Raiders of the Lost Ark

While on vacation in Hawaii in 1977, filmmakers Steven Spielberg and George Lucas came up with the idea for a movie based on the serials they had loved as children: action movies set in exotic localeswith cliffhangers every second. Recalled Spielberg: "I wondered why they didn't make movies like that anymore. I still wanted to see them." Apparently, so did millions of Americans, as Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), the fruit of the filmmakers' labors, grossed more than $200 million domestically in its first box-office run and re-established the adventure movie genre in U.S. film.

Harrison Ford in a scene from the film Raiders of the Lost Ark.

With Spielberg as director and Lucas as executive producer, Raiders of the Lost Ark follows the adventures of Indiana Jones (played by burgeoning screen icon Harrison Ford), a mild-mannered, bespectacled archeology professor who leads a double life as a whip-wielding swashbuckler who hunts down ancient treasures and prevents them from falling into the wrong hands, generally those of profit-seekers. Jones's adversaries in this particular episode, set in the 1930s, are Nazis in search of the Ark of the Covenant, allegedly once the storehouse for the Ten Commandments. The Nazis want the Ark because they believe possession of such an ancient treasure would serve as a rallying point for nationalistic pride. Jones and his partner Marion (Karen Allen) venture across the globe in search of the Ark, all the while avoiding the Nazis' best attempts on their lives. The movie climaxes with a fantastic showdown between the two sides over the prized treasure.

With its exotic locations and storyline of "narrow misses and close calls," Raiders of the Lost Ark brought adventure back to American cinema. The B-movie adventure story had been out of style since the 1940s, and only in the James Bond films of British cinema could films be found that were remotely adventure-based. In making Raiders of the Lost Ark, Spielberg and Lucas attempted to do away with the quintessentially British adventure narrative and restore to the action film the uniquely American flavor of such 1930s serials as Commando Cody and Don Winslow of the Coast Guard.

Raiders of the Lost Ark was resoundingly popular with both the public and critics. It earned Academy Awards in film editing, visual effects, sound, and art direction. It also ushered in a new era of American action movies, as the 1980s and 1990s gave rise to a host of adventure serials, not the least of which were the two Raiders of the Lost Ark sequels: Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1985) and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989), also starring Harrison Ford.

An unintended consequence of Raiders of the Lost Ark was the way it spawned renewed interest in the profession of archaeology. With series such as Mysteries of the Pyramids, the Discovery Channel and the Arts & Entertainment Network maintained the public's fascination with the exotic and fantastic image of archaeology presented by Raiders of the Lost Ark. However, much to the chagrin of savants in the field, Raiders of the Lost Ark created a less-than-accurate image of professional fieldwork, in which the spoon, not the bullwhip, represents the traditional tool of choice. Professionals havehad to disabuse not a few starry-eyed youngsters that the field is not quite as exciting as the movies make it out to be.

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Taylor, Philip M. Steven Spielberg: The Man, His Movies, and Their Meaning. New York, Continuum Publishing Company, 1992.

Williams, Stephen. Fantastic Archaeology. Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 1991.