Legend has it that Steven Spielberg was considering directing a James Bond movie before George Lucas convinced him to take on an original hero instead. And Indiana Jones was certainly set apart from other big-screen heroes. He was smarter than the average good guy, and while he got beat-up often, he could handle himself in a fi
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
“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
The script for Raiders of the Lost Ark Collectibles Ark went through various different drafts, in which a number of scenes and concepts came and went. A lot of those ideas would later be reused in the second movie (which was technically a prequel ), Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom . These include Indy traveling the Shanghai and avoiding machine gun fire by hiding behind a gong and a high-speed chase on mine carts. Originally, in Raiders , the trip to Shanghai was to recover a piece of the Staff of Ra and the mine cart pursuit followed the opening of the
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
Simply put, people of non-Western nationalities are shown as exotic caricatures at best and non-white bad guys at worst. The Hovitos tribe, Toht’s Nepalese gunmen, and the Egyptians only exist to hinder or help Indy, having little to no agency to speak of. While their depictions are a product of the archaic adventurer genre’s trappings, the racially insensitive subtext can’t be igno
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
In 1981, movie-goers were introduced to one of the most iconic action heroes ever to grace the big screen: Indiana Jones. Raiders of the Lost Ark __ was released in June 1981 with Steven Spielberg in the director’s chair and Harrison Ford in the leading role. George Lucas wrote the story, which ultimately consisted of an archaeologist being hired to find the Ark of the Coven
One of the most memorable moments from Raiders of the Lost Ark is when Indiana Jones is in Cairo and comes across a swordsman looking to fight him. Instead of engaging the enemy, he simply pulls out his gun and effortlessly shoots him. However, that’s not the way the scene was originally supposed to go d
Most people couldn’t imagine anybody playing Indiana Jones except for Harrison Ford . Ford has even said he never wants to be replaced as Indiana Jones and nobody else wants that either. That being said, Tom Selleck was super close to playing the famous archeologist. Actors such as Tim Matheson, Peter Coyote, John Shea auditioned for the role, but Selleck was offered the posit
Steven Spielberg has been revered by film buffs and casual moviegoers alike since his directing career begin in the ‘70s. Bursting onto the scene with his first breakout hit Jaws in 1975, effectively birthing the summer blockbuster (for better or for worse), Spielberg has continued to revolutionize Hollywood filmmaking for deca
He’s made all kinds of movies: historical dramas, biopics, action movies, science-fiction, suspense. Spielberg is a master of visual storytelling, and a large part of that is opening his movies with the perfect shot to immerse us in each story’s world straight away. So, here are Steven Spielberg’s 10 Best Opening Shots, Ran
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