Three movies, three stages of knighthood. Indiana Jones goes from being a mercenary knight in Temple of Doom to an indentured knight in Raiders of the Lost Ark, and finally graduates to a Grail Knight in The Last Crusade.
In Temple of Doom, we first see a young Indy stealing the cross of Coronado to take glory for the find and give it to a museum where he feels it belongs. He acts on whim, and as we flash later to the Portuguese coast, he still is after the same cross and is still insisting on its placement in a museum.
Indy transitions away from the deceptive, win at all costs mentality of the mercenary knight into the grail knight by The Last Crusade. When Indy's father is shot in the temple Indy realizes he must fulfill his duty and help his father. He is on a spiritual quest, as well as an earthly one, and his father's potential death spurs him to his eventual reclaiming of the grail. He helps deceive Donovan as he remains quiet when Donovan chooses his grail, and then picks the proper and modest grail to save his fathers life. Then he leaves the grail in the temple, listening to his father and realizing that it is not an object of this world, and not fit for a museum.
What about Raiders. What stage is Indy in then? It is important to the transition to the final film.
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