Raiders of the Lost Ark: Adventure for Adventure's Sake

Indiana Jones Arrives

In preparation for the return of Lucasfilm’s other long-running franchise, I’ll be sharing thoughts about the Indiana Jones films until Thursday, when I see Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny for the first time.

Is Indiana Jones a hero? In Raiders of the Lost Ark, I’d suggest the answer is no. Or, at the very least, he’s not a participant in the now-ubiquitous hero’s journey.

He’s an adventurer, a treasure hunter, a man with derring-do, and a hat that won’t quit. He’s the protagonist, certainly, we’re rooting for him, but unlike the template of the modern hero in cinema, he is not on a journey of self-discovery. He is not transformed by his accomplishments. He does not pass from adolescence to adulthood; he doesn’t overcome self-doubt to become a better version of himself; he does not transcend his circumstances; he does not leave the film a better person. He saves people, but often incidentally, in service of his own goals. He enters the frame whole and leaves the way we found him.

Raiders of the Lost Ark plays like a single episode of a serialized adventure (imagine a relic-of-the-week) on the grandest scale available in 1980. It’s composed of sequences instead of scenes. (If you think that sounds like the first Star Wars: ding ding ding.) It’s a tribute to another era of storytelling, a nostalgia act even when it was fresh and new. Plenty can be written about the difference between Star Wars and Indiana Jones, but I’d say the central one is character. In Star Wars, characters emerge and change. Indiana Jones has no such interest. Indiana Jones is not a saga, it’s a series.

Which is why, perhaps, Indiana Jones is not presented as a model of growth. He is here to strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield; but not evolve. Much like a week-to-week series where the adventurer stays the same, always facing a new goal or mystery, we’re meant to understand that we’re watching one of his many adventures, and are left to imagine what the others may have been.

This lack of introspection is what gives Raiders of the Lost Ark lightness and motion. It’s devoid of anxiety. There are moments where Indy or Marion find themselves in danger, but precious few when they ask themselves who they are, what they stand for. That’s why it’s so much fun to watch. It’s buoyant and care-free, made to frolic instead of fret.

Raiders does not concern itself, for example, with the ethics of removing sacred artifacts from non-Western countries. It does not ask itself if Indiana Jones’s relationship with Marion (“I was a child! It was wrong and you knew it!”) is anything more than a bit of Lawrence Kasdan-y backstory to build out the impression of a rugged, emotionally remote, leading man. It doesn’t worry about the body count (quite high, but whatever, they’re Nazis) or explain the logistics (how does sunlight trigger a bobby trap, exactly, and where did that giant golf ball come from). It’s not trying to make sense, it’s trying to make cheer. It’s adventure for the sake of adventure.

Even though Raiders of the Lost Ark is often considered one of the parents of the modern blockbuster, hallmarks of contemporary blockbuster-bluster are nowhere to be found. The movie has no time for them. There’s no throw-away line in the beginning that comes back reframed as wisdom by the end, for example, or a moral lesson in being a good person, no sense of Indy as “The One" (see: Neo, Luke Skywalker, Harry Potter). Instead it’s non-stop trouble: a stolen idol, a daring dash, a series of traps, a snake on a plane, a race against the Nazis, an old flame, a fight in the flames, a chase, a secret, a tomb, a submarine, dangers, scrapes, and escapes. That is the beautiful uniqueness of Raiders of the Lost Ark: it’s a totally external experience.

It feels like a response to the cinema of the time. The late 60s and early 1970s were rife with experimentation, soul-searching. Glamour was replaced with grit. The post-Watergate, post-Vietnam, era was about character study, a generation railing against its parents, and the failings of the American Dream. The old studio system gave way to the ethos of the auteur. Lucas, Spielberg and Coppola were film school rebels, trying to carve out their identities and make their movies without executive interference. In doing so, they ironically created the template for a whole new kind of big budget film. They reinterpreted old studio ideas through the lens of the newest technology and freshest perspectives. In a film landscape that reveled in a lack of adornment, here is a movie full of flash, played to the back row, anchored by a movie star.

And what a movie star. Harrison Ford is pretty much everything in Raiders of the Lost Ark, from silly to dashing to infuriating to vulnerable. It’s why Indiana Jones is not, thus far, the American James Bond. Bond has been played by six actors. But no one else can or should play Indiana Jones.

Watching the way Raiders of the Lost Ark eschews contemporary tropes reminded me of Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds or Psycho. Those films are structured episodically, they slowly unspool, and what happens in the beginning of each film is only a prelude to the eventual, unexpected result. They’re written without the Save The Cat idea that screenplays must be thus, and be structured like so. They pre-date the structural ideology and resulting sameness of newer movies, of movies written to sell to investors.

Raiders of the Lost Ark feels that way to me, in the wake of decades of imitators and action films. The movie doesn’t set up more movies, it doesn’t treat the characters like role models, you can’t feel the strain of the writers trying to tie the beginning of the film to the end (in a contemporary movie, something Indy does in the first sequence might prove important in the resolution; or the writers might underscore his lack of faith in order to create a moment of revelation of the character when the Ark opens). Instead, things happen as they should, whatever happens next happens, and the character reacts to survive and win. That’s it. It’s always good to be reminded that the best films don’t follow someone else’s map. Instead, they chart their own path to wherever X marks the spot.

One more thought I had while rewatching was how, unlike the Star Wars films, Raiders has escaped both a digital facelift and the feeling that it’s dated. Everything shot in camera, every special effect, looks as persuasive and perfect as it did when it was first released. It’s a forty three year old movie that would be a smash hit if it were released for the first time next week. It never feels like it’s testing out new technology, it’s just telling a story with exuberance and expertise, grounded in our world, with a supernatural twist.

I realize this reads like a list of all the things Raiders of the Lost Ark isn’t instead of is, but that’s the point: Raiders leaves everything out, from moralizing to mythmaking, in service of aesthetic and showing off. In an age of ever-expanding interconnectedness, stories about the multiverse, too many cooks and not enough chefs, it’s regrounding to watch a pure expression of the art of moving pictures about motion. Nothing to learn here, but lots to see, lots of places to go. It’s an amusement park ride, hop in, leave your cares at concession stand.

And don’t forget your hat!