"
It's true, it's true, the opening scene of Raiders was based on Carl Barks' excellent Uncle Scrooge comics. I basically ripped off the boulder scene from his 'The Seven Cities of Cibola' story. But I like to think I've paid back what I took from him, by working on the new Uncle Scrooge TV show coming to the Disney Channel."
--Steven Spielberg, from the January/February 1985 issue of
The Mickey Mouse Club Magazine
"
Indiana Jones... now that's a name I haven't heard in a long time..."
--Marion Ravenswood
"
Working on two movies was not easy. I struggle to imagine how Raiders could have turned out good if Steven hadn't been there to work with me. I mean, I was working on Empire during the film's production, and he was working on Close Encounters. So between us, we had one whole brain focusing on directing Raiders."
--George Lucas, from an August 1998 interview with
Rolling Stone Magazine
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Raiders of the Lost Ark kicked of the Indiana Jones saga in 1979. Co-directed by Steven Spielberg and George Lucas, co-written by George Lucas, Lawrence Kasdan, and Philip Kaufman, its music by John Williams, and starring Harrison Ford, the movie was an instant classic, utterly decimating all other competition at the box office sans Universal's
Alien, which managed to do decently alongside it. The film was released on May 20, 1979, and it has been frequently cited as Walt Disney's favorite live-action movie of all time, serving some inspiration for later movies like the
Pirates of the Caribbean film franchise.
The movie opens up with the castle logo of Walt Disney Productions fading into a mountain similarly shaped to it, before panning down to follow Indy, his face hidden behind a map, and his caravan through the tropical jungles of Peru. One by one, his followers desert the party or, in one case, attempt to betray him. Indy quickly stops the attempt on his life with a crack of his whip, sending the traitor into the forests and leaving him alone with just his navigator, Satipo. The pair soon find what Indy has been looking for: an ancient booby-trapped temple with a golden idol deep inside. They deftly navigate the maze-like structure, and show off Indiana Jones' fearlessness and genius. But it's not enough, and when he takes the idol, it sets off a chain reaction that causes the temple to begin to collapse around them. Satipo betrays Indy here, leaving him to die and making off with the idol himself. But he instead is impaled on spikes, and Indiana Jones survives a harrowing experience as he sprints off, idol back firmly in hand.
In perhaps the most iconic scene in all film, Indy runs down a long hallway as a massive stone boulder follows, threatening to flatten him. At just the last second he dives out of the temple, narrowly avoiding the boulder, somersaults... and rolls right to the feet of his greatest enemy and arch-rival, René Belloq. Surrounded by hostile natives pointing poison blowdarts at his neck, Indy is forced to give up the idol. But in a moment of confusion, he manages to run off and, after a high-speed chase through the jungle, makes it to his plane and flies off. Indy's friend Jack pilots the plane, and on the ride home the intrepid adventurer shares his cockpit with the only thing he fears: a snake.
The movie then jumps to presumably weeks later, with Indy having assumed his role as professor of archaeology at Marshall College in Bedford, Connecticut. After ending a class, he's called to speak with two agents from Army Intelligence. They tell him that the Nazis are looking for Indy's old mentor, Abner Ravenswood, who is an expert on Ancient Egypt and known to possess the headpiece to the artifact known as the Staff of Ra. From this, Indy deduces that the Nazis are on the hunt for the biblical Ark of the Covenant, believing that if they acquire the relic, their armies will be truly unstoppable. The government tells him to find Ravenswood and the headpiece, which Indy excitedly agrees to, always one for adventure. He flies out to Ravenswood's last known home: Dhaka, a part of the British Raj.
The movie then cuts to a young woman in a ramshackle tavern, sitting at a poker table surrounded by men much more threatening than her, including a British officer. She's clearly winning, even though the other players are cheating. Just as she wins, the cheering crowd quiets down and the shadow of a man in a fedora appears on the wall behind them. After some witty banter, the young woman--revealed to be Marion Ravenswood, Abner's daughter--deals Indiana in, and they have a smart-ass conversation during the game. It's high stakes, and everyone else folds but Marion and Indy. He's confident he's won, and shows his straight triumphantly. But Marion just smiles, and drops her hand on the table: a royal flush. Satisfied with her winnings, Marion closes up shop for the night, but Indy refuses to leave until she talks more about the headpiece, which she'd bet during poker to match him (and then won back). But she refuses, and the conversation morphs into an argument over bitter feelings from a romance of years gone by.
Eventually, Jones leaves after Marion refuses and rebuffs his efforts to get the headpiece. But soon after, Nazi thugs led by their creepy commander Arnold Toht enter the bar, and demand the artifact themselves. Luckily, Indy returns and he and Marion fight off the bad guys as the tavern goes up in flames. At one point, Marion looses the headpiece, and it falls into the fire. Toht grabs it, but severely burns his hand, emblazoning one side of the headpiece's images on it. Indy and Marion manage to escape with the headpiece, and she decides to go along with him at the promise of money she's owed by Indy.
The duo then travel to Giza, Egypt to meet up with Sallah, Indy's close friend and digger. He tells them that Jones' rival, Belloq, has aligned himself with the Nazis and is digging for the Well of Souls using coordinates and instructions from a replica of the headpiece cast from the side burned onto Toht's hand.
The next morning, Indy and Marion go on a trip through the city and run into some native thugs aligned to the Nazis. The archaeologist hides his partner, and he attempts to shake them off by hopping on a horse and riding off towards the pyramids, past the Sphinx. They follow on motorcycles instead, and while Indy manages to kill a few of the grunts, he's pressed to the foot of the Great Pyramid by their leader, a masterful swordsman. The pair duel, whip to sword, backing up the steps of the pyramid and climbing higher and higher. In one swift movement, he cracks his whip, loops it around his assailant's sword, yanks it out of his hand, and smacks the attacker across the face, sending him flying down the pyramid and snapping his neck. Interspliced with this fight scene was another one, following Marion as she attempts to outrun the Nazi baddies who are looking for her. She takes to the rooftops, and leaps perilous gaps in a blood-pumping sequence of parkour. At the end of it, she slips into a plain wicker basket, which Indy manages to see as he practically flies into town on a stolen motorbike. But the Nazis pick up the basket (with Marion inside) and make off into a crowded marketplace filled with dozens of other similar baskets.
Indiana Jones loses track of them until he sees seemingly the same basket being loaded onto a German truck. He gives chase on foot, but is in anguish when he sees the truck crash and its gas tank explode, killing everyone riding.
He feeds his sorrow in a bar, where he runs into Belloq. After the two exchange some venomous words, Indy is threatened by his foe at gunpoint. At the last second though, Sallah's young children show up and escort him out, saving his life, because no one wants to shoot a child. Indy reconvenes with Sallah back at his home, and the two realize that the headpiece (which Marion had entrusted to Sallah) has
two sides. The Nazis are going off of incorrect measurements where they're digging, and the good guys know the true location of the Well of Souls. The next day, Indiana and Sallah infiltrate the Nazi dig site and find the true location of the Ark of the Covenant with the completed Staff of Ra. Later, Jones stumbles across a very much alive Marion inside of a tent, bound and gagged, though he refuses to let her out out of fear that the Nazis will be alerted.
Jones and a group of diggers then go to the site of the Ark and begin digging all through the night, stumbling across the entrance to its chambers. Meanwhile, Belloq attempts to seduce Marion, who is having none of it, in his tent. Back with Indy, he and Sallah travel down into the snake-infested depths and return with the gilded Ark of the Covenant. Sallah returns topside first, but the rope goes up with him. Then the Nazis, including Belloq, show up above, Marion tied up next to them. She is thrown in with Indy, and the Nazis seal them in with all the snakes, left to rot. Through some quick thinking, they manage to escape and make their way to the nearby airfield, where Marion heard the Nazis were flying the Ark out of Egypt and back to Berlin. Indy fights a bald, muscle-bound Hulk of a man hand-to-hand on the airstrip, only defeating him by tricking him into getting shredded by the plane's propeller. A nearby oil tanker had begun to leak its flammable fuel, however, and it accidentally catches ablaze, making the whole airfield and plane explode.
The now-paranoid Nazis panic and decide to instead put the Ark on a truck bound for Cairo. Indy manages to catch them during a high-speed car chase, however, and takes the artifact up to Alexandria with Marion, making arrangements to ship it to London on the ship
Bantu Wind. During their trip through the desert at night, Marion confesses her feelings to Indy, who reciprocates. Yet, just as they're about to kiss... Sallah shows up outside, having caught a boat down the Nile and beating them to the city, ruining the moment.
Upon entering the docks of the ancient town, Nazi agents stop the group and discover it's Indiana Jones and his crew. They put up a valiant effort, but the bad guys take Marion, and the Ark, on a U-boat. Jones manages to escape them, but sneaks aboard the ship anyways in the guise of a German sailor. The sub lands on an island in the Aegean Sea, the location where Belloq plans to test out the power of the Ark before showing it to Hitler. On the trek up to the site they plan to test it, Indy reveals himself and threatens to blow up the Ark with a bazooka. But Belloq calls his bluff, unwilling to believe that his former friend would destroy such a precious historical artifact and his love in the process, and Indy reluctantly is forced to follow as their prisoner.
The Nazis then take both Jones and Marion to an area where they can see the Ark's opening, and tie them to a post. Belloq, who is dressed in a traditional Israelite kohen gadol, performs a ceremonial opening of the Ark alongside Nazi officials (including Toht)... only to discover the golden box is filled with sand. Spirits then emerge from the Ark, and reveal themselves as Angels of Death, destroying the electronic equipment around the place. A pillar of flame shoots high into the sky, and tendrils of electricity arc out, slaughtering the Nazis who dare look upon the power of God. Indiana Jones and Marion Ravenswood only survive due to them shutting their eyes. The pillar of flame then ascends into the sky and disappears, and the lid of the Ark falls back atop the relic, shutting it. Finding their ropes burned off, the couple rejoice and hug.
Back in Washington, DC, Indy is informed that the government has decided the Ark of the Covenant is too dangerous to be put in a museum. Rather, it will be studied and examined by top men someplace safe. The film then cuts to the Ark being stored amongst other similar crates in a warehouse in Area 51.
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Actors
Indiana Jones: Harrison Ford
Marion Ravenswood: Debra Winger
René Belloq: Paul Freeman
Sallah: John Rhys-Davies
Major Arnold Toht: Michael Sheard
Doctor Marcus Brody: Denholm Elliott
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Raiders of the Lost Ark, despite all of its differences from OTL, is still considered an absolutely amazing film, and busted the box office for the entire summer. Sadly, it did not come very close to the runaway sensations of the co-director's previous works (
Jaws and
Star Wars) in terms of box office returns, though it obviously did well. Its only true competition was Universal's
Alien, debuting just five days after
Raiders and holding its own against the Disney/LucasArts juggernaut.
One of the more notable changes to the film is the lack of the iconic scene where Indy just shoots the swordsman instead of actually fighting him. IOTL, a fancy fight had been choreographed that just wasn't used because the place they were filming at was just miserable. Here, that was not the case, and by using Disney's clout they were able to actually shoot on the real Great Pyramid of Khufu in Giza, not a set.
Speaking of Disney, the
Indiana Jones franchise is wholly owned by the Walt Disney Company, unlike
Star Wars, which George Lucas owns the sequel rights to (but not the 1977 original movie). This drew the two companies closer, and made a full-on buyout of LucasArts by Disney likely in the near future, especially since its value would only keep going up. It was all a matter of if George Lucas would play ball, or not...