It’s possible that Indiana Jones cemented his legend 27 years ago in “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” when he picked a fight with a bad guy twice his size. Having skipped among such exotic locales as Egypt and Nepal on the hunt for the ultimate treasure, the unfamiliar hero suddenly found himself engaged in hand-to-hand combat with an angry, shirtless Nazi. After getting pummeled repeatedly, Indiana grabbed a fistful of gravel and threw it in the guy’s face, then waited for the Nazi to back himself into the swirling blades of an airplane propeller.

It was hardly your standard fistfight, but Indiana Jones was never the standard protagonist. He was an adventurer of flawed, profoundly imperfect proportions, something that made him relatable to the masses no matter how grandiose (or even academic — he is but a lowly college professor) the mission. No doubt a great many fans are eagerly awaiting the arrival next week of the fourth Indiana Jones installment, “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull,” precisely because they’ve been waiting more than a decade to see what sort of pickles the hero can get himself out of, not into. The titular skull is an afterthought.

Consider the opening sequence of “Raiders.” As Indiana expertly wraps his hands around a gold idol and deftly slides a bag of sand in its place, the viewer is left to marvel at his daring ingenuity. A moment later, as the ancient Incan temple begins to crumble and a massive boulder comes crashing down in pursuit, it becomes clear that he has botched the operation and must now run for his life. Managing to sneak his way out of the chaos alive, he is immediately confronted with bows and arrows, and then watches as his nemesis makes off with the treasure.

Skip to the end of the film, and our hero doesn’t save the day so much as successfully stay out of the way as the villains perish for their greed. Here was a serial-style hero of the prewar era, updated to overcome all the flaws and inabilities inherent to his character. He was even afraid of snakes.

In 1981, Indiana Jones was a refreshing antidote to the chiseled heroes of the late 1970s and early ’80s — the all-powerful Superman, the debonair James Bond, the ruthless Ripley in “Alien.” He was saved from certain death as often as he saved someone else from it. By contrast, in the franchise’s first sequel, 1984’s “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom,” that vulnerability was transferred to the character of Indiana’s oft-victimized love interest, Wilhelmina Scott (Kate Capshaw), who did enough whining and screaming to fill the entire series. The main character suffered as a result, precisely because he was too often the savior and not the saved.

Five years later, in 1989’s “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade,” that frailty was restored when the action star was reduced to juvenile status, spending the majority of the story trying to impress his renowned father (played by a wily Sean Connery). Again, the object of desire (in this case the Holy Grail) was all but incidental. More important was the notion that this great hero of the screen was being mocked incessantly by his parent.

All of which has left many to wonder whether Indiana Jones should have been left to remain an artifact of the 20th century. The modern summer blockbuster market has become a place where stories and characters must be more dazzling and daring than ever, a mentality that seems to run counter to the ragtag “Indiana Jones” franchise. One need only examine the first serial megahit of 2008, “Iron Man,” in which Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) offers a modern twist on Indiana Jones’s flawed-but-fearless, victory-by-elbow-grease persona. Yet even in “Iron Man,” one can sense the guiding force of studio expectations, as the story’s third act quickly devolves into generic sequences of damsels in distress and computer-generated battles between state-of-the-art machines.

So there is reason to speculate: Will “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull,” regardless of its box-office haul, be another cog in today’s summer movie machine, or will it restore the mantle of the do-it-yourself hero?

A spring of optimism can be found in the new film’s story, which drops Indiana into a nefarious Soviet plot set in the late 1950s — meaning it doesn’t attempt to brush over the two-decade gap since the events of “The Last Crusade.” Nor does it attempt to ignore the advancing age of star Harrison Ford (he turns 66 in July). In interviews regarding the top-secret plot, Mr. Spielberg and executive producer George Lucas have noted that the Cold War story line accepts that Indiana has grown older and less agile — something sure to be accentuated by the presence of co-star Shia LaBeouf (“Transformers”), whose wisecracking, Brando-style greaser character will no doubt play the converse of Mr. Connery’s creaky oldster in “The Last Crusade.”

Some have called the casting of Mr. LaBeouf, who wasn’t born when the first two “Jones” films hit theaters, superfluous, but it may prove to be the most important indicator that Indiana Jones will reprise the role that made him famous: that of the outsider.

ssnyder@nysun.com