Review: Raiders of the Lost Ark (Steven Spielberg, 1981)

In 1981, executive producer/co-creator George Lucas and director Steven Spielberg, longtime friends and the men responsible for the two biggest hits of all time up to that point (Star Wars and Jaws), teamed up to give the world Raiders of the Lost Ark, the first (and by a considerable margin the best) of four films following the adventures of Dr. Henry "Indiana" Jones, and in the process they introduced to the world both a character and a series of films that changed not just cinema, but worldwide pop culture.

It's 1936. The one and only Harrison Ford breathes life into the arrogant but lovable Dr. Henry "Indiana" Jones, a man who by day is a boring college archaeology professor, but by night scours the Earth in search of priceless ancient artifacts not for personal gain, but so they can be restored and stored in museums for future generations. In this particular adventure, Dr. Jones travels to Egypt to capture the famed Ark of the Covenant, an ancient chest said to contain the stone tablets on which the Ten Commandments were inscribed. The problem is the Nazis are also after it, having learned that any army that wields it is invincible. Along the way our hero is reunited in a Nepalese bar with his feisty ex-flame Marion Ravenwood (Karen Allen) and doges all sorts of booby traps and life-threatening situations in his quest to retrieve the Ark before the Nazis and his archaeological rival Dr. René Belloq get their hands on it. Our hero is no Superman though, as he gets beaten and bashed up at every time, while Marion is no token damsel in distress either, but rather a tough, independent woman who (most of the time) doesn't need Indy at all.
Like all the best movies ever made, Raiders of the Lost Ark is a series of awesome scenes strung together by a perfect narrative: Indy finding the basket of snakes in the back seat of the plane with him; Indy in the pyramid finding the location of the Ark by using the staff and the medallion; having to face his fear of snakes whilst being trapped in Egyptian asp-filled Well of Souls; the truck chase; dodging bandits in a Cairo market; the fight with the Arab swordsman (which was originally supposed to be a much longer sequence, but Ford was suffering from dysentery on the day and ask Spielberg if he could "just shoot the guy"), and my personal favourite, Indy dodging the giant rolling boulder after retrieving the golden idol. With this masterpiece Spielberg and Lucas raised the bar for the action-adventure film-making so high that it still has not been matched.
Yes, E.T. made more money and Schindler's List (which I must confess is barely superior for me) and Saving Private Ryan earned him his well-deserved and long overdue recognition from AMPAS, but Raiders of the Lost Ark remains Spielberg's most unabashedly fun piece of escapist entertainment, one which still serves as an inspiration for countless filmmakers and writers alike (most clearly evident in Raiders of the Lost Ark: The Adaptation, a remake Spielberg apparently enjoyed which was made in the '80s by three kids whose lives the original changed.) The quintessential action-adventure movie of all time