Raiders of the Lost Ark

Raiders of the Lost Ark, also known as Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark, is a 1981 adventure film directed by Steven Spielberg. It was the first released, though the twenty-fourth, chronologically, in a series of film and TV productions about the adventures of the heroic fictional archaeologist Indiana Jones.

The story introduces us to archaeologist and adventurer Indiana Jones (Harrison Ford). Jones is a professor of archaeology who is contacted by the government to go on a quest for the Ark of the Covenant. On his adventure in the film, he is accompanied by Marion Ravenwood (Karen Allen) and Sallah (John Rhys-Davies). His adversary is Rene Belloq (Paul Freeman).

Production

George Lucas originally became involved in the project in 1977. Like A New Hope, he saw it as an opportunity to create a modern version of the serials of the 1930s and 1940s. The early 1970s had been dominated by action films either with a certain gritty realism, such as the Dirty Harry series, or that were massive productions with huge casts and elaborate special effects such as The Poseidon Adventure. By contrast Raiders of the Lost Ark is comic book-like in tone, with a glamorous heroine, over-the-top villains, and impressive stunt work combined with moments of comedy. It was also limited in its ambitions as it was shot in only 73 days, the plot is rather straightforward, and there are only a few principal characters.

Lucas had conceived of the idea in discussion with Philip Kaufman who had worked on a treatment. In a "Making of..." TV special, Lucas said that the mental picture of Indy chasing the truck on horseback, in the style of a western hero chasing a runaway stagecoach, was his initial inspiration for the film. He told his colleague, "I want to see this movie!"

Steven Spielberg had expressed an interest in directing a James Bond film, but to no avail from EON Productions, the company that owned the rights to the character. Lucas convinced his friend Spielberg that he had conceived a character "better than James Bond": Indiana Jones. While on holiday in Hawaii, the pair worked out the basis for the film. At the time, Spielberg's career was suffering due to the expensive bomb 1941 so it was agreed that Lucas would produce and Spielberg would direct. A new screenplay was commissioned from Lawrence Kasdan. Raiders was conceived by Paramount Pictures as a star vehicle for Tom Selleck but he was not available due to a commitment to star in the American television show Magnum, P.I., so Harrison Ford was cast instead.

Synopsis

Set in 1936, the story begins with Jones' journey into the South American jungle with two local guides to find a hidden temple that houses a small golden idol. Jones avoids various traps, betrayal by both his guides (one played by a young Alfred Molina), and, in a memorable and much-parodied scene, a giant rolling boulder that chases him out of the temple. Waiting for him outside is his old enemy, French archaeologist Rene Belloq, and a small army of natives. Belloq steals the idol from Jones, who barely escapes to a float plane he had waiting nearby.

Back at the American university where he teaches, two US Army intelligence men explain to Jones and his colleague Dr. Marcus Brody that a secret, cryptic Nazi message mentions a Prof. Ravenwood being under the scrutiny of German intelligence. Jones, a former student of Ravenwood, interprets the message as an indication that the Nazis are close to finding the Ark of the Covenant — a golden chest that held the remnants of the original Ten Commandments. According to the Bible, the army that carries the Ark in front of it would become invincible. Thus, Hitler could ostensibly use such a treasure to render his army invincible.

The Germans believe that Ravenwood has the headpiece of the Staff of Ra needed to pinpoint the Ark's resting place. The headpiece is a bronze disk that, when affixed to the top of a staff of a specific height, focuses a beam of sunlight onto a model of the ancient Egyptian city Tanis and thus reveals the Ark's location. According to Ravenwood, the Pharaoh Shishaq stole the Ark from Jerusalem and hid it in the Well of Souls, in Tanis, before the city was consumed by a year-long sandstorm.

Jones flies to snowy, mountainous Nepal to speak with Marion Ravenwood, the professor's tough-minded and independent daughter, only to find that her father died and that she's reluctant to part with the headpiece. A Nazi agent named Toht, who has followed Jones to Marion, tries to take the piece from her by threatening her with a red-hot poker. Marion teams up with Jones, following a fiery shootout between him and Toht's hired thugs which results in Marion's tavern being burned to the ground. During the gunfight Toht briefly attempts to seize the headpiece, which had been lying in a nest of flame. The intense heat burns part of the headpiece's image into his hand.

Jones and Marion fly to Cairo and meet Jones's friend Sallah, a skilled Egyptian digger and archaeologist, to find help in decoding the markings on the headpiece that specify the height of the staff needed to hold the headpiece. While touring Cairo's markets, Marion and Jones are chased by hired swordsmen. Nazi operatives grab Marion and throw her in a truck, but the vehicle crashes and explodes when Jones shoots the driver with his pistol. Assuming that Marion was killed in the blast, an enraged (and heavily drinking) Jones encounters Belloq once more in a Cairo tavern and wishes to kill him despite Belloq's sermon about the Ark's wonders. One of Belloq's musings enrages Indy further and as he draws his gun he finds himself surrounded by his enemy's gun-wielding henchmen. At that moment, Sallah's children surround Jones and lead him from the bar.

That evening, Sallah takes Jones to an old wiseman who decodes the markings on the headpiece. He notes that one side of the headpiece says that the staff must be shortened out of respect for the Hebrew God. It appears that the Nazis have misread the headpiece (since they only have a copy of one side's markings from the image on Toht's hand). Their staff is too long, and they are digging for the Ark in the wrong location.

Infiltrating the dig, Jones and Sallah use the headpiece in the map room to find the location of the Well of Souls. As he avoids some tauting German soldiers Jones ducks into a tent and finds Marion, still alive and tied up. He begins to free her but realizes that her absence will prompt an extensive search of the area and that the Germans will inevitably discover his and the Ark's location. He leaves Marion, promising to return for her once the Ark is secured.

Indy and Sallah gather a small crew of men and begin to dig at the coordinates Indy has calculated. After several hours, they enter the Well of Souls (through the structure's roof). (The buried temple is also infested with deadly asps, much to Jones' dismay; he harbors a distinct phobia for snakes.) Sallah joins him, they find the stone box housing the Ark and extract it. As the Ark is being lifted out of the temple, Belloq and the Germans, led by the sadistic Col. Dietrich and his assistant Gobler, surround the entrance and seize the Ark. They also throw Marion into the opening, leaving her to die with Jones. As their torches burn out, the duo escape by pushing an enormous statue through a weak stone wall and emerge back aboveground in time to see a Luftwaffe flying wing being prepared to ship the Ark to Berlin.

After attempting to stop the pilot and accidentally setting the plane rolling in a trundling circle, Jones gets entangled in a fistfight with a muscular soldier (Pat Roach) around the spinning propellers of the plane. Marion knocks out the pilot (played by the producer, Frank Marshall) and fends off some infantrymen with the plane's machine gun while Indiana's opponent is hit by the propeller and killed. Gasoline leaking from a refuelling truck ignites and destroys the plane, causing Belloq and Dietrich to put the Ark on a truck instead. It will be driven to Cairo and shipped to Berlin from there.

Stealing a horse, Jones chases the convoy. In a dramatic chase sequence, he seizes control of the truck. A lengthy fight ensues with German soldiers stationed on the truck as well as those on the other escort vehicles. Jones regains control of the truck and the Ark, hiding it in a small village. That evening, Jones and Marion depart from a happy Sallah and sail with it on a tramp freighter bound for England.

A Nazi U-boat commandeered by Belloq and Dietrich stops the ship and takes the Ark and Marion, but Jones, having hidden himself on the ship, covertly boards the U-boat. It docks at a submarine pen on an island in the Aegean Sea, where Jones steals a soldier's uniform. Threatening to destroy the Ark with a rocket launcher, Jones is soon convinced by Belloq to surrender, giving in to his own deep desires as an archaeologist to see the Ark's contents.

Marion and Jones are tied up and forced to view a ceremony where Belloq opens the Ark in front of a group of German soldiers. Inside there is only sand which appears to disappoint Belloq and amuse both Toht and Jones. (The symbolism of the Ark containing sand is known only to the director of the film.) As Belloq ponders the Ark's contents a humming sound starts and strange glowing spirits emerge from within. At first they appear benign and delight the witnesses but then they suddenly transform into hideous Angels of Death. Jones realizes that the spirits must not be viewed and shuts his eyes and instructs Marion likewise. Jets of fire and energy zap the soldiers through their chests, killing them instantly; Dietrich shrivels up, Toht's face melts, and Belloq's head explodes. Energy rushes out of the Ark, scouring the area clean of everything except for Jones and Marion, before the Ark's lid finally tumbles back out a stormy sky and seals the chest. When Jones and Marion finally open their eyes and realise that they have been spared, they discover that their bonds have been burned away by the power of the Ark.

Later, back in Washington D.C., the two Army intelligence representatives tell a suspicious Jones that "top men" are studying the Ark, but in a dramatic irony we see that the artifact is instead sealed in a wooden crate and stored in a giant government warehouse filled with countless other similar crates.

Reaction

The $20-million film was a huge success, easily the highest grossing film (earning $210 million approx.) of 1981, and, at the time, one of the highest-grossing movies ever made. According to the 2005 edition of The World Almanac (from Variety data), the first two Star Wars films are the only pictures released prior to 1981 that have out-earned Raiders. Raiders of the Lost Ark was nominated for eight Academy Awards in 1982 and won four (Best Sound, Best Film Editing, Best Visual Effects, Best Art Direction-Set Decoration). It won numerous other awards including seven Saturn Awards.^*

Following the box office success of Raiders, two more feature films were produced: Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, which is a prequel, and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, which is a sequel. Another sequel, known only as Indiana Jones 4, is also in pre-production. A TV series, entitled The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles, also spun off from this film, and details the early years of the character leading up to this film. Numerous other books, comics and video games have also been produced.

In 1998, the American Film Institute placed the film at number 60 on its top 100 films of the first century of cinema. In 1999 the film was deemed "culturally significant" by the United States Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry.

An amateur shot-for-shot remake was made by Chris Strompolos, Eric Zala and Jayson Lamb then children in Biloxi, Mississippi. It took the boys seven years to finish, from 1982-1989. It was discovered by Eli Roth, made famous by Harry Knowles of Ain't It Cool News ^*" target="_blank" >After production of the film, called The Adaptation, wrapped in 1989, it was shelved and forgotten until 2003. Spielberg congratulated the boys on their hard work and said he looked forward to seeing their names on the big screen.Scott Rudin and Paramount Pictures have purchased the trio's life rights and will be producing a film based on their adventures making their remake, known as the Untitled Daniel Clowes Project (2006).[http://www.aintitcool.com/display.cgi?id=17079" target="_blank" >^*

Cast

Actor/Actress	Role(s)
Harrison Ford	Indiana Jones
Karen Allen	Marion Ravenwood
Paul Freeman	Dr. Rene Belloq
Ronald Lacey	Major Toht
John Rhys-Davies	Sallah
Denholm Elliott	Dr. Marcus Brody
Alfred Molina	Satipo
Wolf Kahler	Colonel Dietrich
Anthony Higgins	Gobler
Vic Tablian	Barranca/Monkey Man
Don Fellows	Col. Musgrove
William Hootkins	Major Eaton
Bill Reimbold	Bureaucrat
Fred Sorenson	Jock
Patrick Durkin	Australian Climber

Soundtrack

Raiders Of The Lost Ark is the soundtrack that is most notable for featuring the rousing and iconic song "The Raiders March" that came to symbolize Indiana Jones. The tune was composed by John Williams. The score also featured three other prominent themes: the grand yet mysterious "Ark Theme", a theme associated with Marion, and the loud, pompous Nazi March. The score would receive an Oscar nomination for best original score, but would lose to Vangelis' electro-synth based score for "Chariots of Fire".

Track listing

"The Raiders March"
"Main Title: South America"
"In The Idol's Temple"
"Flight From Peru"
"Journey To Nepal"
"The Medallion"
"To Cairo"
"The Basket Game"
"The Map Room: Dawn"
"Reunion And The Dig Begins"
"The Well Of The Souls"
"Airplane Fight"
"Desert Chase"
"Marion's Theme"
"The German Sub/To The Nazi Hideout"
"Ark Trek"
"The Miracle Of The Ark"
"The Warehouse"
"End Credits

Video games

The only video game based exclusively on this movie is Raiders of the Lost Ark (Atari 2600), released in 1982 by Atari for their Atari 2600 console.

The first third of the video game Indiana Jones' Greatest Adventures , released in 1994 by JVC for Nintendo's Super Nintendo Entertainment System is based entirely on the film. Several sequences from the film are reproduced (the boulder run and the showdown with the Cairo Swordsman among them); however, several odd anachronisms make their way into the game as well, such as Nazi soldiers and bats being present in the Well of Souls sequence, for example. The game was developed by LucasArts and Factor 5.

DVD release

For its 1999 VHS re-issue, and the subsequent DVD release four years later, the outer package has been retitled Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark. However, the title in the film itself remains unchanged, even in the restored DVD print. The newer video boxes of the movie on VHS and DVD are titled in order to correlate with the film's prequel and sequel.

Trivia and goofs

Steven Spielberg suggested casting Harrison Ford as Jones, but George Lucas objected, stating that he didn't want Ford to become his "Bobby DeNiro" or "that guy I put in all my movies." Desiring a lesser known actor, Lucas convinced Spielberg to help him search for a new talent, and the actor they both became keen for was Tom Selleck, who possessed features similar to Ford's and a much larger physical frame. However, Selleck was infamously unavailable for the part because of his commitment to the television series Magnum, P.I.. Nick Nolte, Gene Hackman, and Tim Matheson were also considered for the role of Jones. But in the end, Spielberg convinced Lucas to offer the role to Ford, who accepted.
The gag where Indiana Jones shoots the sword-wielding assassin (played by Terry Richards) in the market was improvised on the set. Harrison Ford had been suffering from dysentery and exhaustion due to the extreme heat of Tunisia during filming. As originally planned, the scene was elaborately choreographed, with Jones facing the expert swordsman and trying to defeat him with just his whip. Some footage of the planned fight was shot (and was seen in at least one of the movie's trailers) but the filming was proving to be very tedious, both for Ford and the crew, and at some point Ford had had enough. It has been widely reported that he said something to Spielberg along the lines of, "Why don't we just shoot the fucker?" or "Why don't we just shoot the son of a bitch?" Spielberg liked the idea, scrapped the rest of the fight scene, and filmed the brief sequence of the shooting that appears in the movie. Richards was allegedly so disappointed with the cut that he tried for an extremely hammy death scene. Despite the cut, it is many fans' favorite moment in the film.
Comic book artist Jim Steranko was commissioned to produce original illustrations for pre-production, which heavily influenced Spielberg's decisions in both the look of the film and the character of Indiana Jones himself.
In the scene where Jones threatens to destroy the ark, he's holding a Soviet RPG, which didn't appear until well after the war. He should be using either an anti-tank rifle or a rifle-fired grenade, since the film takes place years before the outbreak of the Second World War.
The scene in which Jones threatens Belloq with a rocket propelled grenade was shot in the exact same Tunisian canyon where George Lucas shot a scene involving Tusken Raiders attacking Luke Skywalker in his film A New Hope (1977).
Later in the scene, when Belloq is negotiating with the Panzerschreck-toting Jones, it appears that a fly crawls into actor Paul Freeman's mouth. In the DVD version, however, you can see it fly off at the moment it "enters" his mouth.
Pat Roach, the actor who played the large mechanic with whom Jones brawls in the famous plane sequence was seen as such a formidable physical opponent for Jones that he returned in both Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade in similar roles as huge, burly fistfighters.
In the airplane scene, a drivechain can be seen turning the plane's undercarriage.
In the scene where Indiana Jones is lifting the Ark of the Covenant out of its holding place in the Well of Souls, one of the hieroglyphs is meant to resemble Star Wars characters C-3PO and R2-D2.
When Indiana Jones is breaking out of the Well of Souls, he shoves a heavy stone block out of the wall. The sound effects and shadow indicate the block bounced - on desert sand.
The U-boat scenes were shot at La Rochelle, both outside the harbour and inside the U-boat bunkers there, built by the Germans in 1942. Filming was done here due to the need to obtain a U-boat to film with — the film "borrowed" the U-boat that was being prepared for filming Das Boot.
The film was originally set to be rated R by the MPAA because, during the climax where the Nazis who look at the Ark die, there is a visual of an exploding head. After it was partially obscured behind a column of fire, the rating was lowered to PG (there was no PG-13 at the time).
During the Well of Souls scene, when Indiana stares down the cobra, the snake's reflection is visible in the glass separating the two to prevent the cobra from actually harming any of the actors (the reflection was digitally removed for the 2003 DVD release).
There were three stunt doubles for Harrison Ford, the primary one being British born stunt man Vic Armstrong, who reportedly resembled Ford to the degree that people off camera often mistook him for the real Ford. But Ford fought to do much of the fights and stunts himself, arguing there wouldn't have been much else for him to do if he wasn't in the thick of it.
Director David Lean cited this as one of his favorite films after it came out. Lean's Lawrence of Arabia is on record as being director Steven Spielberg's favorite film.

External links

IndianaJones.com, the official site
The Indiana Jones Wiki
TheIndyExperience.com,
Indy-Net.co.uk
Keith Short - Film Sculptor Sculpted the Ark for this film
The Raider.net - Making of the film
Karen Allen: An ACME Page - includes a Raiders page
Roger Ebert's review
An interview with Richard Anderson about the Sound Design and Sound Editing of the film "Raiders of the Lost Ark"
The Spoilers Alternate DVD Commentary of Raiders of the Lost Ark with Jonathan Coulton

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