In lieu of the upcoming fifth installment of the Indiana Jones films (planned to be released this June), I was inspired to write my next American Film Institute (AFI), Top 100 Movie overview on Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), the first film of the franchise. 

Directed by Steven Spielberg and produced by George Lucas, Raiders of the Lost Ark was the highest grossing movie of 1981 after its release on June 12th of that year. The pair came together over a shared vacation in Hawai’i, where Lucas asked Spielberg to direct what was originally titled, The Adventures of Indiana Smith. The name change from Indiana Smith to Indiana Jones didn’t occur until script writing began, but Spielberg argued it was a necessary change as the character of Indiana was being created. 

Even after four decades of release, the movie, as well as the rest of the Indiana Jones franchise, is still found pop-culturally relevant. It’s jam packed with scenes full of action, romance, charismatic one-liners, and the iconic music score by John Williams. 

In the opening scene, audiences are introduced to the character of Indiana Jones, a daring and wry professor of archaeology. It is 1936, and he is shown traveling through South American forests in search of a lost artifact. He braves his way through a Peruvian temple, smartly dodging deathly booby traps, and makes his way out with his life intact as well as with the golden idol he was searching for; However, he was not the only one looking for it. Before Jones can leave the temple, he encounters his archaeologist nemesis, René Bolloq, and is forced to give over the idol. 

Jones empty-handedly returns to the United States, and is greeted by two military agents who brief him of a pressing situation. Adolf Hitler is in search of the Ark of the Covenant, a biblical artifact that is thought to have supernatural powers. The agents recruit Jones to find the covenant before the Nazi’s, and Jones eagerly accepts and begins to pack for his journey. 

Jones faces treacherous fights with Nazi’s, snake ridden chambers, and ex-lovers as he embarks on his hunt for the covenant, hoping to reach it before falling into the clutches of Hitler. 

With the Nazis being the main antagonists, Raiders of the Lost Ark has been considered a Jewish-Vengeance film. The artifact Jones and the Nazis are fighting for, the Ark of the Covenant, is a sacred relic from Christian and Jewish faith. Throughout the film Spielberg finds ways of subtly degrading them, and in some ways making fun. In one scene, the Ark of the Covenant is being contained in a crate adorning a swastika. By the supernatural powers of the ark, the hate symbol is burned and no longer visible. Along with this scene, most of the deaths throughout the film are those of either Nazis or Nazi sympathizers, showing indignation and retribution. 

After many considerations for the role of Indiana Jones, such as Bill Murray, Jack Nicholson, and Tom Selleck, Spielberg favored Harrison Ford after watching The Empire Strikes Back. Ford went through weeks of training to learn how to use a bullwhip, Indiana Jones’s weapon of choice. In 2003, AFI had named the character of Indiana Jones as the second-greatest film hero of all time, second to Atticus Finch of To Kill A Mockingbird (1962). What is interesting about the character of Jones is that the writers did not write him to be considered a perfect hero. In fact, he was even originally written as a “grave-robbing anti-hero”(Raiders of the Lost Ark, An Oral History). The character of Jones is brave and adventurous, but the writers also made a point to humanize him. Audiences discover his deathly fear of snakes at the end of the first scene, as he jumps into his escape plane and comes face to face with a python in his lap. 

While there is a significant amount of gore throughout the movie, Indiana Jones is a relatively great family movie. I grew up watching the film franchise with my older brother, and I was always captivated by the excitement of Jones’s adventures and romances. It will be interesting to see what feat Indiana Jones will partake in in Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (2023).