Raiders of the Lost Ark (also known as Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark) is a 1981 American adventure film directed by Steven Spielberg, produced by George Lucas, and starring Harrison Ford. It is the first (chronologically the second) film in the Indiana Jones franchise. It pits Indiana Jones (Ford) against the Nazis, who search for the Ark of the Covenant, because Adolf Hitler believes it will make their army invincible. The film co-starred 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; and Denholm Elliott as Indiana's colleague, Marcus Brody.

The film originated with 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, Tunisia, Hawaii, and California from June to September 1980.

Released on June 12, 1981, Raiders of the Lost Ark became the top-grossing film of 1981; it remains one of the highest-grossing films ever made. It was nominated for eight Academy Awards in 1982, including Best Picture, and won four (Best Art Direction, Best Film Editing, Best Sound Mixing, Best Visual Effects) as well as winning a fifth Special Achievement Academy Award in Sound 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), a television series, The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles (1992–1996), and 15 video games as of 2009. In 1999, the film was included in the United States Library of Congress' National Film Registry as having been deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant."

I never liked any of the IJ movies. I always found them to be pretty overrated. They weren't awful or anything, but they were far from great. B- sounds about right for the first one, then the second was pretty C worthy, and then the 3rd one was maybe a B/B-.
Something i have always found odd was that i never really cared for the Indiana Jones movies or the Back to the Future movies. They were like the big 80's franchises, and i always found them all rather childish.

A+, this is THE movie I grew up on, it's one of my five favorite movies of all time.

Laughable and pathetic. I'm embarassed to admit I was stupid enough to have been attracted to it as a kid. I've grown up since.

I hope your joking.

Laughable and pathetic. I'm embarassed to admit I was stupid enough to have been attracted to it as a kid. I've grown up since.

Guyssssssssss


Tell me this: suppose you're not having fun watching this, at all. And you don't find it to be clever or fresh or of any significance to you.

Would you still think of it as a good movie? Indiana Jones relies heavily on the audience's likability of it to be a good film, to them at least. That's a harder argument to make with, say, E.T., which can be judged as a good film objectively. For example, it does a good job in providing a critique of divorce and this image of suburbia as a perfect place. What kind of lesson is there to be found in Indiana Jones? That you shouldn't be greedy or curious? That the lost ark should be left alone? One of the things I really appreciate about the film is that it does a really good job dissing the Nazis, but we all know they're bad guys anyways. They're not charismatic (how could they be?), they're just bad bad people.

I think as an icon, Indiana Jones will be around for a long time. The films might be viewed only in order to see how this icon came into being. That's a possibility down the road. I can imagine Star Wars (which is much better) being approached in the same way by a lot of people who are curious about Luke Skywalker or Han Solo, and watch the film for that reason, and not because they're interested in the film itself.