Full disclosure: Raiders of the Lost Ark is my favorite movie of all time.
I say that and people look at me like I have two heads. What nobody realizes, however, is that there is a difference between "favorite" and "best". It's not that Raiders is the best movie ever made. There are other movies that are better than it certainly. Or if not better, than more "important" than it in terms of what they have to say. Let's just throw it right out there: Raiders is pop entertainment. Two hours of pure pop entertainment, in fact. It's not a message film like On the Beach or Schindler's List. It's not meant to make you consider the human condition or anything like that. It is, at it's heart, a pure early 80s summer blockbuster, and one of the best at it.
Conceived as an homage to the great serials of the 1930s and 40s, in particular the Republic serials, Raiders has a simple premise. In 1936, the Nazis are looking for the Lost Ark of the Covenant, the fabled chest that allegedly contained the original Ten Commandments (the stone tablets, not the movie). The U.S. Government asks archeologist Indiana Jones to beat the Nazis to the prize. Jones reunites with an ex-lover whose father has an artifact the Nazis need to aid in their search. The Nazis call upon Jones number one rival Belloq to help them. The Ark is found and trades off who owns it several times before the end of the movie. Yep, that's about it.
Don't let the fairly simple description above fool you. I mentioned that Raiders was a throwback to Republic serials and nobody was better at simple premises than Republic serials. Raiders tells a simple, straightforward story but tells it thrillingly. Once the movie starts, it never really takes a breather. I would argue that it is one of the most action packed movies you'll ever see. Keep in mind, this was in the pre-CGI world, with actually stuntmen pulling off such mind blowing stunts as Jones being chased by a very large boulder to Jones chasing after a speeding truck on horseback to Jones being dragged behind said truck and climbing back on. That last mentioned stunt is a clever nod to one of the most famous serial stunts, typically called The Yakima Canutt Stunt, where the hero is sliding under a speeding wagon and climbs back on. Actually, that's the genius alone of the original Indiana Jones trilogy. Like the James Bond movies of the era, all the stunts are for real and all the more amazing for it.
Harrison Ford got the role of Indy when Tom Selleck had to turn it down due to his Magnum, P.I. commitment. I like Selleck and I've seen his audition. He's a fine actor, but Ford nailed Jones and made him into an iconic movie character. Ford IS Indiana Jones, a not entirely likeable good guy--he does have a touch of greed to him--who rises above the occasion to kick some Nazi rear. Karen Allen plays his feisty ex-flame Marion Ravenwood. She's the best of the heroines in the series, instantly recalling the true Serial Queens like Kay Aldridge and Linda Stirling. She may get into trouble, but she puts up a fight and uses her wiles to attempt to escape. The scene where she tries drinking head bad guy Belloq (Paul Freeman) under the table in an attempt to escape from him is alternately hilarious and suspenseful.
This is Spielberg's second movie involving Nazis. He's said that he regrets portraying them the way he does in this, especially after Schindler's List, which was his first time at portraying them as they really were. What Spielberg seems to forget, however, is that their portrayal in this movie is appropriate for the type of movie it is. It's a serial, after all, and anyone who has seen Spy Smasher or Manhunt in the African Jungles knows where the Nazis in this film were modeled off of. On top of that, the three main villains--Belloq, Toht (Ronald Lacey), and Dietrich (Wolf Kahler) are perfect representations of the best of the serial villains. They're a nasty, murderous bunch--in particular Toht, who threatens Marion with a hot poker in one scene and throws her into the Well of Souls in another. Incidentally, Freeman went on to appear (not as Belloq) on the early 90s Young Indiana Jones Chronicles.
Look, this is a movie that has it all: amazing action scenes, genuine suspense, and just the right amount of humor. It truly is representative of the classics of the serial genre and if it were an actual cliffhanger serial, it would be the greatest one of all. One can tell that Steven Spielberg and George Lucas had a genuine affection for serials. If you pay attention, you can even find every chapter break in it. Count them. There's 12 actual chapters in it. Plus, if you're a serial nut (like I am), you can tell which serials which scenes were nods to.
Proof of the greatness of this movie is the sheer number of imitators it spawned. This happened frequently back in the late 70s and early 80s. Jaws gave rise to any number of shark movies (and still does for that matter). Star Wars inspired movies like Battle Beyond the Stars and Starchaser: The Legend of Orin. Halloween begat Friday the 13th, My Bloody Valentine, and so on. Alien gave use movies like The Thing. And Raiders inspired movies like Treasure of the Four Crowns (truly awful) and Romancing the Stone (actually fairly decent). The problem with the Raiders imitators is that they just looked at the treasure hunter aspect or the serial aspect and missed the whole fun aspect. When Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow came out (another serial inspired film), I went to it eagerly. After watching it, however, I turned to a friend of mine and said "it just didn't have the wow factor Raiders did".
I'm quite certain that if you wanted to judge the best Spielberg movie, some artsy critic would point to something like Saving Private Ryan or Lincoln, both of which are excellent movies indeed. However, I'm not an artsy critic. I'm a film buff and while I recognize the superiority of those two movies, I'll go back to Raiders again and again and again and never get bored with it. I first saw Raiders at age 11 on the big screen in March of 1982. It captured my imagination then and 32 years later, it still captures my imagination. After all, isn't that what a favorite movie does?
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