RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK: Spielberg’s adventure masterpiece

At the end of the 1970s, Steven Spielberg was relaxing on a Hawaiian beach with his friend George Lucas. Spielberg was celebrating the success of Close Encounters of the Third Kind, while Lucas needed a break after the exhausting work on Star Wars. At one point, Spielberg mentioned that he’d love to make a James Bond movie. Lucas replied that he had a much better idea, which resulted in Raiders of the Lost Ark. The rest is history.

Indiana Jones was born as a tribute to the adventure serials of the 1930s and 1940s, in which heroes found themselves in ever-deepening trouble, often in exotic and far-flung corners of the globe. Each episode would end on a so-called “cliffhanger,” where the action was abruptly cut off at the most thrilling moment—typically with death looming over the hero. Of course, the protagonist always escaped the reaper’s grasp. Spielberg and Lucas dreamed of creating something in that spirit, but with a modern twist and using contemporary technical capabilities.

The script was developed by Lawrence Kasdan and Philip Kaufman, with Lucas tossing out ideas. The action was set in the latter half of the 1930s, and the villains were the increasingly powerful Nazis. Originally, the hero was called Indiana Smith, a name inspired by George Lucas’s dog (which would later be acknowledged in the story). The filmmakers were intrigued by the Nazis’ fascination with the occult, particularly their obsession with hunting down religious artifacts. From there, it was a short leap to portraying a race between the hero and the Nazis to find the Ark of the Covenant, said to hold the tablets inscribed with the Ten Commandments. The Ark was believed to be a source of divine power, which the Nazis hoped to use to take over the world—and Indy had to stop them. The wonderfully pulpy plot aligned perfectly with the creators’ intentions.

Production went into full swing, with one thing missing: the actor to play the main role—whose last name had by then changed to Jones. Tim Matheson (of Animal House and later Fletch) was considered, as was Tom Selleck, known from the TV series Magnum, P.I. The latter was actually the top choice. Unfortunately for Selleck (and fortunately for audiences), he was bound by a contract and couldn’t take the part. So the iconic fedora ended up on Harrison Ford’s head, even though George Lucas was initially hesitant, since Ford had already starred in American Graffiti and the space saga Star Wars. Today, it’s hard to imagine anyone else playing Indiana Jones. The cast was rounded out by Karen Allen as Marion Ravenwood, the hero’s feisty partner; Paul Freeman as the cynical French archaeologist Belloq; John Rhys-Davies as Sallah, Indy’s Egyptian friend; and Denholm Elliott as Marcus Brody, the dean of the university where Indy teaches.

Raiders of the Lost Ark has since become the gold standard of adventure cinema. Packed with iconic scenes—just think of the booby-trapped corridor in the Peruvian jungle; Indy fleeing from the rolling boulder; shooting the swordsman in the Cairo marketplace (a moment improvised because the crew was suffering from food poisoning and Ford was too exhausted to film a full fight scene); the fight by the plane; the truck chase; and the climactic revelation of the Ark’s power—the film moves at a great pace and never lets up. Harrison Ford lights up the screen with his charisma, all to the pulse of John Williams’s fantastic score, featuring one of the most recognizable movie themes in history.

Sure, there are cracks in this otherwise crystal-clear adventure glass—such as the long-debated question of whether Indy was even necessary to the story, given that the Nazis would have met the same fate without his involvement—but there’s no need to nitpick. It’s better to let yourself be swept away by an Adventure with a capital A.

Spielberg created another masterpiece, while simultaneously cementing Indiana Jones’s place in the pantheon of the coolest heroes of all time. Decades later, Raiders of the Lost Ark still holds up beautifully, and it’s impossible not to cheer Indy on as he punches Nazis in the face.