The love interests in Indiana Jones movies have been a bit hit-or-miss over the years, but surely everyone agrees that Marion Ravenwood is the best of them all by a wide margin. As heroic and fun as Indy is, Marion is just as entertaining and a true badass in her own ri
Raiders of the Lost Ark features a lot of supernatural moments towards the end of the film, but one of the most chilling scenes comes in the very beginning when Indy is searching for the Golden Idol. Indiana Jones tells Satipo (Alfred Molina) to turn around and his entire back is covered with tarantulas scurrying ab
Though both movies have action sequences that rank among the best of all-time, The Last Crusade edges out the original. From the opening train fight to the boat chase through Venice to the wild tank battle, these action scenes come one after another and are all extremely impress
Then, a wider shot reveals the thing that was ripping through the trees: a large truck, carrying a heavy-duty cage. It slowly becomes apparent that there’s a dinosaur in the cage, and these guys aren’t equipped to handle
Both of these films seemed to recognize that Nazis make for fantastic villains in the Indiana Jones franchise. However, Raiders of the Lost Ark just succeeds a little more in making their villains truly despica
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
As world-renowned as the Indiana Jones series has become, it’s a bit shocking to find out that George Lucas and Steven Spielberg originally had trouble pitching the idea to movie studios. George Lucas once revealed to Empire that pretty much every studio turned down Raiders of the Lost A
Munich , Spielberg’s cinematic retelling of Operation Wrath of God, the Israeli government’s response to the 1972 Munich Olympics massacre, opens with an intricate tracking shot that frames each of its components perfectly. It opens on a gate, then two hands appear on it and a man climbs up to peer over. When the rest of his group arrives, he drops from the gate to join them. This is all conveyed through camera movements and angles, courtesy of cinematographer Janusz Kamiń
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
He seems genuinely excited about the work, which we come to learn is inspired by his father’s teachings. This makes the final journey to find the Holy Grail all the more satisfying as Indy and his father both us their knowledge to escape the traps, beat the bad guys and find the true
Spielberg seemingly acknowledged this as proven by his Holocaust drama Schindler’s List and the works that followed. No longer were Nazis depicted as silly bad guys for someone to beat up. Instead, they were shown in all of their monstrosity and inhuman
Instead of going into a location blind, the crew built miniature sets of the filming locations so that when they were finally on set, they could film things as efficiently as possible. After all, in show business, time is mo
The camera deliberately points down, so we can’t see what’s ahead. A 25-foot great white shark, or any other terror that the ocean has to offer, could be lurking around anywhere. As far as opening title sequences go, this is quite rivet
The Last Crusade has some memorable villains but they’re all just a little too cliché without any real personality. Raiders of the Lost Ark DLC Ark makes Belloq a more complex bad guy while the Nazi officer Toht was a frightening yet weaselly henchman who you couldn’t wait to see get his comeuppa
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
Raiders of the Lost Ark was the first cinematic Indiana Jones adventure and did a fantastic job presenting a hero that would go down in cinema history. As soon as Ford steps out of the shadows in that first scene, we were hooked to this guy. The movie showed him to be a smart, charming rogue who could kick butt but was never taken overly seriou
The aesthetic can make for fun period pieces, but World War II itself has become a cliché. Today, setting a story during the war is seen as a shortcut to gaining audience sympathy since the genre’s simplistic morals are basically prem