Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)

 Originally Reviewed

Friday October 14, 2005

I'm not going to bother giving a summary of the plot, if you haven't seen Raiders of the Lost Ark yet... well you either aren't human or you have never left your house and probably don't own a TV. I think it's fair to say that the Indiana Jones Trilogy is quite simply one of the greatest adventure series of all-time and that Indiana Jones is easily one of the greatest film characters of all-time. If you want to take either of those statements to tasks then by all means do so, leave a comment.

Raiders of the Lost Ark is actually my least favorite of the three films, probably because I've have seen it dozens upon dozens of times and out of the three it's played the most on television. Don't get me wrong I still think it's a great film but not my favorite of the trilogy. Harrison Ford was made for this role and it is really hard to believe that Spielberg and Lucas originally offered Tom Seleck the lead, but he was advised to turn it down since he was just about to start his Magnum PI series... I bet he regrets that. Oh well, good luck for Harrison who was second in line and gladly excepted the role after being sky rocketed to fame in the Star Wars films.

One thing I ever understood is how Indiana Jones could teach a class while fighting Nazis and hunting for treasure. In the beginning of the film we see him teaching one of his archeology classes and then the next thing you know he's off to Egypt to save the world, well I guess they just had a substitute teacher. Anyhow, almost everything about this film is extremely well done and is what adventure films of present should model themselves after even though they'll never be able to achieve this type of success again.  I think The Mummy was about as close to quality Raiders of the Lost Ark you could get, but unlike this trilogy, The Mummy series only went downhill while Indy kept getting better (ignoring the 4th film of course).

9/10