Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981): A Timeless Epic That Never Gets Old

People say the perfect adventure movie doesn’t exist. I say shutup.

Raiders of the Lost Ark: The quintessential example that practical will always overrule digital. There’s raw, new set-pieces, new action segments, and new stakes in just about every single edging sequence dredged amongst this questful, dirt-trailing animal. Yet, the film can never strike one as “clustered” because, well, its story isn’t convoluted. It’s in fact, pretty dang straightforward!

When you try to make an action, adventure movie more than just an action, adventure movie, your film is likely to draw out quite drab and dull. But when you’re like Raiders, and you choose a simplistic story and just go with it, bowl in all this exemplary movie magic, action/visual spectacle and magnetic performances, you get yourselves a tremendously fast-paced, archaic, on edge adventure classic. There is so much hard, arduous work juiced into this flick and it pays off gloriously. Sometimes more—in terms of its combat (action) galore—can be better when given an accessible scenario like this.

Indiana Jones is arguably considered to be one of the greatest action hero, protagonists of all-time. Funny enough though, this infamous scoundrel is a very flawed character, which peculiarly enough, makes him all the more likable to the audience. Since so many affairs relentlessly transpire during the two-hour runtime, the movie has the advantage to make Indy fail a lot. He is a perfect character because he is not a perfect human being. The story allows him to fall down and get back up, fall down and get back up, while simultaneously letting the audience in on the smashing bullheadedness of this rock-ribbed archeologist. He withholds the same human flaws as anyone else but in spite of that, he still maintains this courageous backbone of an arc.

I’ve discovered minor, inconsequential flaws with some details that don’t hold up too well today specifically in the first excerpt but screw it. After that first scene, everything transforms into a bombastic rollercoaster hysteria of perfection—especially during that finale which is clearly the best thing in the whole entire world.

Verdict: A+

Marion is wife material, c’mon Indy. Such an underrated, kickass character in the franchise. She’s the real MVP. I want y’all to compare her kill count in this movie to Indy’s. Yep.

“Raiders of the Lost Ark” is now available to rent and buy on YouTube, Amazon Prime, Google Play, iTunes, Vudu, and Netflix.

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