Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark

Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark is a movie that I remember not liking when I was a child. Later in my teenage years I re-watched the movie and discovered it was a really good. Now in my older years I wanted to test it out and see how I thought of it with today's climate of political correctness in mind.

The movie starts off with the classic scene that everyone knows of Indiana Jones. This is classic storytelling at it's finest. Not many words are shared it's just all visual. You see Indiana Jones trying to retrieve an indigenous artifact. The area is filled with hidden traps that only he can figure out how to avoid.

Looking back at that I could see a lot of people going up in arms now talking about how the hero is in fact raiding indigenous tombs for treasure. It's something that people are up in arms over today but this actually happened in those times. He's still a hero in this movie but we kind of start having a closer eye when watching this movie.

It's soon discovered that Indiana's new target is the ark of the covenant. A biblical relic that has been hidden for centuries. It's interesting how they don't go too much into detail about the relic and how he goes about to find this thing. Today's movies go into greater details as in the case of the movies National Treasure and the DiVinci Code. I liked this old method because it sets the pace and gets the movie going. You're not bogged down with tons of explanation.

In search of the ark he has to visit an old flame in Tibet. I remember this scene in the past but now I look at it differently. You actually see white actors with makeup to make them look Asian. I don't know how I missed this before but it's really messed up looking.

Then again a lot of the special effects are rather crude by today's standards. Still the effects work for the most part but I there are times I was thinking about how far we've advanced in movie magic. The use of the special effects is done sparingly. Most of the scenes are made with creative camera angles and timing to make us as the audience use more of our imagination. I kind of prefer this old method rather than creating gruesome scenes with tons of gore.

As I mentioned before I didn't like this movie when I was a child. When I grew up I started appreciating the storytelling of this movie and I was able to see how great the movie was. Now into later adulthood I live in a new age where we start to become more aware of problematic things in older movies.

The white actors playing Asian roles was a pretty big shocker moment for me. I also noticed that they used the love interest (Marion) like some sort of pet dog in this movie. She's passed around and capable to fend for herself and save Indiana but she's easily captured and passed around.

Another weird thing about Marion is the fact that there are 3 scenes where men just magically have lingerie and dresses for her to wear. Do these guys just have these clothes lying around for some reason? Usually these locations only consist of men. What's even more weird is that somehow these items of clothing just so happen to fit her perfectly.

Although there's also an air of innocence to this movie. A simple kiss from Marion will get all the guys worked up. There's no scenes of sex but in one scene its implied. Kids won't have a clue because they don't really go into it.

It's also interesting to see that Hollywood's take on cultures differs every few generations. In this movie Arabs are scene in a positive light. We don't really see that often in a lot of movies. It was kind of a nicer change of pace. Although pretty much all the cultures represented in this movie are kind of scene as more primitive cultures to American culture.

This movie is first and foremost an action adventure movie. Indiana constantly gets into sticky situations and has to figure out ways of getting out of it. There are clever action sequences that had me excited to watch this movie from start to finish.

Overall, despite a lot of the problematic things that happen in this movie I was still able to enjoy this movie. New adults may not really be into this movie because of those issues I mentioned earlier. As a story it is very well told and paced where you are constantly entertained. I have to still give this movie an 8 out of 10. Entertainment is entertainment. There's no real malice intent in this movie. People will take it the way they will no matter what you say.