Review of Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) by Cameron H — 04 May 2016

I wanted an adventure. Spielberg complied, and gave so much more than expected. Granted, he had a reputation for crafting top-rate films of multiple genres, but no one was prepared for Indiana Jones. It really has held up well, thankfully taking place in 1936, during the rise of Adolf Hitler. If this were a contemporary adventure, there may have been some references that dated the movie. That does not happen. For one, Spielberg treats us with likable and useful characters -- Indiana Jones (Harrison Ford) the clever but not pompous archeologist/hero, Marion Ravenwood (Karen Allen) the equally clever archeologist/ex-lover who refuses to fall into the pitfalls of most love interest characters, Belloq (Paul Freeman) the Nazi archaeologist whose intentions have less to do with pleasing Hitler or killing innocent people and more to do with discovering the unknown. All three of them are driven by the yearning to discover the unknown; in this case, they are all on the search for the ark that supposedly held the original stone tablets of the Ten Commandments. Indie travels all over the world -- South America, Nepal, Egypt, and an island in the Mediterranean Sea -- with a helpful map trope that Spielberg felt like inventing. Action scenes are fun (note to self: bring a gun to a knife fight), the environment is groundbreakingly immersive (see opening sequence that has inspired more than enough rolling boulder levels in video games), and John Williams scores once again with a rollicking score that hypes every coming scene.

Honestly though, those wouldn't matter much, if I did not like the development of the story or characters. The story is simple: everyone is on the search for the lost ark. Who will find it first? Who will get to keep it? What's inside of it? We don't need subplots. My hope for the answers to those questions drove me to watch the entire movie with full engagement and time passing quickly. The characters have clear, similar motives, and while there may be a "good" side and a "bad" side, that doesn't really matter by the end of the movie. The main characters feel like real humans, at the expense of many throwaway characters that lose their lives. Shit happens. One of my favourite character flaws is Indiana Jones' fear of snakes. Not only is it a recurring joke, but it leads to a serious confrontation of one's fear. There are many moments of humour in Raiders, but to have the main recurring one lead to a whole scene of confrontation is brilliant. In my arrogant opinion, this is one of the greatest action movies of all time. I believe the hype. Now, I wonder how the other movies hold up.