One of the most iconic moments in Raiders of the Lost Ark sees Indy facing a swordsman with ostentatious choreography. Indy just shoots the guy and moves on. This wasn’t in the original script. Initially, Indy was supposed to use his whip to yank the sword out of the guy’s hand, but since the entire cast and crew was sick from a bad case of food poisoning during the shoot in Tunisia, Harrison Ford suggested simply “shooting the sucker,” to cut down on how long it would take to film. Steven Spielberg loved the idea and decided to use
Raiders of the Lost Ark is the best example of Indy as a cinematic hero. From the very first scene, as he goes through the temple filled with boobytraps to his iconic “fight” with the swordsman, he is a hero that explodes off the scr
That being said, when they first tried to film the scene, none of the spiders moved when they were put on Molina’s back. This was because all of the spiders were male. After they added a female to the mix, however, the spiders got very animated and the shot was achie
In the temple in the opening scene of Raiders of the Lost Ark , little hieroglyphs of R2-D2 and C-3PO can be seen engraved on the wall . They can also be seen engraved on a golden pillar in the Well of Souls. This could just be seen as a fun Easter egg. But on top of that, the use of R2-D2 and C-3PO as hieroglyphs also seems to suggest that those droids actually went on their cosmic adventures a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away , and the Star Wars and Indiana Jones franchises take place in the same unive
When George Lucas made Star Wars , he had no idea how much of an international hit he had on his hands. It quickly became apparent that Star Wars was going to make him a lot of money so by the time they were making Raiders of the Lost Ark, it was at some point decided to give R2-D2 and C-3PO a cameo in the f
Since Raiders of the Lost Ark was inspired by the pulpy adventure serials of the 1930s , the early conceptual designs for the characters were a lot pulpier. The pulpiest of the bunch was the initial design for the Nazi villain, Arnold Toht. Whereas he’s just a sinister man in black in the final film, he was originally supposed to wear a cartoonishly kitted-out Nazi unif
While Harrison Ford got sick while filming in Tunisia, he also tore his ACL on set. In the scene where Ford was fighting a large, muscular foe around the plane, the landing gear of the plane rolled over his knee and tore his A
Although a lot of his contemporaries, like Francis Ford Coppola and John Milius, tackled the Vietnam War on the big screen while it was still raging, Spielberg avoided explicitly commenting on the conflict in his films until 2017. The Post is really the story of the Washington Post’s battle with the Nixon administration and the power of the free press, but it opens on a U.S. Army base in Vietnam’s Hau Nghia Province in 1
Steven Spielberg is quite possibly the most imaginative and diverse director of his generation, and this is best seen in his blockbuster legend Raiders of the Lost Ark. Indiana Jones’ (Harrison Ford) cinematic debut has him fighting Nazis around the world in a breathtaking adventure movie that only Spielberg could make. Since then, action movies followed Raiders’ example and Indy’s presence was never forgot
Indy is a stereotypical man’s man, someone who’s so manly that even as an academic his forte is punching people. Because he’s the hero, he gets away with casual misogyny, violence, and has to heroically dodge women’s affection (ex. One of his students). This doesn’t make him terrible, but his example is better left in the confines of cinema and mythmak
Raiders of the Lost Ark and the rest of Indy’s adventures were inspired by the pulp serial that Spielberg and Lucas enjoyed as kids, which explains the movies’ many anachronistic elements such as unintentional rac
When Raiders of the Lost Ark was first sent to the censors to be rated, it was hit with an R rating, because the MPAA felt that the melting face at the end was too graphic. The producers really wanted a PG-13 rating to allow it to become the box office hit that it would eventually become , so a layer of fire was added on top of the shot of the melting face to make it less horrifying and it was given a PG-13 rating. Steven Spielberg didn’t want to cut the melting face scene altogether, because he felt that it was the most impressive special effect he’d ever seen up to that po
While it takes place a few years before global war broke out, Raiders of the Lost Ark tips Ark was still made with World War II firmly lodged in its mind. As if the Nazis didn’t make things obvious enough, Indy and his friends represent the Allied Forces that would later team up to end the
Karen Allen brings so much humor, heart, and fun to the character. From her first scene where we find her in the midst of a drinking contest, she makes for an unforgettable character who is a welcome addition to this advent