Amazon Rainforest

The Amazon rainforest is a setting of the Indiana Jones films. Raiders of the Lost Ark opens in 1936 in the Peruvian Amazon jungle, where Jones recovers the Golden Idol. In Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, set in 1957, Jones and Mutt are captured by the Soviets in Peru and taken to a camp in the Amazon rainforest, and the film's journey runs across Nevada, Connecticut, Peru and the Amazon rainforest in Brazil.

Quick Facts

Primary location: South America

Lore & Background

During a chase through the Amazon jungle, Mac tells Jones that he is a double agent working for the CIA. The jungle scenes of Crystal Skull were filmed in Hilo, Hawaii, and because the script needed an untouched jungle for a chase that would have been unsafe to film, Industrial Light & Magic built a virtual jungle with a geography like the real Amazon.

Reader's Guide

The real explorer Percy Fawcett, last seen in 1925 returning to the Amazon Basin to look for the Lost City of Z, is named among the inspirations for Indiana Jones. In 2019 Harrison Ford spoke at the United Nations Climate Action Summit about the destruction of the Amazon rainforest.