It isn’t uncommon for older movies to use miniature models and sets to pull off complex action sequences. Lucas did this numerous times in the original Star Wars trilogy since CGI was still being fully developed, but the same thing was done for Raiders of the Lost Ark . Several miniature sets were built. Not really to film scenes, but to expedite film
Given how many comic book movies are around these days, it’s easy to forget how difficult it can be to introduce a character no one has ever heard of and make the audience cheer for them almost immediat
Like many female leads in action movies of the period, Marion Ravenwood is a proactive woman capable of fighting but still needs a man. A man who, in Indy’s case, she’s constantly irritated by and has legitimate reason to hate
Steven Spielberg and George Lucas auditioned a ton of different actors for the roles of Indiana Jones and Marion Ravenwood. For Indy, they considered David Hasselhoff, Tom Selleck, Michael Biehn (who would go on to play Kyle Reese in The Terminator ), Mark Harmon, Christopher Guest (who starred in This is Spinal Tap ), and A Star is Born ’s Sam Elli
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
While it takes place a few years before global war broke out, Raiders of the Lost 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
The Indy movies are renowned for their over-the-top sound effects, and there’s one legendary sound designer that we have to thank for that: Ben Burtt. Burtt is also responsible for all the sound effects in Star Wars and the voice of WALL-E. The sound of the snakes slithering in the Well of Souls was created by Burtt sliding his fingers into a cheese casserole. The sound of the Ark of the Covenant’s lid being removed was created by Burtt sliding the lid off the back of his toilet. The sound of the boulder rolling after Indy was actually the sound of a Honda Civic driving over gravel. And famously exaggerated punching sounds were created by Burtt beating a pile of leather jackets with a baseball
Though the love interest angle of The Last Crusade is not great, it does feature the best of Indy’s sidekicks in the franchise. Sean Connery joined this third film as Indy’s father, Dr. Henry Jones Sr. A famed archaeologist in his own right, the elder Dr. Jones was a tough, sophisticated and hilarious partner to his
The totally black frame could be read to represent the bleak reality of living in Nazi-occupied Poland, while the match could be seen to represent the beacon of hope that emerges in the form of Oskar Schindler, when he comes to his senses, renounces the Nazi Party, and uses his resources to save 1,200 Jews from concentration camps. The majority of this three-hour epic is shot in black-and-white , but it opens in color. It only turns to black-and-white when that candle burns
What follows is an intense dramatization of the massacre, in which the Black September terrorist group takes 11 members of the Israeli Olympics team hostage before killing them. The carefully planned opening shot reflects the carefully planned attack we’re about to see play
Raiders of the Lost Ark begins with a giant action scene of Indy trying to escape a temple that housed the Golden Idol. Indiana Jones almost gets crushed by rocks, trapped in the temple, has to outrun a giant boulder, and then runs for his life from the angry locals. Indy runs to a seaplane and they fly off, but things only got worse from there in real-l
“Snakes…why did it have to be snakes?” Indiana Jones’ fear of snakes is one of his defining characteristics, and it’s put to excellent use in the narrative of Raiders of the Lost Ark when Indy enters the Well of Souls and finds that it’s filled with hundreds of hissing cobras and pythons. However, as it turns out, neither Harrison Ford not Steven Spielberg are afraid of snakes, so it’s unclear where exactly this character quirk came from. It was a good thing for Ford and Spielberg, because it meant that they could focus on their work during the snake-infested sce
Lauded as one of the greatest movies ever made, Raiders of the Lost Ark Updates Ark introduced the movie-going world to one of its most timeless icons: Indiana Jones . Even though the dream team of Steven Spielberg and George Lucas, who had each directed a record-breaker for the highest grossing movie ever made at this point, were behind the production, they struggled to garner any interest from the major Hollywood stud