But, five movies and 42 years in, we might start to wonder whether Indiana Jones does belong in a museum. Indiana Jones has many children, and the franchise’s influence is so sweeping that even the biggest video game in the world at the moment, “ The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom,” bears its mark. Ngugi wa Thiong’o singles out Haggard for special scorn in “Decolonising the Mind” as one of the “geniuses of racism,” and the award is not undeserved. Quatermain’s first-person narration is funny and gripping, especially coupled with the footnotes from an “Editor” issuing their own corrections and commentary - but it is very hard to ignore the story’s racism, beginning with an extended commentary on racial slurs in the novel’s first chapter.

These books saw their swashbuckling hero, a master hunter, seeking lost treasures across Africa, Asia and South America, eventually uncovering over the course of the series a hidden world of mystery, magic and danger far exceeding the rationalist, scientistic expectations of mainland Europe. Rider Haggard cycle of Allan Quatermain novels (1885-1927) that began with “ King Solomon’s Mines” (1885). Adventure novels from around the turn of the 20th century, a genre coded as “boys’ entertainment,” are another important antecedent for Indiana Jones.