Holy Grail

The cup of Christ that Indiana Jones and his father race the Nazis to find in 1938.

In the Indiana Jones franchise, the Holy Grail is the object of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989). Henry Jones Sr., a scholar who spent much of his life researching the Grail of Christian legend, keeps his clues in his Grail diary, and the Nazis, with the businessman Walter Donovan, who wants the Grail to achieve immortality, kidnap him to reach it. Lucas had suggested giving the Grail healing powers and the ability to grant immortality.

Lore & Background

The path to the Grail begins in Alexandretta, as an inscribed shield in a Venice catacomb reveals, and ends at a temple in Hatay guarded by traps, which Indy overcomes with his father's diary. In a room with many cups an ancient knight, who drank from the cup of Christ during the Crusades, explains that only one cup is the true Grail. Donovan drinks from a false one chosen by Elsa Schneider and dies by rapid aging; Indy picks a pewter cup, the cup of a carpenter, and heals his mortally wounded father with it. The knight warns that the Grail can never cross the great seal; Elsa ignores the warning and falls to her death, and Henry persuades Indy to let the Grail go.

Reader's Guide

Spielberg at first did not care for the Grail idea, which he found too esoteric. In real-world history, Otto Rahn's books inspired interest in the Grail in Nazi occultist circles and led to SS chief Heinrich Himmler's abortive sponsorship of Rahn's search for it.