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The Indiana Jones franchise is an American entertainment franchise, based on the adventures of Dr. Henry "Indiana" Jones, a fictional archaeologist. It began in 1981 with the film Raiders of the Lost Ark. A prequel, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, followed in 1984 and the sequel Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade in 1989. In 1992, The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles, featuring adventures the character had as a child as he traveled around the world with his father, began airing on television. A fourth film, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, was released in 2008 and was the last in the series to be distributed by Paramount Pictures. The series was created by George Lucas; the films star Harrison Ford and were directed by Steven Spielberg. The Walt Disney Company owns the Indiana Jones franchise since its acquisition of Lucasfilm in 2012.
The franchise has expanded beyond film and television. Marvel Comics began publishing The Further Adventures of Indiana Jones in 1983, and Dark Horse Comics earned the comic book rights to the character in 1991. Novelizations of the films have been published, as well as many novels with original adventures, including a series of German novels by Wolfgang Hohlbein, twelve novels set before the films published by Bantam Books, and a series set during the character's childhood inspired by the television show. Numerous Indiana Jones video games have been released since 1982.
The first film, Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) is set in 1936. Indiana Jones (Harrison Ford) is hired by government agents to locate the Ark of the Covenant before the Nazis. The Nazis have teams searching for religious artifacts, including the Ark, which is rumored to make an army that carries the Ark before it invincible. The Nazis are being helped by Indiana's nemesis René Belloq (Paul Freeman). With the help of his old flame Marion Ravenwood (Karen Allen) and Sallah (John Rhys-Davies), Indiana manages to recover the Ark in Egypt. The Nazis steal the Ark and capture Indiana and Marion. Belloq and the Nazis perform a ceremony to open the Ark, but when they do so, they are all killed gruesomely by the Ark's wrath. Indiana and Marion, who survived by closing their eyes, manage to get the Ark to the United States, where it is stored in a secret government warehouse. (Full article...)