While many fans are convinced no one else could play Indy after Ford retires from the role, Phoenix made for a great Indy and brought a lot of Ford’s charisma while making it his own. It is a fantastic opening scene showing how this hero came to
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
Spielberg’s WWII epic Saving Private Ryan , the one that induced PTSD attacks in war veterans, opens and closes with the same image: an American flag, blowing in the wind, color-graded with a very bleak, washed-out palette. Some critics have called these shots contradictory to the movie’s message. Saving Private Ryan is poised as an unpatriotic, anti-war film, yet it’s impossible to see the American flag as anything other than patriotic. The desaturated colors could be seen as Spielberg having his cake and eating it,
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
This series has always known the importance of throwing some comedy in with all the action and adventure elements. Each movie has its share of genuinely funny moments, but The Last Crusade has the biggest lau
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
He would’ve also had a mechanical arm that functioned as a machine gun and a radio antenna sticking out of his head. George Lucas eventually vetoed this design, feeling that it was too far-fetched, and the character’s final design came to
Raiders of the Lost Ark DLC 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
Lauded as one of the greatest movies ever made, Raiders of the Lost 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
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
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
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
To the filmmakers’ credit, Sallah is a fun and well-written supporting character who was expertly brought to life by Davis. Still, this doesn’t excuse the casting of a Welshman for a character clearly written as an Egyptian. The fact that Davis actually spent majority of his youth in Tanzania because his father was a colonial officer doesn’t help matt
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