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
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
While the cast and crew were out in Tunisia, shooting the Cairo-set scenes for Raiders of the Lost Ark , they all got really sick from food poisoning. John Rhys-Davies, who played Sallah in the movie , apparently got so sick that he soiled himself during a scene that required him to bend over. The only person involved in the production who didn’t get food poisoning was Steven Spielberg, because he had brought his own food from home – which reportedly consisted of dozens and dozens of cans of Spaghetti-O’s – and didn’t eat any of the local food that everyone else was hav
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
Connery seemed to be having a lot of fun with his role and he has amazing chemistry with Ford. Their action sequences together were thrilling and the father and son aspects of the story were very effect
When the plane went out of frame, it actually crashed. Since the pilot wasn’t able to close the cockpit door, this made it impossible to use the rudder. Thankfully, the plane wasn’t too far off the ground, so Ford and the pilot weren’t hurt too ba
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
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 strategy 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
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
In a frenzied handheld shot that just points at whatever’s going on in front of it, more like a documentary than a docudrama, we see soldiers gearing up, assembling rifles, watching helicopters fly overhead – it’s hec
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
Steven Spielberg opened Raiders with the perfect shot to introduce the tone of the film. And then, he created a cinematic icon (with the help of Harrison Ford) as Indiana Jones strides into frame with a bullwhip hanging off his belt, wearing his signature fedora. He’d be etched in audiences’ minds for deca
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
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
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