John Payne: The Last Son

John Payne: The Last Son is an American action-adventure fantasy film written by George Lucas and Steven Spielberg and directed by Peter Jackson and the sequel to John Payne: Darkest Times starring Dylan O'Brien, Emma Stone, Robert De Niro, Emma Watson, Seth MacFarlane, Helen Mirren, Patrick Dempsey, Oded Fehr, Ken Davitian and Joel Courtney. The film is the third installment in the John Payne series. It was released on November 1st 2019 for North America, November 2nd for Europe and Japan, and November 3rd for Australia. The main plot of the game involves Jonathan "John" Payne and Phillip "Phil" Lovecraft trying to find the legendary Atlantis of the Sands.

Plot
The story begins with Jonathan "John" Payne (Dylan O'Brien) and Phillip "Phil" Lockhart (Robert De Niro) entering a pub in London to meet with a man named Jason Locke (Patrick Dempsey), who is interested in purchasing John's ring. During the meeting, John and Phil accuse Locke of offering them counterfeit banknotes, and a fight ensues. After fighting their way past Locke's thugs, John and Phil emerge in an alleyway, where they are surrounded and subdued by Peter Smith (Seth MacFarlane), Locke's cohort. They are then approached by Locke's client, Pamela Bryar (Helen Mirren), who steals John's ring. John attempts to go after her, but Smith guns him and Phil down, seemingly killing them.

The story flashes back to 10 ears earlier. A teenage John Payne (Max Records) explores a museum in Cartagena, Colombia, in search of Sir Francis' ring, but is thrown out after guards suspect him of being a thief. Intrigued by the actions of a young Phillip Lockhart, who he does not know at this point, John follows Phil to a keymaker and pickpockets him, before returning to the museum. He steals the ring, but before he can leave he is caught by Bryar, her henchmen, and Phil, who was working for her. John flees with the ring, with Bryar's agents in pursuit, but Phil rescues John from the agents and decides to act as a mentor to him.

Returning to the present day, it is revealed that the meeting was an elaborate set-up by John and Phil to get closer to Bryar, with Smith being an friend of theirs and newly associate. With the help of Helena Beckham (Emma Watson), they trace Bryar's car to a hidden library, where they manage to retrieve T. E. Lawrence's notebook and a map showing Francis Drake's secret voyage to Arabia, where he was commissioned by Queen Elizabeth I to search for the lost city of Ubar which is only mentioned in the Quran. Using these items, John works out that clues to the city's location lie in Crusader crypts in a French chateau and a Syrian citadel. John and Phil head to eastern France and locate the long-abandoned chateau in a dense forest. They find one half of an amulet inside the crypt, but the four are ambushed by Locke, who takes the amulet and sets the chateau on fire. John and Helena escape and quickly head to Syria, fearing that Helena and Smith, who traveled to the Syrian citadel, may have been followed as well.

In Syria, John and Helena meet up with Helena and Smith, who have learned that Bryar is the head of an order dating back four centuries. The order seeks to gain power by exploiting the fears of their enemies. During their quest, Smith gets shot by a dart containing hallucinogens, which forces him to give his gun and notebook to Locke, later causing Smith to fight with John, just to end in a draw as Smith gets his consciousness back. The group reaches the second crypt and find the other half of the amulet, revealing the location of the next clue in Yemen. However, while trying to exit the citadel, Smith is cornered by Bryar and Helena, forcing him to hand over the amulet piece. Although John, Phil, Helena and Smith manage to escape, Smith breaks his leg in the process, forcing him and Helena to back out for the rest of the game, while John and Phil travel to Yemen on their own.

Drake reluctantly follows Phil's advice to meet with his wife Emily Williams (Emma Stone), recently estranged. Though the two argue over the fact that Emily is still wearing her wedding ring, and how John seems to be obsessed with his quest, Emily still helps John and Phil, giving them a tour of the city. They eventually locate the underground tomb where they discover the location of the lost city, as well as evidence that Sir Francis Drake had also found the tomb, and that what he learned there caused him to abandon his mission. Back above ground, Nate is shot with a dart containing hallucinogens. After stumbling away alone, John wakes up outside a café with Bryar and Locke. Here, Bryar comments on his past and his relationship with Phil, and even threatens Emily if he does not cooperate. When Locke gets news of Phil's location, John breaks free and gives chase to Locke throughout the city; however, John is then knocked out by Faran (Ken Davitian), a pirate working with Bryar. Faran interrogates John for information about Iram of the Pillars. When John refuses to cooperate, Faran reveals to have captured Phil. John manages to escape captivity and eventually reach the cruise ship where Phil is captured.

John discover Phil sitting on a chair in the cargo hold with a fabric bag on his head, but discovers it is a dummy. Faran and his men appear, and reveal that Faran never had Phil. Faran stumbles to safety after being shot by John. John then throws a grenade in the ensuing battle, which results in a large explosion rupturing the ships hull. Eventually the excess water causes the whole vessel to roll 90 degrees and begin sinking. After navigating through the capsized ship, John finds himself in the over-turned ballroom. A mortally wounded Faran re-appears and shoots the glass roof, resulting in water rapidly flooding in, killing himself in the process. John escapes the overturned ship and washes back onto the shore.

He is reunited with Emily, but she informs him that Phil and the rest of his team were located and captured by Bryar's men and was taken on a convoy into the Rub 'al Khali desert; but they may be able to rescue him if they stow away on a cargo plane due to deliver supplies to Marlowe's convoy. At dawn, the two of them infiltrate the airstrip, where they eventually reach a high wall. John gets to the other side but refuses to help Emily up, and claims he doesn't want to risk losing Emily again. She understands and accepts this, and eventually leaves using a nearby jeep. John tries to reach the plane as it begins its take-off run, but ultimately fails. Emily re-appears in the jeep and picks him up, allowing him to enter the plane through one of the landing-gear bay doors just as the plane lifts off. John is soon discovered by Bryar's men on board, and a shoot-out ensues, resulting in a fire on board,leading to massive decompression, which tears the plane apart and sucks Nate out. Falling through the sky, John collides with a falling supply crate and deploys the crate's unused parachute; he is able to land safely on the desert floor. John finds a weapon in the wreckage and starts to journey through the desert.

After wandering the desert, suffering from heat exhaustion, severe thirst and experiencing hallucinations and mirages, John arrives at a ghost town in the desert where he is attacked by Bryar's men. A troop of men on horseback, led by Salim (Oded Fehr), appear and ride to John's rescue. At the horsemen's encampment, Salim tells John that the city of Ubar was doomed thousands of years ago by King Solomon when he imprisoned evil Djinn within a brass vessel and cast it into the heart of the city. He agrees to help John and leads him to the convoy spotted by his scouts. John and Salim destroy the convoy and rescue Phil. Salim then instructs John and Phil to follow him into a nearby sandstorm, but the pair lose him amidst the dust and they realize that they have arrived at the gates of Ubar.

Upon entering Ubar, John and Phil come across a sophisticated water fountain that John drinks from. Suddenly Locke appears and shoots Phil, killing him. Overcome by rage over Phil's death, John gives chase and has to fight more of Bryar's men, who seem to have been possessed by the Djinn, engulfing themselves in flames as well as showing the ability to teleport. John eventually comes to his senses and finds Phil alive. The true mystery of what happened to the people of Ubar thousands of years ago becomes apparent: when King Solomon cast the brass vessel into the depths of the city, it fell into the water and began to taint the water with a powerful hallucinogenic agent. The people were subsequently driven mad, and civilization within the city collapsed. John realizes that the vessel is what Queen Elizabeth had sent Francis Drake to find, but after learning the consequences of his quest, Drake abandons his mission and returns to England. John and Phil search the city and locate Bryar, who is using a winch to pull the brass talisman from the water. John and Phil destroy the winch and the explosion sets off a chain reaction throughout the entire city, causing it to collapse. John and Phil attempt to escape the crumbling city, and encounter Bryar and Locke shortly before the floor collapses, throwing Bryar into a pit of quicksand. John tries to save her but is unable to pull her out, and Bryar is submerged in the sand, taking Drake's ring with her.

After desperately trying to reach the edge of the giant sinkhole that the city has now become, John and Phil are intercepted by Locke, close to the exit. An enraged Locke attempts to kill John and Phil, but after a brutal fight, he is shot by John and dead, falls out of sight. At the city gates, Salim rides in on his horse and leads John and Phil to safety as the city is engulfed by the desert sands. John and Phil return to the airport in Yemen. There, Phil explains why he took such an interest in the young John. He then gives back John's wedding ring, which he secretly kept safe when John and Emily separated. John turns to see Emily, Helena and Smith joining them. John and Emily embrace each other, and all fly back home on Phil's new personal plane.

Cast

 * Dylan O'Brien as John Payne
 * Max Records as John Payne, age 16
 * Robert De Niro as Phillip "Phil" Lockhart
 * Emma Stone as Emily Williams
 * Emma Watson as Helena Beckham
 * Seth MacFarlane as Peter Smith
 * Helen Mirren as Pamela Bryar
 * Patrick Dempsey as Jason Locke
 * Oded Fehr as Salim
 * Ken Davitian as Faran
 * Marc Joseph as Willis

Reception
The film opened to mixed to very positive rewiens by critics. It was panned by Andrew Sarris in The New York Observer, David Denby in New York magazine, Stanley Kauffmann in The New Republic and Georgia Brown in The Village Voice. Jonathan Rosenbaum of the Chicago Reader called the film "soulless". The Washington Post reviewed the film twice; Hal Hinson's review on the day of the film's release was negative, describing it as "nearly all chases and dull exposition". Although he praised O'Brien and De Niro, he felt the film's exploration of John Payne's character took away his mystery and that Peter Jackson should not have tried to mature his storytelling. Two days later, Desson Thomson published a positive review praising the film's adventure and action, as well as the father–son relationship's thematic depth. Joseph McBride of Variety observed the "Cartoonlike Nazi villains of El Dorado have been replaced by more genuinely frightening Nazis led by Helen Mirren and Patrick Dempsey," and found the moment where John meets Hitler "chilling". In his biography of Spielberg and Lucas, McBride added the film was less "racist" than its predecessors.

The prologue depicting John Payne in his youth inspired Lucas and Spielberg to create The Young John Payne Adventures television series, which featured again Max Records as the young John Payne and Robert De Niro as Phil Lockhart. The 13-year-old incarnation played by Records in the film was the focus of a Young John Payne series of young adult novels that began in 1990; by the ninth novel, the series had become a tie-in to the television show. German author Wolfgang Hohlbein revisited the 1996 prologue in one of his novels, in which Payne encounters the lead grave robber—whom Hohlbein christens Jake—in 1998. The film's ending begins the 2023 comic series John Payne and the Spear of Destiny, which moves forward to depict John and Phil searching for the Holy Lance in Ireland in 2010.

The film currently holds a 97% on Rotten Tomatoes, with the site's consensus reading: "Lighter and more comedic than its predecessor, John Payne: The Last Son returns the series to the brisk serial adventure of El Dorado, while adding a dynamite double act between Dylan O'Brien and Robert De Niro".