Raiders of the Lost Ark (also known as
Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark) is a 1981 American
action adventure film directed by Steven Spielberg, with a screenplay
written by Lawrence Kasdan, from a story by George Lucas and Philip
Kaufman. It was produced by Frank Marshall for Lucasfilm Ltd., with
Lucas and Howard Kazanjian as executive producers. Starring Harrison
Ford, it was the first installment in the Indiana Jones film
franchise to be released, though it is the second in internal
chronological order. It pits Indiana Jones (Ford) against a group of
Nazis who are searching for the Ark of the Covenant, which Adolf
Hitler believes will make his army invincible. The film co-stars
Karen Allen as Indiana's former lover, Marion Ravenwood; Paul Freeman
as Indiana's nemesis, French archaeologist René Belloq; John
Rhys-Davies as Indiana's sidekick, Sallah; Ronald Lacey as Gestapo
agent Arnold Toht; and Denholm Elliott as Indiana's colleague, Marcus Brody.
The
film originated from Lucas' desire to create a modern version of the
serials of the 1930s and 1940s. Production was based at Elstree
Studios, England; but filming also took place in La Rochelle, France,
Tunisia, Hawaii, and California from June to September 1980.
Released on June 12th, 1981, Raiders of
the Lost Ark became the year's top-grossing film and remains one of
the highest-grossing films ever made. It was nominated for eight
Academy Awards in 1982, including Best Picture, and won four for Best
Art Direction, Film Editing, Sound, and Visual Effects with a fifth
Academy Award: a Special Achievement Award for Sound Effects Editing.
The film's critical and popular success
led to three additional films, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom
(1984), Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989), and Indiana Jones
and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008), with a fifth slated for
2020; the television series The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles
(1992–1996), and over a dozen video games. In 1999, the film was
included in the U.S. Library of Congress' National Film Registry as
having been deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".
In
1973, George Lucas wrote The Adventures of Indiana Smith. Like Star
Wars, which he also wrote, it was an opportunity to create a modern
version of the film serials of the 1930s and 1940s. Lucas discussed
the concept with Philip Kaufman, who worked with him for several
weeks and came up with the Ark of the Covenant as the plot device.
Kaufman was told about the Ark by his dentist when he was a child.
The project stalled when Clint Eastwood hired Kaufman to direct The
Outlaw Josey Wales. Lucas shelved the idea, deciding to concentrate
on his outer space adventure that would become Star Wars. In late May
1977, Lucas was in Hawaii on vacation, waiting out the public
response to his new film Star Wars. Friend and colleague Steven
Spielberg was also there, on a break from work on Close Encounters of
the Third Kind. While building a sand castle at the Mauna Kea Beach
Hotel, Spielberg expressed an interest in directing a James Bond
film. Lucas convinced his friend Spielberg that he had conceived a
character "better than James Bond" and explained the
concept of Raiders of the Lost Ark.
Spielberg loved it, calling it "a
James Bond film without the hardware", although he told Lucas
that the surname 'Smith' was not right for the character. Lucas
replied, "OK. What about 'Jones'?" The name Indiana came
from Lucas' Alaskan Malamute, whose habit of riding in the passenger
seat as Lucas drove was also the inspiration for Star Wars' Chewbacca.
Although he loved the story, Spielberg was
at first reluctant to sign on because Lucas had told him that he
would want Spielberg for an entire trilogy, and Spielberg did not
want to work on two more scripts. Lucas told him, however, that he
already had the next two movies written, so Spielberg agreed. But
when the time came for the first sequel, it was revealed that Lucas
had nothing written for either sequel.
The following year, Lucas focused on
developing Raiders and the Star Wars sequel The Empire Strikes Back,
during which Lawrence Kasdan and Frank Marshall joined the project as
screenwriter and producer respectively. Between January 23rd and
27th, 1978, for nine hours a day, Lucas, Kasdan, and Spielberg
discussed the story and visual ideas. Spielberg came up with Jones
being chased by a boulder, which was inspired by Carl Barks' Uncle
Scrooge comic "The Seven Cities of Cibola". Lucas later
acknowledged that the idea for the idol mechanism in the opening
scene and deadly traps later in the film were inspired by several
Uncle Scrooge comics. Lucas came up with a submarine, a monkey giving
the Hitler salute, and Marion punching Jones in Nepal. Kasdan used a
100-page transcript of their conversations for his first script
draft, which he worked on for six months. Ultimately, some of their
ideas were too grand and had to be cut: a mine chase, an escape in
Shanghai using a rolling gong as a shield, and a jump from an
airplane in a raft, all of which made it into the prequel, Indiana
Jones and the Temple of Doom.
Spielberg
and Lucas disagreed on the character: although Spielberg saw him as
a Bondian playboy, Lucas felt the character's academic and adventurer
elements made him complex enough. Spielberg had a darker vision of
Jones, interpreting him as an alcoholic similar to Humphrey Bogart's
character Fred C. Dobbs in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948).
This characterization fell away during the later drafts, though
elements survive in Jones's reaction when he believes Marion to be
dead. (Pictured right: Indiana Jones Concept Art by Jim Steranko, 1979).
Raiders costume designer Deborah Nadoolman
credits Secret of the Incas (1954), starring Charlton Heston, as an
influence on the development of the character, noting that the crew
watched the film together several times. Nadoolman based the look of
Ford's costume on that of Heston's, and observed that Indiana is a
"kinder and gentler" Harry Steele.
Initially, the film was rejected by every
major studio in Hollywood, mostly due to the $20 million budget and
the deal Lucas was offering. Eventually Paramount agreed to finance
the film, with Lucas negotiating a five-picture deal. By April 1980,
Kasdan's fifth draft was produced, and production was getting ready
to shoot at Elstree Studios. With four illustrators, Raiders of the
Lost Ark was Spielberg's most storyboarded film of his career to
date, further helping the film economically. He and Lucas agreed on a
tight schedule to keep costs down and to follow the "quick and
dirty" feel of the old Saturday matinée serials. Special
effects were done using puppets, miniature models, animation, and
camera trickery. "We didn't do 30 or 40 takes; usually only
four. It was like silent film shoot only what you need, no
waste", Spielberg said. "Had I had more time and money, it
would have turned out a pretentious movie."
Harrison Ford (above) was cast as Indiana
Jones, an archaeology professor who often embarks on perilous
adventures to obtain rare artifacts. Jones claims that he has no
belief in the supernatural, only to have his skepticism challenged
when he discovers the Ark. Spielberg suggested Ford as Jones, but
Lucas objected, stating that he did not want Ford to become his
"Bobby De Niro" or "that guy I put in all my
movies" - a reference to Martin Scorsese, who often worked with
Robert De Niro. Desiring a lesser known actor, Lucas persuaded
Spielberg to help him search for a new talent. Among the actors who
auditioned were Tim Matheson, Peter Coyote, John Shea, and Tom
Selleck. Selleck was originally offered the role, but became
unavailable for the part because of his commitment to the television
series Magnum, P.I. In June 1980, three weeks away from filming,
Spielberg persuaded Lucas to cast Ford after producers Frank Marshall
and Kathleen Kennedy were impressed by his performance as Han Solo in
The Empire Strikes Back.
Karen Allen (below) plays Marion
Ravenwood, a spirited, tough former lover of Indiana's. She is the
daughter of Abner Ravenwood, Indiana Jones' mentor, and owns a bar in
Nepal. Allen was cast after auditioning with Matheson and John Shea.
Spielberg was interested in her, as he had seen her performance in
National Lampoon's Animal House. Sean Young had previously auditioned
for the part, while Debra Winger had turned it down.
Principal photography began on June 23rd,
1980, at La Rochelle, France, with scenes involving the Nazi
submarine, which had been rented from the production of Das Boot. The
U-boat pen was a real one from World War II. The crew moved to
Elstree Studios for the Well of Souls scenes, the opening sequence
temple interiors and Marion Ravenwood's bar. The Well of Souls scene
required 7,000 snakes.
The
only venomous snakes were the cobras, but one crew member was bitten
on set by a python. The bulk of the snakes numbers were made up with
giant but harmless legless lizards known as Scheltopusiks (Pseudopus
apodus). Growing to 1.3 m they are the largest legless lizards in the
world and are often mistaken for snakes despite some very obvious
differences such as the presence of eyelids and external ear
openings, which are both absent from all snakes, and a notched rather
than forked tongue. In the finished film, during the scene in which
Indiana comes face-to-face with the cobra, a reflection in glass
screen that protected Ford from the snake was seen, an issue that was
corrected in the 2003 digitally-enhanced re-release. Unlike Indiana,
neither Ford nor Spielberg has a fear of snakes, but Spielberg said
that seeing all the snakes on the set writhing around made him
"want to puke".
The opening scene in the Peruvian jungle
was filmed on the island of Kauai, one of the islands of Hawaii, to
where Spielberg would return for Jurassic Park. The "temple"
location is on the Huleia River, on the Kipu Ranch, south from
Kaumualii Highway on the east coast, just south of Lihue, the
island's main town. Kipu is a working cattle ranch, not generally
open to the public. The Peruvian section (but actually filmed in
Hawaii) featured live tarantulas of a Mexican species (Brachypelma)
on Harrison Ford and Alfred Molina, and are harmless to humans, and
in fact of a species which are commonly kept as exotic pets. A
fiberglass boulder 22 feet (7 m) in diameter was made for the scene
where Indiana escapes from the temple; Spielberg was so impressed by
production designer Norman Reynolds' realization of his idea that he
gave the boulder a more prominent role in the film and told Reynolds
to let the boulder roll another 50 feet (15 m).
The scenes set in Egypt were filmed in
Tunisia, and the canyon where Indiana threatens to blow up the Ark
was shot in Sidi Bouhlel, just outside Tozeur. The canyon location
had been used for the Tatooine scenes from 1977's Star Wars (many of
the location crew members were the same for both films) where R2-D2
was attacked by Jawas. The Tanis scenes were filmed in nearby Sedala,
a harsh place due to heat and disease. Several cast and crew members
fell ill and Rhys-Davies defecated in his costume during one shot.
Spielberg averted disease by eating only canned foods from England,
but did not like the area and quickly condensed the scheduled
six-week shoot to four-and-a-half weeks.
Much was improvised: the scene where
Marion puts on her dress and attempts to leave Belloq's tent was
improvised as was the entire plane fight. During that scene's
shooting, a wheel went over Ford's knee and tore his left leg's
cruciate ligament, but he refused local medical help and simply put
ice on it.
The fight scenes in the town were filmed
in Kairouan, while Ford was suffering from dysentery. Stuntman Terry
Richards had practiced for weeks with his sword to create the
scripted fight scene, choreographing a fight between the swordsman
and Jones' whip. However, after filming the initial shots of the
scene, after lunch due to Ford's dysentery, Ford and Spielberg agreed
to cut the scene down to a gunshot, with Ford saying to Spielberg
"Let's just shoot the sucker". This sequence would find its
way on to numerous lists of "favorite movie scenes".
Most of the truck chase was shot by second
unit director Michael D. Moore following Spielberg's storyboards,
including Indiana being dragged by the truck (performed by stuntman
Terry Leonard), in tribute to a famous Yakima Canutt stunt. Spielberg
then filmed all the shots with Ford himself in and around the truck
cab. Lucas directed a few other second unit shots, in particular the
monkey giving the Nazi salute.
The interior staircase set in Washington,
D.C. was filmed in San Francisco's City Hall. The University of the
Pacific's campus in Stockton, California, stood in for the exterior
of the college where Jones works, while his classroom and the hall
where he meets the American intelligence agents was filmed at the
Royal Masonic School for Girls in Rickmansworth, Hertfordshire,
England, which was again used in The Last Crusade. His home exteriors
were filmed in San Rafael, California. Opening sequence exteriors
were filmed in Kauai, Hawaii, with Spielberg wrapping in September in
73 days, finishing under schedule in contrast to his previous film,
1941. The Washington, D.C. coda, although it appeared in the script's
early drafts, was not included in early edits but was added later
when it was realized that there was no resolution to Jones'
relationship with Marion. Shots of the Douglas DC-3 Jones flies on to
Nepal were taken from Lost Horizon, and a street scene was from a
shot in The Hindenburg. Filming of Jones boarding a Boeing Clipper
flying-boat was complicated by the lack of a surviving aircraft.
Eventually, a post-war British Short Solent flying-boat formerly
owned by Howard Hughes was located in California and substituted.
Untitled
AV
CLUB FEATURETTE DEPARTMENT
Untitled
The original Raiders of the Lost Ark trailer (1981).
The
special visual effects for Raiders were provided by Industrial Light
& Magic and include: a matte shot to establish the Pan Am flying
boat in the water and miniature work to show the plane taking off and
flying, superimposed over a map; animation effects for the beam in
the Tanis map room; and a miniature car and passengers superimposed
over a matte painting for a shot of a Nazi car being forced off a
cliff. The bulk of effects shots were featured in the climactic
sequence wherein the Ark of the Covenant (which was designed by Brian
Muir and Keith Short) is opened and God's wrath is unleashed. This
sequence featured animation, a woman to portray a beautiful spirit's
face, rod puppet spirits moved through water to convey a sense of
floating, a matte painting of the island, and cloud tank effects to
portray clouds.
The melting of Toht's head was done by
exposing a gelatine and plaster model of Ronald Lacey's head to a
heat lamp with an under-cranked camera, while Dietrich's crushed head
was a hollow model from which air was withdrawn. When the film was
originally submitted to the Motion Picture Association of America, it
received an R rating because of the scene in which Belloq's head
explodes. The filmmakers were able to receive a PG rating when they
added a veil of fire over the exploding head scene. (PG-13 rating was
not created until 1984.) The firestorm that cleanses the canyon at
the finish was a miniature canyon filmed upside down.
Ben
Burtt, the sound effects supervisor, made extensive use of
traditional foley work in yet another of the production's throwbacks
to days of the Republic serials. He selected a .30-30 Winchester
rifle for the sound of Jones' pistol. Sound effects artists struck
leather jackets and baseball gloves with a baseball bat to create a
variety of punching noises and body blows. For the snakes in the Well
of Souls sequence, fingers running through cheese casserole and
sponges sliding over concrete were used for the slithering noises.
The sliding lid on a toilet cistern provided the sound for the
opening of the Ark, and the sound of the boulder in the opening is a
car rolling down a gravel driveway in neutral.
Burtt also used, as he did in many of his
films, the ubiquitous Wilhelm scream (more on that below) when a Nazi
falls from a truck. In addition to his use of such time-honored foley
work, Burtt also demonstrated the modern expertise honed during his
award-winning work on Star Wars. He employed a synthesizer for the
sounds of the Ark, and mixed dolphins' and sea lions' screams for
those of the spirits within.
The Wilhelm scream is a stock sound effect
of a man screaming that has been used in more than 360 movies and
television episodes, beginning in 1951 for the film Distant Drums.
The scream is often used when someone is shot, falls from a great
height, or is thrown from an explosion, and is most commonly used in
films and television and video games (often as an in-joke).
Most
likely voiced by actor and singer Sheb Wooley (right), the sound is
named after Private Wilhelm, a character in The Charge at Feather
River, a 1953 Western in which the character gets shot with an arrow.
This was its first use from the Warner Bros. stock sound library,
although The Charge at Feather River is believed to have been the
third movie to use the effect.
The Wilhelm scream originates from a
series of sound effects recorded for the 1951 movie Distant Drums. In
a scene from the film, soldiers are wading through a swamp in the
Everglades, and one of them is bitten and dragged underwater by an
alligator. The scream for that scene was recorded later in a single
take, along with five other short, pained screams, which were
labelled "man getting bit by an alligator, and he screamed."
The fifth scream was used for the soldier in the alligator scene,
but the fourth, fifth, and sixth screams recorded in the session were
also used earlier in the film, when three Native Americans are shot
during a raid on a fort. Although takes 4, 5, and 6 are the most
recognizable, all the screams are referred to as "Wilhelm"
by those in the sound community.
The Wilhelm scream's major breakout in
popular culture came when Burtt discovered the original recording
(which he found as a studio reel labeled "Man being eaten by
alligator") and incorporated it into a scene in Star Wars in
which Luke Skywalker shoots a Stormtrooper off of a ledge. Burtt is
credited with naming the scream after Private Wilhelm in The Charge
at Feather River and began incorporating the effect in other films on
which he worked, including most projects involving George Lucas or
Steven Spielberg, including the Star Wars films, as well as the
Indiana Jones movies. Other sound designers picked up on the effect,
and inclusion of the sound in films became a tradition among the
community of sound designers. In what is perhaps an in-joke within an
in-joke, one of the scenes from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom
actually features a man being eaten by a crocodile (closely related
to the alligator) accompanied by the scream.
Research
by Burtt suggests that Sheb Wooley, best known for his novelty song
"The Purple People Eater", which spent six weeks at Number
One and sold 3 million copies in 1958, is likely to have been the
voice actor who originally performed the scream. Wooley, a musician
and character actor appeared in many Westerns. He played one of the
four gunslingers that stalked Gary Cooper in the classic "High
Noon" (1953), and starred on the hit TV series
"Rawhide" as scout Pete Nolan. He also appeared in
"Giant" (1956), "The Outlaw Josey Wales" (1976),
"Silverado" (1985) and even the film adaptation of his song
"Purple People Eater" (1988).
This has been supported by an interview in
2005 with Linda Dotson, Wooley's widow. Burtt discovered records at
Warner Brothers from the editor of Distant Drums including a short
list of names of actors scheduled to record lines of dialogue for
miscellaneous roles in the movie. Wooley played the uncredited role
of Private Jessup in Distant Drums, and was one of the few actors
assembled for the recording of additional vocal elements for the
film. Wooley performed additional vocal elements, including the
screams for a man being bitten by an alligator.
Wooley died of leukemia in Nashville,
Tennessee, in 2003. He was 82. His widow, Linda Dotson, confirmed
Wooley's scream had been in so many Westerns, adding, "He always
used to joke about how he was so great about screaming and dying in films."
Untitled
The Wilhelm Scream is a popular stock scream used in countless films, tv shows, and video games. It was recorded in 1951 for Distant Drums, but found it's infamy when sound magician Ben Burtt snuck it into the films he was working on, especially Star Wars and Indiana Jones. This video features a collection of the films that The Wilhelm Scream has been in. There are different takes of the Wilhelm Scream from the original recording. The most popular version is take 4, but you will hear other versions as well.
John Williams composed the score for
Raiders of the Lost Ark, which was the only score in the series
performed by the London Symphony Orchestra, the same orchestra that
performed the scores for the Star Wars saga. The score most notably
features the well-known "Raiders March". This piece came to
symbolize Indiana Jones and was later used in the scores for the
other three films. Williams originally wrote two different candidates
for Jones's theme, but Spielberg enjoyed them so much that he
insisted that both be used together in what became the "Raiders
March". The alternately eerie and apocalyptic theme for the Ark
of the Covenant is also heard frequently in the score, with a more
romantic melody representing Marion and, more broadly, her
relationship with Jones. The score as a whole received an Oscar
nomination for Best Original Score, but lost to the score to Chariots
of Fire composed by Vangelis.
The
only video game based exclusively on the film is Raiders of the Lost
Ark, 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 of the film's
sequences are reproduced (the boulder run and the showdown with the
Cairo Swordsman among them); however, several inconsistencies with
the film are present in the game, 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.
In the 1999 game Indiana Jones and the
Infernal Machine, a bonus level brings Jones back to the Peruvian
temple of the film's opening scene. In 2008, to coincide with the
release of Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, Lego released the Lego
Indiana Jones line, which included building sets based on Raiders of
the Lost Ark, and LucasArts published a video game based on the
toyline, Lego Indiana Jones: The Original Adventures, which was
developed by Traveller's Tales.
Marvel Comics published a comic book
adaptation of the film by writer Walt Simonson and artists John
Buscema and Klaus Janson. It was published as Marvel Super Special
#18 and as a three-issue limited series. This was followed with the
comic book series The Further Adventures of Indiana Jones which was
published monthly from January 1983 through March 1986.
In
1981, Kenner released a 12-inch (30 cm) doll of Indiana Jones, and
the following year they released nine action figures of the film's
characters, three playsets, as well as toys of the Nazi truck and
Jones' horse. They also released a board game. In 1984, miniature
metal versions of the characters were released for a role playing
game, The Adventures of Indiana Jones, and in 1995 Micro Machines
released die-cast toys of the film's vehicles.
Hasbro released action figures based on
the film, ranging from 3 to 12 inches (7.6 to 30.5 cm), to coincide
with Kingdom of the Crystal Skull on May 1st, 2008. Later in 2008,
and in 2011, two high-end sixth scale (1:6) collectible action
figures were released by Sideshow Collectibles, and Hot Toys, Ltd. respectively.
A novelization by Ryder Windham was
released in April 2008 by Scholastic to tie in with the release of
Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. A previous novelization by Scottish
author Campbell Armstrong (under the pseudonym Campbell Black) was
concurrently released with the film in 1981. A book about the making
of the film was also released, written by Derek Taylor.
The film was released on VHS, Betamax and
VideoDisc in pan and scan only, and on laserdisc in both pan and scan
and widescreen. For its 1999 VHS re-issue, the film was remastered in
THX and made available in widescreen. The outer package was retitled
Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark for consistency with
the film's prequel and sequel. The subsequent DVD release in 2003
features this title as well. The title in the film itself remains
unchanged, even in the restored DVD print.
In the DVD, two subtle digital revisions
were added. First, a connecting rod from the giant boulder to an
offscreen guidance track in the opening scene was removed from behind
the running Harrison Ford; second, a reflection in the glass
partition separating Ford from the cobra in the Well of Souls was
removed. Shortly before the theatrical release of Kingdom of the
Crystal Skull, Raiders (along with The Temple of Doom and The Last
Crusade) was re-released on DVD with additional extra features not
included on the previous set on May 13th, 2008. The film was released
on Blu-ray Disc in September 2012. Previously, only Kingdom of the
Crystal Skull had been available on Blu-ray.
Raiders of the Lost Ark opened at #14 and
grossed $384 million worldwide throughout its theatrical releases on
an $18 million budget. In North America, it was by some distance the
highest-grossing film of 1981, and remains one of the top twenty-five
highest-grossing films ever made when adjusted for inflation. Box
Office Mojo estimates that the film sold more than 70 million tickets
in the US in its initial theatrical run.
The film was subsequently nominated for
nine Academy Awards, including Best Picture, in 1982 and won four
(Best Sound, Best Film Editing, Best Visual Effects, and Best Art
Direction-Set Decoration (Norman Reynolds, Leslie Dilley, and Michael
D. Ford). It also received a Special Achievement Award for Sound
Effects Editing. It won numerous other awards, including a Grammy
Award and Best Picture at the People's Choice Awards. Spielberg was
also nominated for a Golden Globe Award.
The
film was highly acclaimed by critics and audiences alike. In his
review for The New York Times, Vincent Canby praised the film,
calling it, "one of the most deliriously funny, ingenious and
stylish American adventure movies ever made." Roger Ebert in his
review for the Chicago Sun-Times wrote, "Two things, however,
make Raiders of the Lost Ark more than just a technological triumph:
its sense of humor and the droll style of its characters [...] We
find ourselves laughing in surprise, in relief, in incredulity at the
movie's ability to pile one incident upon another in an inexhaustible
series of inventions." He later added it to his list of
"Great Movies". Stephen Klain of Variety also praised the
film. Yet, making an observation that would revisit the franchise
with its next film, he felt that the film was surprisingly violent
and bloody for a PG-rated film.
Still, there were some dissenting voices:
Sight & Sound described it as an "expensively gift-wrapped
Saturday afternoon pot-boiler", and New Hollywood champion
Pauline Kael, who once contended that she only got "really
rough" on large films that were destined to be hits but were
nonetheless "atrocious", found the film to be a
"machine-tooled adventure" from a pair of creators who
"think just like the marketing division". (Lucas later
named a villain, played by Raiders Nazi strongman Pat Roach, in his
1988 fantasy film Willow after Kael.) On Rotten Tomatoes, the film
has a 94% "Certified Fresh" rating as well as a 85% rating
on Metacritic, indicating "universal acclaim".
Assessing the film's legacy in 1997,
Bernard Weinraub, film critic for The New York Times, which had
initially reviewed the film as "deliriously funny, ingenious,
and stylish", maintained that "the decline in the
traditional family G-rated film, for 'general' audiences, probably
began" with the appearance of Raiders of the Lost Ark.
"Whether by accident or design," found Weinraub, "the
filmmakers made a comic nonstop action film intended mostly for
adults but also for children."
In December 2012, the University of
Chicago's admissions department received a package in the mail
addressed to Henry Walton Jones, Jr., Indiana Jones' full name. The
address on the stamped package was listed for a hall that was the
former home of the university's geology and geography department.
Inside the manila envelope was a detailed replica journal similar to
the one Jones used in the movie, as well as postcards and pictures of
Marion Ravenwood. The admissions department posted pictures of the
contents on its Internet blog, looking for any information about the
package. It was discovered that the package was part of a set to be
shipped from Guam to Italy that had been sold on eBay. The package
with the journal had fallen out in transit and a postal worker had
sent it to the university, as it had a complete address and postage,
which turned out to be fake. All contents were from a Guam "prop
replicator" who sells them all over the world. The university
will display its replica in the main lobby of the Oriental Institute.
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fan site, presented here is for general educational and informational
purposes only.
This site is in no way
affiliated with Lucasfilm Ltd. or Paramount Pictures. Copyrights and
trademarks for the films, books, articles, and other promotional
materials are held by their respective owners and their use is
allowed under the fair use clause of the Copyright Law.
In
1973, George Lucas wrote The Adventures of Indiana Smith. Like Star
Wars, which he also wrote, it was an opportunity to create a modern
version of the film serials of the 1930s and 1940s. Lucas discussed
the concept with Philip Kaufman, who worked with him for several
weeks and came up with the Ark of the Covenant as the plot device.
Kaufman was told about the Ark by his dentist when he was a child.
The project stalled when Clint Eastwood hired Kaufman to direct The
Outlaw Josey Wales. Lucas shelved the idea, deciding to concentrate
on his outer space adventure that would become Star Wars. In late May
1977, Lucas was in Hawaii on vacation, waiting out the public
response to his new film Star Wars. Friend and colleague Steven
Spielberg was also there, on a break from work on Close Encounters of
the Third Kind. While building a sand castle at the Mauna Kea Beach
Hotel, Spielberg expressed an interest in directing a James Bond
film. Lucas convinced his friend Spielberg that he had conceived a
character "better than James Bond" and explained the
concept of Raiders of the Lost Ark.
Spielberg
and Lucas disagreed on the character: although Spielberg saw him as
a Bondian playboy, Lucas felt the character's academic and adventurer
elements made him complex enough. Spielberg had a darker vision of
Jones, interpreting him as an alcoholic similar to Humphrey Bogart's
character Fred C. Dobbs in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948).
This characterization fell away during the later drafts, though
elements survive in Jones's reaction when he believes Marion to be
dead. (Pictured right: Indiana Jones Concept Art by Jim Steranko, 1979).
The
only venomous snakes were the cobras, but one crew member was bitten
on set by a python. The bulk of the snakes numbers were made up with
giant but harmless legless lizards known as Scheltopusiks (Pseudopus
apodus). Growing to 1.3 m they are the largest legless lizards in the
world and are often mistaken for snakes despite some very obvious
differences such as the presence of eyelids and external ear
openings, which are both absent from all snakes, and a notched rather
than forked tongue. In the finished film, during the scene in which
Indiana comes face-to-face with the cobra, a reflection in glass
screen that protected Ford from the snake was seen, an issue that was
corrected in the 2003 digitally-enhanced re-release. Unlike Indiana,
neither Ford nor Spielberg has a fear of snakes, but Spielberg said
that seeing all the snakes on the set writhing around made him
"want to puke".
The
special visual effects for Raiders were provided by Industrial Light
& Magic and include: a matte shot to establish the Pan Am flying
boat in the water and miniature work to show the plane taking off and
flying, superimposed over a map; animation effects for the beam in
the Tanis map room; and a miniature car and passengers superimposed
over a matte painting for a shot of a Nazi car being forced off a
cliff. The bulk of effects shots were featured in the climactic
sequence wherein the Ark of the Covenant (which was designed by Brian
Muir and Keith Short) is opened and God's wrath is unleashed. This
sequence featured animation, a woman to portray a beautiful spirit's
face, rod puppet spirits moved through water to convey a sense of
floating, a matte painting of the island, and cloud tank effects to
portray clouds.
Ben
Burtt, the sound effects supervisor, made extensive use of
traditional foley work in yet another of the production's throwbacks
to days of the Republic serials. He selected a .30-30 Winchester
rifle for the sound of Jones' pistol. Sound effects artists struck
leather jackets and baseball gloves with a baseball bat to create a
variety of punching noises and body blows. For the snakes in the Well
of Souls sequence, fingers running through cheese casserole and
sponges sliding over concrete were used for the slithering noises.
The sliding lid on a toilet cistern provided the sound for the
opening of the Ark, and the sound of the boulder in the opening is a
car rolling down a gravel driveway in neutral.
Most
likely voiced by actor and singer Sheb Wooley (right), the sound is
named after Private Wilhelm, a character in The Charge at Feather
River, a 1953 Western in which the character gets shot with an arrow.
This was its first use from the Warner Bros. stock sound library,
although The Charge at Feather River is believed to have been the
third movie to use the effect.
The
only video game based exclusively on the film is Raiders of the Lost
Ark, 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 of the film's
sequences are reproduced (the boulder run and the showdown with the
Cairo Swordsman among them); however, several inconsistencies with
the film are present in the game, 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.
In
1981, Kenner released a 12-inch (30 cm) doll of Indiana Jones, and
the following year they released nine action figures of the film's
characters, three playsets, as well as toys of the Nazi truck and
Jones' horse. They also released a board game. In 1984, miniature
metal versions of the characters were released for a role playing
game, The Adventures of Indiana Jones, and in 1995 Micro Machines
released die-cast toys of the film's vehicles.
The
film was highly acclaimed by critics and audiences alike. In his
review for The New York Times, Vincent Canby praised the film,
calling it, "one of the most deliriously funny, ingenious and
stylish American adventure movies ever made." Roger Ebert in his
review for the Chicago Sun-Times wrote, "Two things, however,
make Raiders of the Lost Ark more than just a technological triumph:
its sense of humor and the droll style of its characters [...] We
find ourselves laughing in surprise, in relief, in incredulity at the
movie's ability to pile one incident upon another in an inexhaustible
series of inventions." He later added it to his list of
"Great Movies". Stephen Klain of Variety also praised the
film. Yet, making an observation that would revisit the franchise
with its next film, he felt that the film was surprisingly violent
and bloody for a PG-rated film.
