Raiders of the Lost Ark

Alright everyone, we have an exciting month ahead of us, because I am going to look at all of the films in this beloved franchise that started back in the 80s. It is none other than the collaborative effort of the great directors George Lucas and Steven Spielberg: "Indiana Jones." The wait is over folks, I am going to review this franchise, starting with the first film that came out in 1981, "Raiders of the Lost Ark."

George Lucas has hinted that Harrison Ford was the model for Indiana Jones almost from the beginning. This would come as no surprise: Lucas actually really thought of Harrison for the role of Indiana Jones, but didn't want to confuse it with the Star Wars franchise, and, what a shock, Harrison didn't want to confuse it with Star Wars either. When you compare Indiana Jones with Han Solo, Indiana Jones is more of a complex character because he had the opportunity for greater complexity and he's a lot smarter than Han Solo, and the breath of the character is so much greater. When Harrison Ford was a guest on Inside the Actors Studio, James Lipton commented that Indiana Jones is a very vulnerable action hero, although Lipton also believes that all of Harrison Ford's action heroes have some sort of vulnerability to them.

Harrison Ford has said that he thought the whole idea behind acting was to make an emotional relationship with the audience, to give them someone on stage that they could feel the story through. He wanted fear and vulnerability to be along with it, thinking that it would be more interesting and allow for more fun. There would be more humor with it and that is something Harrison has always been ambitious for. Just like how Michelle Pfeiffer had to train for Catwoman in Batman Returns, Harrison Ford had to learn the bullwhip, which he snapped his ear more than a few times, and Pfeiffer has also commented that it's very interesting what you can do with a whip. If you miss, the whip goes around your neck.

The costume was described that Indiana Jones would be wearing a gray fedora, so Harrison went with Anthony Pollock for the costume design. Harrison did like the hat, but did say that it kept falling off in the midst of things, and thought that it was a great movie joke that the hat never came off. The only method that Harrison says he has is to just tell the story, and how through that character he can help tell the story. The given circumstances of the script are what helps Harrison out and feeds it to them thoroughly, and that's why he has spent a lot of time on the words. It was difficult for Harrison to work until he had access to the directors and was able to encourage them to have some dialogue with him about the words and about how the scenes work. He would ask, "Why doesn't the scene end here and why does it go on for another 3-4 lines?" or "Why does he say that? That's inconsistent to what he said before." If he gets his questions answered there, if he does his exploration there, the rest of it comes very easily. He feels confident in that material, he feels confident in the ideas, the ideas become a part of him, and the next part is dressing up and making believe. But the process of belief is something you have to invest in, brick by brick.

Spielberg himself says that Lucas is the birth parent to Raiders of the Lost Ark, and it was his idea. Lucas had always wanted to do a serial, but not have the audience come back a week later, but give them act breaks inside the experience. This film has one of the most phenomenal openings in motion picture history. Spielberg shot this film in Tunisia, which was one of the places, but the shots in the desert was to overexpose the premise. The DB, Douglas Sloucomb, who shot the first three, always tried to let more light in just to make the desert scene open it up. Sloucomb is one of the few cinematographers that doesn't use a light meter.

Spielberg uses a lot of short lenses on most of his films because he likes to have the audience be the editor, have them choose who to look at from time to time. He doesn't like films that are all close up, cut to fast, and you can't catch your breath. A lot of his films, he tends to do three or four masters in the same scene, which gives the audience more geography and know where stuff is. The shoot lasted for 74 days, originally it was supposed to be about 86, and the set-ups were averaged about 35 a day.

If anyone remembers the scary moment with the snakes, here's a shocker: around 7,000 live snakes were used. First when they used 3,000 snakes, it didn't look enough, so they had 5,000 rubber snakes, which were controlled by wires, but since there were not many wires and more snakes, they had to put about 100 snakes on every wire. They went to every pet and gardening store in London to get different gardener snakes to get into the movie. There were 5 cobras that were controlled by the Animal Control people. Since they were dangerous, they had shot them with glass, and Spielberg mentions that in a bad print of the film, you can see Harrison reflected in the glass.

One morning, Harrison came in and had a definitive John Woo scene between a whip vs. a sword. Spielberg had about 3-4 days to shoot that scene. Harrison came in, literally doubled over, and said, "It was something I ate last night, and I literally only had an hour in me." Spielberg asked him, "Why don't you just shoot the guy?" which made the crew laugh. They said they would do it that way, and they did 4 shots, he shot the guy, and went back to the hotel. Spielberg told Lipton's student, "You have to understand that sometimes compromise is your bunk-mate, and compromise is sometimes the best thing that you can do for your film. When you have a tremendous dream, and you pull out all the stops to accomplish your dream and nothing will stop you, you become very rigid. You only see that moment, and you forget all the hundreds of details you need to think about at every single moment when you're making decisions and directing a picture. Sometimes you sort of go in there loose and figure if something doesn't work, you might get an even better, cheaper idea with your second thought. I always covet my second thoughts because those are the spots that are often better than the first ideas."

Enough about that, what about the film? Well, the film revolves around Indiana Jones in 1936, who is a professor of archeology, but the government asks him to go out and find the Ark of the Covenant before the Nazis do. For those of you who have read the Bible, you know that in the Old Testament, the Israelites used the Ark to become invincible, who revered it as the dwelling place of God. Amongst the Nazis is Indiana's nemesis René Belloq, played by Paul Freeman. Indiana gets help from his old girlfriend, Marion Ravenwood, played by Karen Allen, who I have to say is a really strong love interest. When he first meets her in the film, and she gives him a reuniting punch, which at first is like, "Why did you do that?" Karen Allen mentioned that, a few times, she actually punched Harrison. Another help that Indiana gets is Sallah, played by Gimli from the Lord of the Rings trilogy, John Rhys-Davis.

All around, it's an exciting film (maybe one of my favorites, but I'm not sure), but has a share of silly moments. One is when Indiana and Marion are fighting in Cairo, and one of the moments, like I had mentioned before, is when Indiana shoots a guy with a gun when he's swinging his sword around. The other is when Marion is fighting a guy with a knife, and she's holding a frying pan. When she runs into a house and the guy chases after her, we hear a *clunk* sound, and he falls out of the door. We're supposed to get the joke from the first one, but the other one, I just don't get. It's silly, but what the heck, let's just go with it, a lot of silly moments happen in these films. Something that I believe everyone should be cautious of, there are people who get melted by looking at the Ark, so beware of that graphic part near the end of this film.

Well anyway, hope you enjoyed today's review. Stay tuned for next week in my "Indiana Jones Month" reviews, when I look at the prequel, The Temple of Doom.