Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark (Special Edition)
I wish I could have watched this movie as a kid, more specifically as an eight year old boy or forty year old man. I guess if you're going to go with the male aspect, you don't really need to specify an age. Either way, it's the perfect adventure movie for a little kid. I'm assuming this isn't big news for the rest of the world as I'm sure I'm the only one who until recently had not seen the movie.
What I hadn't realized about the movie was that it was set in the 1940s and not in a modern day setting, this was probably the biggest surprise in the whole movie for me. Not that I'm complaining, it's one of my favorite eras in American History and a movie set in that era provides era appropriate eye candy, naturally. I'm talking clothes here people! It also explains why Indiana Jones always made such a to-do about his hat, I never understood why his hat was such a big deal until then. It was custom for men to wear hats in the 1940s and slowly faded out around the time President Kennedy took office. I'm typically a big fan of Jackie O., but why she never encouraged her husband to wear a hat is beyond me. The story behind the hat is a little more involved than just men typically wearing hats in 1940s America. The hat is from a famous hat shop in London's Saville Row. It was the shops version of an Australian hat that took both the costume designer and Harrison Ford sitting on the hat and roughing it up a bit to get a "lived in and well-loved" look. A similar procedure was used for the matching leather jacket, of which the production company had to purchase ten jackets for stunt purposes. Both items (the hat and leather jacket) are on display at the Smithsonian.
Another iconic scene from the movie was when Indy has to escape the run away boulder and stumbles as he sprints to safety. There was actually a surprising amount of information about the boulder (and movie for that matter) available online and through the bonus features on the DVD. The boulder interestingly enough was constructed from fiberglass and the sequence required Harrison Ford to outrun the massive fiberglass boulder ten times. It was on his first attempt to outrun the boulder that he stumbled. The stumble made it into the final cut once director Steven Spielberg decided it looked and felt authentic. To achieve the appropriate sound for the boulder, the sound department attempted to roll multiple boulders but were unable to come up with an appropriate sound. It wasn't until they had decided to pack up and leave that they notice the sound of the Honda Civic coasting on a gravel embankment that they found a sound were happy enough with. Additional sounds created for the movie were created by hitting a pile of leather jackets with a baseball bat, and the sound of removing the lid of a toilet cistern.
The film would end up being another massive hit for Lucas, who I'm convinced at this point managed to make a killer deal with the devil for all of his success, as it would go on to be the highest grossing film of the year. Not only was Lucas known for making a killer deal on his Star Wars movies, but landed an amazing deal with the studios who financed the films entire $20 million dollar budget. In exchange, Lucas owns over 40% of the film and collects almost half of the profits once the studio reached a capped amount of money. Again, it's incredible the kind of deals this man makes with studio heads.
Final thoughts: While I'm not ready to make a deal with the devil in the same way Lucas did, I wouldn't mind be able to come up with some of these great epic stories Lucas seems to be full of. And while none of the other Indiana Jones movies are part of the 365 Movie Challenge I look forward to watching them again in the future.
OFFICIAL COUNT: 168 DOWN 197 TO GO
Next up: Mystery Science Theater 3000
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