My Favorite Movies: #5—Raiders of the Lost Ark

5. Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) 

Genre: Action-Adventure 

Director: Steven Spielberg 

Writer: Lawrence Kasdan (screenplay), George Lucas (story) 

Stars: Harrison Ford, Karen Allen, Paul Freeman, John Rhys-Davies, Denholm Elliott 

Awards: 4 Oscars—Art Direction, Sound, Editing, Visual Effects 

Metacritic score: 85 

IMDB Ranking: #41

The greatest adventure movie of all time, Raiders of the Lost Ark was the brainchild of friends and fellow wunderkind directors Steven Spielberg and George Lucas, and it's still one of the best movies either man has ever made. It's also what I consider Harrison Ford's most iconic role; with all due respect to Han Solo, who I love unconditionally, when I think of Ford, I think of Indiana Jones.

Spielberg and Lucas wanted to make an homage to the adventure serials of their youth, low-budget, cheesy productions with two-dimensional characters, predicable plots, mustache-twirling villains, damsels in distress, and most of all, weekly cliffhangers that kept you coming back for more. What they did with the concept was to turn it all into high-quality movie magic.

The characters are familiar tropes with complex motivations. Indiana Jones is an archaeology professor with a passion for history and a belief that the treasures of antiquity belong to the whole human race, and therefore, inside a museum. His antagonist foil is Rene Belloq (Paul Freeman), a French archaeologist who always seems one step ahead of Dr. Jones, showing up to collect by force what Indy has gained by guile, wit, and bravery.

The movie's plot has epic, monumental stakes at hand. The Nazis, on the verge of taking control of Europe, are digging in Egypt for the fabled Lost Ark of the Covenant, the golden chest sacred to the Israelites of the Old Testament, in which they kept the stone tablets of the Ten Commandments. Hitler believes possession of it will make his army invincible. Belloq wants to use it to talk to God. Indy wants to put it in a museum. The Ark itself has other intentions.

Marian Ravenwood (Karen Allen) is no damsel in distress. She can outdrink and outfight most of the men who are trying to get from her a piece of the puzzle that leads to the Ark. She's an old flame of Indy's whose presence in his adventure gives him an additional motivation. As he says at one point, when threatening to blow up the Ark with a rocket-launched grenade, "I just want the girl."

Every scene in this movie is not just memorable but iconic. The opening scene in South America where he grabs a golden idol, only to barely escape a gauntlet of booby traps, has been imitated and parodied countless times. From the bar fight in Nepal to the street fight in Cairo, from the map room to the Well of the Souls, from the truck chase through the desert to the ship and the submarine, and finally, to the terrifying conclusion in which the true power of the Ark is revealed, every second of this movie is positively brilliant.

That's not to say it's perfect, however. There are plenty of plot holes to quibble about, as was infuriatingly pointed out in an episode of The Big Bang Theory. I had my own questions at age 13 seeing it for the first time, especially wondering why Indy didn't drown on top of the submarine. I think Spielberg actually left the plot holes in on purpose as an homage to those cheesy old serials. Something can't be "greasy burger and fries" if you're actually going for "escargot and caviar." I think he wanted the flaws so we would use our imaginations to fill in the blanks just like he and George did when they were kids. 

It didn't matter to me then, and it doesn't matter to me now. I saw this movie six times in the theater during its initial release in 1981, and I loved every minute of it. This may actually be the most iconic movie in American history. Think about how many other movies where only two props—a brown fedora and a bullwhip—tell the whole story. Out of the magnificent career of composer John Williams, has there been a more stirring and inspirational theme than that of Indiana Jones? Yeah, Star Wars, probably, but they are cut from the same cloth.

There are a lot of movie goers who hated the fourth movie, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. I'm not among them. Was it silly and unnecessary? Of course it was. Was there a lot to complain about? Sure. But I got to see Indy and Marion finally walk down the aisle together. That was worth the price of admission alone. And to be completely honest, I would pay ten dollars to watch a two-hour movie called Indiana Jones and the Archaeology Lecture. 

Truth be told, so would many of you!