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If you need a primer on the Indiana Jones saga before seeing "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull," here's a recap of the first three movies.

Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)

In 1936, intrepid archaeologist Indiana Jones retrieves a golden idol from an ancient South American temple, but is foiled by his French nemesis, Rene Belloq, who forces Indy to hand over the treasure.

Returning to his teaching job at a university in the States, Jones is commissioned by federal agents to find the Ark of the Covenant, in which Moses put the Ten Commandments. Legend talks of the Ark having awesome powers, and the Nazis are keen to find it and use it as a weapon. Jones travels to Nepal to look up old flame Marion Ravenwood, whose father was the pre-eminent expert on the Ark. They are attacked by Nazis, but manage to fight them off and retain the medallion that Marion's father left with her before he died.

Traveling to Cairo they meet up with Indy's old friend Sallah, a digger who takes them to an old wise man who interprets the writings on Marion's medallion. Marion is captured during a street fight with Nazis and local thugs, and is placed under the protection of Belloq, who is working for the Nazis.

Using clues from the medallion, Indy and Sallah manage to uncover the Ark, but are discovered by the Nazis. They take the Ark and entomb Indy and Marion in the snake-filled crypt. The pair manage to escape, and after a harrowing fight and truck chase, Indy recaptures the Ark. They place it aboard a merchant ship heading to America, but a German submarine boards them, kidnaps Marion and takes the Ark again. Indy eludes the enemy and stows away on top of the sub, which travels to a secret Nazi base in the North Atlantic. There Belloq and the Nazis open the Ark, unleashing a terrible doom that slays everyone but Indy and Marion.

Back in the States, Indy is furious when the federal government whisks the Ark away to parts unknown. In the final shot, it is revealed that the Ark has been boxed up in a crate and placed in a giant warehouse with thousands of other anonymous crates, apparently to be forgotten.

Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984)

Set a year earlier than "Raiders," "Temple of Doom" opens in a Hong Kong nightclub, where Indiana Jones has set up an exchange of artifacts with criminal kingpin Lao Che. The deal goes awry, due mostly to the interference of American singer Willie Scott, and the club turns into a shooting gallery. Jones and Willie escape with the help of Short Round, a spunky boy thief who serves as Indy's sidekick.

After a car chase they manage to book passage on an airplane, but it turns out to be owned by Lao Che, who instructs the pilots to dump the fuel and parachute out of the plane while the trio is sleeping. Indy, Willie and Short Round survive by using an inflatable raft to slow their fall, and end up in the care of an Indian village. The villagers say they are bedeviled by the return of the evil Thuggee cult, which has kidnapped all their children and stolen the Sankara Stone that protected them.

Traveling to Pankot Palace, they meet the boy Maharaja, who denies any Thuggee connection. But after Jones is attacked in his room, the trio discovers a secret entrance. After barely surviving the bug-infested, spike-trapped labyrinth, they end up in a Thuggee temple, where villainous priest Mola Ram is using the mystical power of the Sankara Stones to revive worship of the evil god Kali. They are captured, and Indy is drugged with a mind-altering poison that makes him assist Mola Ram, who intends to use Willie as a human sacrifice in the lava pits below the temple.

After being broken from his trance by Short Round, Indy and his companions fight off the guards and escape with the Stones in a thrilling chase in mine carts and a confrontation with the Thuggees on a spindly rope bridge across a yawning canyon with man-eating crocodiles below. Returning to the mines, Indy frees the enslaved children and brings them and the Sankara Stone back to the village.

Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1989)

In 1912 Utah, a young Indiana Jones is exploring caves with his Boy Scout troop when he discovers looters stealing the Cross of Coronado, a priceless gold artifact. He takes the cross and leads the thieves on a chase though a speeding circus train, where Indy acquires his fear of snakes after falling into a crate full of the reptiles. He manages to make it home with the cross, but after being ignored by his distracted father, the sheriff arrives, retrieves the cross and gives it to the mysterious white-suited man who hired the looters.

Flash to 1938, and Indiana is aboard a ship in a raging storm, again confronting the man in the white suit for possession of the cross. Indy narrowly escapes with it before the ship sinks. Successfully returning to his university job, Jones is recruited by wealthy tycoon Walter Donovan to help in his search for the Holy Grail, the cup that held the blood of Jesus and is said to grant immortality to those who drink from it.

Indy's father, the world's foremost collector of Grail lore, mailed his diary full of clues to Indy before disappearing in Venice. Traveling to Venice with colleague Marcus Brody, Indy teams up with Austrian archaeologist Elsa Schneider. Using information from his dad's diary, Indy and Elsa discover a tomb underneath a library that provides another clue to the location of the Grail, but they are nearly incinerated by cultists. After a speedboat chase through the Venice canals, the cultist leader informs Indy that his father is being held captive in a German castle. Indy and Elsa bluff their way into the castle and Indy rescues his father, but are betrayed when they learn that both Elsa and Donovan are working for the Nazis.

Indy and his father escape from the burning castle, and after a motorcycle chase they make a daring trip to Berlin to recover the diary from Elsa. They make their final escape from Germany after a manic chase aboard a zeppelin and pursuit by Luftwaffe fighter planes. Traveling to Jordan, they learn from old friend Sallah that the Nazis have captured Brody. After an extended battle involving the cultists on horses and a vintage tank, Indy, his father, Brody and Sallah catch up with Donovan's group at the temple where the Grail rests.

The Nazis have been unable to solve the riddles of the traps that protect the Grail. Donovan forces Indy to retrieve the Grail by shooting his father, telling him only the artifact's healing powers can save him. Using the lore of the Grail diary, Indy penetrates the temple's inner sanctum, where he discovers an ancient knight who has been guarding the Grail since the medieval Crusades. Donovan and Elsa intrude, and the knight tells them they must choose the true Grail from among the dozens of golden chalices in the room. Elsa intentionally chooses the wrong cup for Donovan, who drinks from it and in mere seconds ages into a withered corpse that crumbles to the floor. Indy correctly picks the correct Grail, and uses it to revive his father. But the curse of the Grail will not let it leave the temple. Elsa insists on trying to take it, which sets off an earthquake that opens up a chasm in the temple floor. Elsa falls to her death trying to retrieve the Grail, and Indy nearly does so as well, but is convinced by his father to let it go.

Escaping the collapsing temple, the four men ride off into the sunset, but not before revealing that "Indiana" was actually the name of the Jones family dog, which he took as his nickname.