RAIDERS and The Lost Art of Action and Humility: Spielberg Summers Return!

Hello!  Last year, I began a series where I would be going through Steven Spielberg’s sizable filmography sequentially, one decade at a time, one summer at a time.  Last year, I knocked out his 70’s output, a series of films that took him from one of the most popular TV movies of all time (DUEL), to the first true summer blockbuster (JAWS), before finishing with his first major failure (1941).  

This summer, we’re going through Spielberg in the 80’s.  That’ll mean full articles on the first three Indiana Jones movies, E.T. THE EXTRA-TERRESTRIAL, THE COLOR PURPLE, EMPIRE OF THE SUN and ALWAYS.  And maybe, just maybe, a couple of bonus articles to transition us into the spooky season.  But those are only if you’re good and say nice things about me on social media and tell your friends to read along.

Just kidding.  Probably.

Welcome to Spielberg Summer 2: E(igh)T(ies)!  Let’s roll!

Some movies are just so perfect, so tightly woven into the fabric of global popular culture forty-plus years on, that they actively defy any further discussion. 

Or, to put it another way…how the hell does one write an article about RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK in 2025?

I’m really asking.  What is left to say about perhaps the seminal summer blockbuster in the medium of film (besides maybe JAWS six years prior)?  In a lot of ways, the film’s analysis speaks for itself.  It’s a rollicking adventure that almost never stops moving, essentially from its first shot to its famous closing credits.  Even in its slower moments, every line contained within Lawrence Kasdan’s script is loaded with purpose, sneaking in mountains of exposition without it ever feeling like the movie is sitting you down to do so.  Best of all, it’s aged finer than pretty much any movie from its era: it’s just as thrilling now as it was in 1981, a nearly impossible feat.  Throw in a lead performance that shot Harrison Ford into the stratosphere, and you’ve got yourself one of the all-time greats.

Seriously, I could just stop here and hit “Publish”.  But I do want to start this run of summer Spielberg reviews with a little more effort, if not for you, dear reader, then for myself.  Indiana Jones would have done the same.

So…what to do?  Certainly, the temptation is high to break the film down, iconic moment by iconic moment (That big-ass boulder!  “Throw me the idol, I throw you the whip”!  “Why did it have to be snakes?”  The opening of the ark!  Indiana Jones bringing a gun to a swordfight!  “It’s not the years, honey, it’s the mileage”!  “Top.  Men.”)  You could probably wring a 25-page article out of that.  But the initial Indiana Jones adventure has been such a ripe source for tribute and parody that, frankly, pretty much everyone knows it beat by beat, possibly even if they’ve never seen it.  Do we need one more person to gush over that legendary truck chase?

One could also talk about its unique path to the big screen, it being the other “Big Idea” from George Lucas (the STAR WARS saga being the first), a direct tribute to the adventure movie serials of the 30s and 40s that formed his taste in storytelling.  Or how Philip Kaufman was Lucas’ first choice to direct, before a long discussion during a Hawaiian vacation with his friend Steven Spielberg (taken to avoid what Lucas assumed would be bad critical and financial reception to STAR WARS) led to the duo’s first major collaboration.  Or how the original name for the character was going to be Indiana Smith (changed at the urging of Spielberg to avoid comparisons to the Steve McQueen movie NEVADA SMITH).  Or how Kasdan was the third cog in this dreammaking machine, redrafting the script over and over with Lucas and Spielberg until they landed on the version we all know and love (with many potential character quirks discussed and axed, including Jones possibly being an alcoholic or a gambler).

The stopping point for me there, though, is that there are a million articles and books all about those things and, frankly, they’re all written with more wisdom and skill than I would ever be able to muster.  Do we need one more person to point out that Tom Selleck was the first choice to play Jones?

What I do want to dig into, though, is why, even when knowing every frame of this movie backwards and forwards, RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK still makes for an incredible rewatch, a film that continuously makes its case as perhaps the single most purely entertaining one ever made.

To be honest, my wife and I had just watched RAIDERS a couple of years ago, as we geared up to see what would happen when we turned the DIAL OF DESTINY (more on that when I do James Mangold Autumn later this year).  I was worried that not enough time had elapsed between screenings, that maybe its ability to thrill and surprise would be diminished.  I shouldn’t have worried; it’s as good as the first time I ever saw it, as a child on a big screen in an old revival house.

I’ve been thinking long and hard about why you could watch RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK over and over and have it feel like the first time, every single time (I know someone who watched it twice in one day a couple of years ago, mostly because he could).  And I think it comes down to two things: the crafting of Indiana Jones as both a larger-than-life action hero and a deeply relatable figure, as well as Spielberg regaining his action mojo after the letdown of 1941.

RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK

Directed by: Steven Spielberg

Starring: Harrison Ford, Karen Allen, Paul Freeman, John Rhys-Davies, Denholm Elliot, Ronald Lacey

Written by: Lawrence Kasdan (Story by George Lucas and Philip Kaufman)

Released: June 12, 1981

Length: 115 minutes

“I’m going after that truck.”

“How?”

“I don’t know.  I’m making this up as I go.”

Late in RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK, during a quiet moment before its gruesome finale unfolds, Indy makes a soft quip to Marion that ends up serving as one of the most famous lines from a script that seems almost exclusively made up of famous lines, as well as one of the most romantic moments in the entire Indiana Jones quintology: 

“It’s not the years, honey.  It’s the mileage.”

Indiana Jones’ relationship with Marion Ravenwood* is a tricky one to fully unwind, as it’s one forged from a slightly aged crucible.  With an established ten-year age gap between them, we learn fairly early on that Indy and Marion first entered into a relationship when she was just a teenager, which is one of those things that is functionally illegal in the modern era, but really wasn’t all that unusual in the era in which RAIDERS is set (technically speaking, my grandmother married my grandfather when she was a teenager, and there was ten years between them as well).  Even if it would have been a problem in 1936, the simple truth is that your heart can’t be bothered to care because the chemistry between Harrison Ford and Karen Allen is just so fucking strong.

*It should be said, by the way, that Marion Ravenwood might be one of the greatest movie character names of all time.  Every syllable is perfect.

Anyway, the reason I bring the “mileage” line up is because it cuts to the heart of what is so endearing about Indiana Jones as a character.  Even as Marion acknowledges that he’s changed in the years since he first broke her heart, Indiana knows only too well what has spurred that change.  It’s not his literal age so much as the wear-and-tear he’s put on his body, his emotions, his relationships.  There’s a tacit acknowledgement in the very text of the film that running around dashing away from poison darts and giant boulders comes with a cost.  Eventually, adventures catch up to you.

In essence, what this line has always meant, at least to me, is that Indiana Jones exists in the same plane of existence as the rest of us.  He’s human.  Which means he’s relatable.

This is a stunning conclusion to draw about a character who, at the age of 37*, is both a renowned globe-hopping adventurer and a tenured archeology professor.  He’s also as handsome as Harrison Ford was in 1981; if you didn’t know it, one only needs to look at the plethora of fawning female students that attend his lectures.  To a large degree, Indiana Jones resembles no human being you’ve ever met, and certainly not one you’ll ever be yourself.  

*His birthday is apparently July 1, 1899, as established on the Young Indiana Jones Chronicles TV show.  RAIDERS takes place in 1936.  So, there ya go!

Despite these basic, incontrovertible facts, Indiana Jones also never feels too far away from us.  Unlike, say, James Bond (who most of the time is generally always cool and calm in the face of danger, just as likely to talk his way out of danger as he is to shoot his way out) or any number of CSI leads (whose powers of deduction are so strong that they’re able to anticipate an infinite amount of threats by observing one stray hair on the floor), Jones doesn’t always have the firmest grasp on what exactly to do next.  He wins fights, but he also loses them.  He does the death-defying stunt just in the nick of time, but he eats a fair amount of shit as well, forcing him to figure out a Plan B on the fly.  

This is, of course, the same magic trick that the best MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE entries managed to pull off with Ethan Hunt.  As chronicled in this space recently, the series cycled through a few different characterizations for Tom Cruise’s iconic secret agent (maybe he’s a paranoid computer guy!  Maybe he wears shades and a leather jacket!  Perhaps he’s a devoted family man!) before landing on the one that made the franchise a consistent success: Ethan Hunt is a man driven by purpose (that being to keep the world safe), but is often forced by circumstances to constantly improvise exactly how to follow through on that purpose.

Indiana Jones is essentially built the same way.  He’s driven to go out and throw himself into a pit of snakes, or throw himself from a horse to a truck, not necessarily because it’s his job to recover these ancient artifacts (it’s not even clear to me if he clears a check for doing any of this), but because he’s genuinely wants to see and preserve these amazing things.  That drive comes at a cost, as his villainous rival Belloq, working with the Nazis on the recovery of the Ark of the Covenant in exchange for power, successfully calls Indy’s bluff when he threatens to blow it up with a rocket launcher.  Belloq bets that he won’t bring himself to destroy something of such human value.  He bets that Indy also wants to know what happens when it gets opened.  

He bets correctly.  Indy lays down his arms.

It’s very arguable whether Indy does the right thing here!  Now, the problem ends up taking care of itself: the Nazis open up the Ark and their faces immediately melt off.  But, without knowing that…is declining to destroy a powerful artifact worth it if it means the fucking Nazis get to control it?  It’s a tough call, one I don’t necessarily have an answer to.  But that kind of human fallibility, which is woven into Jones’ very fabric, is what makes him so compelling to watch.  The thing is: you know how movies work.  Indiana Jones is not likely to die at the end of the movie.  But, because we know that he’s laying down the tracks of his plan after he’s already decided to move, because we’ve heard him admit offhandedly to his friend that he doesn’t have a plan, because he’s already expressed the change that comes with doing this shit all of the time, you continuously watch the action onscreen wondering, “how is he going to get out of this one?” 

Truthfully, though, even if none of that were true, the action onscreen is so top notch that it’s still worth the price of admission.  Both at 1981 and 2025 prices.

———

“We never seem to catch a break, do we?”

It’s really, really easy to take Steven Spielberg’s run in the 1980’s for granted.

I was born in 1988; I’m guessing most people reading this are within five years of that birth date in either direction.  There’s a good chance that Spielberg’s status as the premier director of our time, whose fingerprints were all over basically everything we consumed as children, whether it be movies, televisions, or even Saturday morning cartoons, was simply a matter of fact.  Of course Spielberg produced Animaniacs and Pinky & The Brain and Tiny Toon Adventures.  He’s the greatest director of all time!  Always has been since the dawn of time.

I’m not sure that kind of Holy Status was anywhere near a given in the time in which RAIDERS was made, however.  As discussed when we left off at the end of last year’s Spielberg Summer, 1941 was a high-profile, star-studded disappointment that ended this fairly impressive run (THE SUGARLAND EXPRESS, JAWS, CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND) the young director had been on since DUEL hit TV screens in 1971.  Spielberg was indeed fallible!  What made 1941’s failure even more notable is that the palpable sense for action and blocking appeared to completely elude him during the making of what turned out to be an overlong, leaden, somewhat desperate wartime comedy.  It’s not the worst movie he, nor his contemporaries, would end up making.  But it still represented something of a blow.  Who knows how a young hotshot recovers from here?

Luckily for us, Spielberg appears to have internalized the failures of 1941 and used them as sources of motivation.  Because what is so striking about RAIDERS, especially when coming off of 1941, is how clear and narratively driven basically every single action scene is.  It can also be a source of sneaking in exposition, using these action sequences as a way to establish the characters in our story.

The whole opening scene serves as a testament to that mentality, using action to establish story and character.  As Indiana and his weaselly guide Satipo (played by a very young Alfred Molina) go deeper and deeper into a Peruvian temple, we see the death and destruction that awaited people who have dared to explore in the past.  We get all that tactile goodness of this cool temple set; the spiky booby-traps, the sunlight triggers, the giant crevasses, all that stuff that undoubtedly sparked an idea for a Disneyland ride a decade later.  More than anything, we see Indy relying on his education to survive.  He has an established knowledge of where and when to anticipate these vicious traps, and is able to avoid them as a result, all the way to the end, when he’s finally able to snag the Golden Idol from its throne.  Indy knows that extraction will lead to another trap.  He even comes prepared; he immediately swaps the idol with a bag of sand that weighs about the same.

Even with his vast knowledge, though, Indiana Jones isn’t infallible.  The sand isn’t heavy enough.  Trap triggered.  Oops. 

From there, it’s a run back through everything we just saw a couple of minutes ago, only with more immediate danger.  Satipo betrays Indy in order to take the idol himself (only to reach a spiky death seconds later).  Indy mistimes a jump over the crevasse, crawling out with only seconds to spare.  Oh, and there’s that famous giant boulder coming down to mess everything up.  Indy now shifts gears to rely on his wits rather than his smarts.  Even though he’s ultimately successful, coming out alive with idol in hand, it’s for naught.  Belloq turned out to have the jump on him, taking the idol away from him, native army backing him up.  Even with all of his smarts and instincts, Indiana Jones can snag a defeat from the jaws of victory.

Jones is able to get away in the nick of time, hopping onto his getaway prop plane as it’s already getting ready to take off.  This, of course, leads to him discovering a snake in his seat, resulting in us learning that he’s terrified of snakes because of course this would be the one thing in the whole damn day that would cause him to completely fall apart (more character insight!).  We’ve opened the movie with an instantly iconic thrill ride and we’ve learned just about everything we need to know about how our new hero thinks and operates.  Masterful work from Spielberg and Kasdan here.

That’s a big moment, in a movie made up, essentially, of one big moment after another.  My favorite little moment to point to that illustrates how RAIDERS never misses an opportunity to keep the ride going is the whole “poison date” sequence.  Never forget that this whole section of the movie kicks off with the revelation that the previously-assumed-to-be-friendly monkey that had been hanging around Indy and Marion turns out to *gasp* secretly be a Nazi sympathizer*!  Now that the bad guys know our heroes are in town, someone takes it upon themselves to pour arsenic over a bowl of dates at their lodging.

*In the entire canon of movies that feature a Nazi monkey, RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK almost certainly ranks near the highest.

Naturally, it’s only a matter of time before Indiana grabs a date, and it becomes this little metaphorical ticking time bomb on screen; he flips the date in the air, he flirts with taking a bite before suddenly having another thought, that sort of thing.  The scene is overall a small expository one, but Spielberg and Kasdan are able to turn it into this edge-of-your-seat ride; again, we know that realistically, our main character isn’t going to poison himself and die an hour into the movie.  But…it’d be so easy for him to do it.  We know something he doesn’t and, like, if I could just tell him…wait, no, don’t eat it!   We get sucked in despite all reason to the contrary.

Thankfully, that poison date doesn’t get eaten by Indiana Jones (that honor instead goes to that damn Nazi monkey, rest in piss bitch), and the movie goes on, filled with all of these elements that have stuck with me for essentially my entire life.  Karen Allen’s effortlessly charismatic performance as Marion.  John Rhys-Davies’ Sallah stealing every single moment he’s in (“Asps, very dangerous.  You go first.”).  Spielberg positioning the Nazis as both the biggest evil in the universe, as well as the dumbest sacks of shit alive, our earliest (but absolutely not the last) indicator of Spielberg engaging with his Jewish background.  I could literally list stuff all day.

All this builds the case for RAIDERS, not JAWS, as the purest Spielberg movie, one with all the thrills and action and humility that made him famous early on, with any of the more heart-tugging moments that would create a schism of opinion on his later work (is he manipulative, or a master of feelings?).  If I needed to sell someone on Spielberg as a director with one movie, this would likely be it.

It wasn’t a given. But it ended up being a hell of a way for him to kick off what would become his biggest decade by far.