry Jones' Timeline