Nostalgia is a powerful thing that can blind us to the realities of things we loved in our youth. This makes going back to a beloved childhood property a dangerous excursion, lest we discover that which we loved in our youth no longer holds up, and those memories we have are forever tainted. The opposite can also happen, where we are blinded by our nostalgia and ignore that something actually just isn’t all that good. I have been a victim of both over the years. I rewatched a “classic” Don Knotts/Tim Conway film, The Private Eyes—a movie I adored as a kid—only to discover the film kind of sucks. Likewise, I still adore the Police Academy movies, even though I know deep down that they really aren’t that good, especially the sequels. My nostalgia keeps me returning to those films for some reason.
For some, especially after Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny was getting ready for its release in theaters a few years ago, they were going back for the first time in years to rewatch the film that started this franchise, hoping that it would be as great as their memories said it was. After all, there was the lackluster Kingdom of the Crystal Skull in 2007 that left a sour taste in people’s mouths and left most people not wanting any more adventures from Indiana Jones. This disappointment led to die hard fans skipping the film altogether and younger audiences feeling like this was a franchise not made for them.
I’m not like most people.
While I was just four years old when Raiders of the Lost Ark premiered in theaters in the summer of 1981, I didn’t discover it until the following year when my father first purchased a VCR, most likely in response to the neighbors getting one a few months prior. My father was always big into movies and television and this new invention, while not cheap, was enticing to him and he had to have one. But in those days, unless you were rich, you didn’t buy studio movies for your personal collection. This meant that you either taped things off of television or, if you had access to a second VCR, you copied movies rented from the store. Somewhere during this time a tape entered into my parents’ collection with a simple sticker label on it that read in hand printed script: Raiders of the Lost Ark. I don’t know where we got it but, with nothing else to watch one day, I put this one on.
At five or six years old I was not the target audience for this film, yet I was mesmerized. I have seen it at least fifty times in the years since but I still remember that first time. Having the benefit of all those repeat viewings over the years I was not afraid that it wouldn’t hold up; I knew it would and could virtually recite the entire film beat for beat. I even remember hand drawing my favorite scenes from it in a notebook that my parents kept for years afterwards. In 1984, because I was still obsessed with it, I got to go on a rare excursion to the theaters to see a new release: Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. For months afterwards I would talk about nothing else on the school yard. To say I was a fan of this franchise is an understatement. This extended through to adulthood where, thanks to Covid-19 slowing down new film releases, I got to see all four, at that time, Indiana Jones films in theaters including Raiders of the Lost Ark, the only one I hadn’t seen on its initial release.
I’m hardly unique in my fandom, though there are times when it seems like I am the only one who enjoyed the latest installment. Many grew up in 1984 and remember the one-two punch of Temple of Doom and Ghostbusters, released just a month apart. Many more can remember the fall of that year dressing up in a leather jacket and fedora and cosplaying as Indiana Jones for Halloween, complete with makeup to simulate the beard stubble (my parents used petroleum jelly and coffee grounds to simulate the effect, and I can only imagine how that must have smelled). All of this is a roundabout way of saying I feared I would not be able to look at this film objectively and not just fanboy out when it finally came time to write this. To some degree, those fears are justified. Yet, when I sat down today and watched this film again, I not only saw the brilliance and the memories that keep me returning to this one, I also saw some little flaws that keep it from being a perfect movie, even though I still consider it to be in my top ten best movies of all time.
The film began as an idea George Lucas was trying to flesh out as a follow-up to Star Warsand The Empire Strikes Back. He was still in the serial adventure mode that had shaped that sci-fi franchise, only this time he was thinking less Flash Gordon and more Zorro or Allan Quartermaine. Steven Spielberg, on the other hand, was wanting to make a James Bond adventure. When these two Hollywood titans got together and Spielberg mentioned this, Lucas saw an opportunity. He said, forget James Bond, he had something better: Indiana Smith. Spielberg liked the concept but hated the name. Through a lot of retooling and writing, the name Indiana Jones was finally settled on. So too was the casting of Tom Selleck in the lead role. Selleck, however, was offered a television starring role that would be filming in Hawaii and left the project to play Magnum P.I. for eight seasons, a decision that aided him in the long run but kept him from ever really being much of a film actor. Instead, he has had a long and profitable career on the small screen.
Lucas didn’t want to work with Harrison Ford as Indiana Jones, primarily because Ford had already been in American Graffiti and Star Wars, and Lucas didn’t want to keep working with the same actor in all of his films. Spielberg convinced him to change his mind, and the final result was so well received that it is difficult to imagine anyone else ever playing this part. Yet, it seems likely that with Disney owning the property, a recasting and reboot will eventually happen. We can see how it would have looked with Tom Selleck in the role thanks to bonus features on the home video releases of this film, and the right choice was made to cast Harrison Ford.
Setting this film in the mid-1930s was an ingenious homage to the movie serials Raiders of the Lost Ark was emulating. So too is the use of Nazis as the villains and the inclusion of mystical elements, in this case, the Biblical Ark of the Covenant. Movie serials of the 30s incorporated real-world monsters as a way to entice audiences to come back week after week to see their heroes in fisticuffs with the very evil they were hearing about in the news, especially in the late 30s and early 40s once America entered World War II. It made young boys and girls proud thinking their fathers and older brothers were doing the same thing in Europe. This setting played off the nostalgia George Lucas felt for those old-time serials, and audiences in 1981, many of whom were children themselves during the forties, responded to it.
The story Lucas and Spielberg came up with was something that could have easily featured in one of those serials. It also took influence from the James Bond movies Spielberg was such a fan of. It opens with Indiana Jones (Harrison Ford) traversing a jungle in search of a golden idol. After escaping a series of booby traps, his prize is taken from him by Belloq (Paul Freeman), a fellow archeologist whom Indiana Jones has had run-ins with before. Jones barely escapes but loses the idol to Belloq.
Back in America, Jones, who teaches at a University, is pulled aside by some government Army Intelligence agents who inform him that Adolph Hitler is obsessed with the occult and has his men specifically looking for the Ark of the Covenant, an object from the Bible that supposedly made any army that carried it into battle invincible. The Nazis have located the lost city of Tanis, Egypt, where the Ark was supposedly hidden which means they may be close to finding the Ark. Indiana has a colleague who was an expert on the Ark who may have something he can use to help locate it before the Nazis, and so he sets out to find his old colleague before the Nazis can find him first. Thus begins an adventure that jumps from Nepal to Cairo as Indiana Jones and the Nazis fight each other over finding, then keeping the Ark in their possession.
Like the serials this is trying to emulate, Raiders of the Lost Ark is a series of action set pieces strung together, and there are moments that almost feel like they were designed to be cliffhangers inviting you to come back next week to see how they are resolved. The inspiration behind this can be felt throughout, and you can tell Lucas spent countless afternoons at the theater as a child devouring this kind of entertainment. This same style of filmmaking is prevalent in Star Wars, too, which was his idea when he was denied the rights to make Flash Gordon. George Lucas has never forgotten the wonder and joy of being a child sitting in a darkened theater watching daring stunts and fisticuffs and that shows in this era of his filmmaking.
This childhood mentality is why young kids can enjoy Indiana Jones on a totally different level than their parents. The Biblical details may go over kids’ heads, but the action set-pieces are almost simplistic to a fault. It appeals to the younger demographic because it borders on ridiculous at times. The opening scene alone is a prime example. If you stop and think about this sacred temple he is exploring, it doesn’t hold up. None of these booby traps make any logical sense. Yet it doesn’t matter. When we are seeing Jones triggering a deadly trap simply by holding a hand up into the light, we don’t question it. The same goes for whatever fantastical mechanism propels the poison darts to fire out of the wall with perfect accuracy just by stepping on the wrong parts of the floor. You could poke holes everywhere in this film if you so choose. It doesn’t matter. We are not here for logical set-pieces any more than we are here to see legitimate archeology.
As with all these kinds of adventures, there has to be a leading lady to add a little romance. That comes in the form of Marian Ravenwood (Karen Allen), the daughter of Indiana Jones’ colleague in Nepal. Marian is a strong female presence that adds a bit of troubling backstory that kids in the 80s never would have picked up on. We are told that her father and Indiana Jones had a falling out at some point, and that turns out to be over her. Their relationship is painted as physical, yet also that she was underage at the time. We get no details, but it doesn’t portray Indiana in the best light. It’s just a couple of lines of dialogue during her introductory scene, but it tells us a lot about their history and how inappropriate their relationship was at the time. Mercifully, this plot point is dropped as quickly as it is introduced, and she becomes a big part of his driving force to defeat the Nazis and save the day. While she does help out at times, though, she also falls into the trope of being a damsel in distress more than once.
Accompanying this adventure is the timeless music of John Williams, who by this point was Spielberg’s and Lucas’ go-to man for film scores. Williams’ heavy use of leitmotif, something that also drives his music in Star Wars, was becoming his signature style at this point. It was a style that, for much of the 70s, 80s, and well into the 90s, defined a John Williams score. There are even hints of it in his Harry Potter scores, although this is to a lesser degree as it was falling out of fashion by the 2000s. It creates a feel to every scene that is immediately identifiable. On top of that, the end titles theme, titled Raider’s March, became so identifiable with the character that it accompanies every sequel, much like the opening title for every main Star Wars film.
Raiders of the Lost Ark was a cultural phenomenon in 1981, topping most critics and audiences’ lists for the year. Famously, Pauline Kael went against the grain and had nothing good to say about it. Reading her review, one gets the sense that she didn’t understand what Lucas and Spielberg were going for. One can never anticipate how Kael would react to any given film, but she seems particularly vitriolic towards Raiders of the Lost Ark. Most everyone else who reviewed it, then and since, has seen it as revitalizing the action/adventure genre, renewed audience interest in the classic serials, and inspired countless imitators in the years since. This includes a little group called Raiders Guys, a team that got together a few years later and made a home video shot-for-shot remake of Raiders of the Lost Ark that they sell on their website, complete with a documentary on just how they managed this feat.
Raiders of the Lost Ark holds a lot of nostalgia for a lot of people, especially for my generation. Fortunately, it is one of those films that still holds up after nearly fifty years. It’s not a perfect film, especially if you really dissect the plot and try to make logical sense of it all. On top of that, there is a perfectly reasonable argument to be made that Indiana Jones doesn’t affect the plot in any way; had he not gotten involved, everything that happens would still happen. Yet that doesn’t matter. We are here for the adventure and the excitement, and this film has all of that in spades. There is a reason fans can watch it dozens and dozens of times and never get tired of it. Compare that to the last two entries, which I don’t hate. They are competently made films but do not have the same rewatchability.
Academy Award Nominations:
Best Picture: Frank Marshall
Best Director: Steven Spielberg
Best Music - Original Score: John Williams
Best Sound: Bill Varney, Steve Maslow, Gregg Landaker, and Roy Charman (won)
Best Art Direction: Norman Reynolds, Leslie Dilley, and Michael Ford (won)
Best Cinematography: Douglas Slocombe
Best Film Editing: Michael Kahn (won)
Best Visual Effects: Richard Edlund, Kit West, Bruce Nicholson, and Joe Johnston (won)
Special Achievement Award - Sound Effects Editing: Ben Burtt and Richard Anderson (won)
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Release Date: June 12, 1981
Running Time: 115 Minutes
Rated PG
Starring: Harrison Ford, Karen Allen, Paul Freeman, Ronald Lacey, John Rhys-Davies, and Denholm Elliott
Directed by: Steven Spielberg
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