Jeremy’s Tophunder №53: Raiders of the Lost Ark

7 min readMay 12, 2020

Indiana Jones has the inauspicious honor of being the only movie on my list where I sometimes have to actually leave the room for a few minutes right in the middle of it. At the very least, I have to pretend like I have to send a very urgent text message and pour all of my attention into my phone.

The reason is, I share many, many qualities with Indiana Jones. For example, we both share rugged good looks, a hatred of Nazis, a propensity to heroically recover historically important artifacts, and then finally:

Obviously, this isn’t the scene I’m referring to — that comes later in the movie. I’m not going to link it, but you can probably find it on YouTube. This scene above has one instance of the animal I’m thinking of. The scene later in the movie has like, 300.

You might also notice that I’m not even referring to the creature by it’s name. There’s a very specific reason for that. You know how you can search for something random online, like, say, the lyrics to Madonna’s “Ray of Light,” and then for the next three weeks, every targeted ad you see on every website and every social media app is somehow related to Madonna, Rays, Lights, or other dance music from the late 90s? (For the record, this is a hypothetical example. As far as you know.) I don’t want this to happen. I have no reason to believe that it would, but I’m not taking any chances. That’s how much I don’t like this creature. I won’t even type its name.

As I re-watched Raiders, I knew this scene was in the movie, and that I don’t enjoy watching it. What I had forgotten about was exactly how long the scene was, and how often these guys randomly show up out of nowhere. It’s unsettling.

But beyond that, there is so much nostalgia wrapped up in Raiders of the Lost Ark that even if I get the heebie-jeebies for almost 15 full minutes, I can’t help but love the rest of the movie. For better or worse, the Indiana Jones series permanently changed the course of action-adventure filmmaking in Hollywood.

The PG-13 Rating was introduced in 1984, in large part due to the response to movies like Raiders and its sequel Temple of Doom, both of which received PG ratings despite more than a healthy dose of violence. While the MPAA rating system has been widely criticized for its inconsistency and exceedingly strange specificity, I would actually argue that the addition of the PG-13 rating was instrumental in the 80s and 90s in how it essentially created a new genre of movie — the action-adventure film geared specifically towards teenagers and young adults. By creating a rating between PG and R, it created a window where a movie could have too much violence and/or language and/or sex to be considered a “kid’s movie” at PG, but not quite enough that it would have to be considered a “grown up’s movie” at R. When you’re in your early teenage years, and you see that movies are rated PG-13, you can’t help but think that those movies were designed for you. They could have made an R-rated movie, but they wanted to make sure that Jeremy could go see it. That means something.

Raiders also came in the sweet spot when movies like this didn’t resort to special effects. If they were re-making Raiders in 2020, I would have to imagine that a lot of the movie would be shot on a soundstage and they would just blue-screen in all of the desert background. And it very well might look just fine. But that’s not what they did here. They filmed using a real submarine (the same one from Das Boot, in fact). The opening sequence in Peru was shot in Hawaii, and the scenes in Egypt were shot in Tunisia. Modern movies, for the most part, just don’t do stuff like this anymore. Now, does that matter? I’d argue not as much as you might think, because a lot of the time you can barely tell the difference. In the Marvel movies, for example, most of the backgrounds are created digitally. They look photo-real, but you obviously know that backdrops from Thor: Ragnarok were created on a computer. It’s just not something you’re fully conscious of as you watch the movie. But your brain can tell the difference, even if you aren’t fully aware of it. It -is- different to watch a movie shot on location rather than with a blue screen. I can’t fully put into words how or why, I just know that it feels ever so slightly different.

And in Raiders, it actually led to some iconic moments. The famous scene where Indiana just shoots the guy with the huge sword was originally written to be a long, drawn out sword fight. The problem was, Harrison Ford was suffering from dysentery brought on by local food, and wasn’t really in the mood to spend all day shooting a rigorous sword battle in 100+ degree heat. He went up to Steven Spielberg and said “let’s just shoot the sucker.” And they did. And not only did it become one of the defining scenes of the movie and of the series, it actually makes sense, story wise. From a character perspective, Indiana Jones doesn’t have time to spend 10 minutes sword-fighting with this random guy in Egypt. He needs to find Marion, who has just been abducted. In a roundabout way, the movie actually ended up being better -because- Harrison Ford was sick, and he was sick because they filmed on location.

There’s one other element about Raiders of the Lost Ark that I can’t fail to acknowledge — Indiana Jones has one of the greatest character introductions in the history of cinema.

My favorite thing about this sequence is really how little it has to do with the story that will come over the next hour and a half. There’s no exposition. The only plot points that remain relevant between this 10-minute sequence and the rest of the movie are (A) Indiana Jones is a bad-ass, (B) he has competing, adversarial archaeologists, and (C) he has a particular aversion for legless reptiles. That’s really it. It’s just a prologue. It establishes character, and nothing else. It’s brilliant, and the type of opening that doesn’t really exist in movies anymore. The Hollywood Machine has squeezed originality out of movies to such a degree that there’s no way this script could get made today as-is unless there was someone like Steven Spielberg backing it. Everything is formulaic now. The fact that the “inciting event” in Raiders (government agents coming to the university to tell Indiana that the Nazis are looking for the Ark) doesn’t come until almost 20 minutes into the movie would be a huge problem for a major studio in 2020. But Raiders flips that idea on its head, and chooses to just throw you into the middle of an adventure with Indiana Jones, introduce you to him in his real element, and then drag you back to something more mundane to get the real story moving. It’s a brilliant opening, and 40 years later, maybe the best component of the movie.

The lasting impression of Raiders of the Lost Ark, for me at least, is just how cool Indiana Jones is. At this point, Harrison Ford had done A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back, so he was already pretty stocked up on coolness. Indiana Jones put him over the top, and cemented him as the most bankable box office star of the next two decades. I do have a lot of love for the next two Indiana Jones movies (Temple of Doom and Last Crusade — I won’t even mention the fourth movie, because it doesn’t deserve any attention), but neither ended up making my list. I think that’s one of Harrison Ford’s defining characteristics, at least for my tastes — he makes movies I like, but ones that I don’t love. He’s among my favorite actors, because it’s very, very rare that I don’t like a Harrison Ford movie, but I’m not over the moon about them. They’re just consistently very good — I’m never disappointed. Raiders of the Lost Ark, though, is one that I really do love. I’ve said it over and over again, I’m a sucker for world building and character introductions, and Raiders sets up the universe and character of Indiana Jones as well or better than any iconic franchise or character ever. And that’s why it’s my 53rd-favorite movie of all time.

(For a refresher on the project, I introduced it in a Facebook Post on Day 1)

Here’s our progress on the list so far:

2. A Few Good Men

4. Dazed and Confused

6. The Fugitive

7. The Dark Knight

9. Saving Private Ryan

11. The Big Short

13. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring

15. Skyfall

17. Ocean’s 11

18. Air Force One