Move over citizen Kane

Why do we watch movies?

I don’t have an answer here, I’m genuinely asking why do we watch movies? Is it to think? Feel? Be entertained? Be turned on? To mindlessly pass the time? I really wanna know. I’m asking because I’ve come across a startling problem. Well, it’s not so much of a problem per se as it is something that we as a society have overlooked. And not just the average movie goer either. Critics and the film intelligentsia have long disregarded what they have known all along—Raiders of the Lost Ark is the most competent movie ever made. Of course, the AFI continues to acknowledge this. It remains ranked in the top 100 movies of all time. But somehow I feel it doesn’t get the respect it deserves. Like, we know it’s great. We just can’t comprehend how great.

I’ve racked my what little of my brain is left trying to address why that is. Raiders came at a time when Steven Spielberg was shitting out hit after hit. First came Jaws. Then came Close Encounters of the Third Kind (let’s forget 1941 for the moment). A year after Raiders, Spielberg released what some might call the pinnacle of his blockbuster era, ET. Meanwhile, George Lucas was in the middle of producing the OG Star Wars trilogy staring Harrison Ford, who was in the midst of cementing himself as the greatest leading man in Hollywood history. So we had three great minds at the height of their creative powers converging on one project. And it worked. It worked so well that we’re still struggling to understand it.

First the casting of Harrison Ford. As is well known, Tom Selleck was originally selected to play Indiana Jones. No doubt, he would have been good. But I implore anyone reading to go watch Selleck’s audition tapes. He’s intense. A little on edge. Kurt Russell gave a similar reading for Han Solo. When you compare Russell’s audition to Ford’s, you realize what an inspired choice it was to roll with Ford. Why? Because Harrison Ford looked liked he couldn’t have given less of a fuck. And that’s part of his charm. Lesser filmmakers, perhaps even filmmakers that many would consider great, might have gone with Kurt Russell or a more intense “actor’s actor”. But Lucas and Spielberg didn’t and their careers were rewarded because of it.

But something that always bothered me about the movie was its conclusion. If you recall, Indiana Jones was dispatched to find the Ark before the Nazis did. After some back and forth in Egypt, Jones secures the Ark in the greatest action sequence of all time and then stows it away on a ship. While in the Mediterranean, the Nazis intercept the vessel, take the Ark, and bring it to an isolated island with Indiana Jones secretly in tow. Jones is caught and is forced to be present when the primary antagonist opens the Ark, which unleashes the wrath of God, killing all the Nazis on the island and leaving only Jones and Marion alive. So if you think about it, Indiana Jones didn’t do much to save the day. IN FACT, it would have been better for the United States to not dispatch Indiana Jones and let the Nazis find the Ark for themselves to presumably open it in Hitler’s presence where he and all of the other high ranking Nazis would have been violently killed. So had US officials done nothing, World War II would’ve never happened. In other words, Indiana Jones started World War II.

But the important thing here is that none of this matters. Your brain didn’t notice this wild act of incompetence because writer Lawrence Kasdan tried to tell you this would happen in the opening scene. When we’re introduced to Indiana Jones, he’s in the middle of a South American jungle trying to steal a golden idol. After surviving numerous threats to his life, he achieves this only to have it pried from his hands by a rival archeologist. This sequence of events establishes Jones as an incredible archeologist in addition to being a scrappy survivalist, but in the world of Raiders, the field of archaeology is filled with treachery and avarice. So Indy can’t win em all. Even though Jones ultimately ends up with the Ark, it is pried away from him by higher powers, allegedly to be studied by “top men.”

And that’s the genius of this film. It begins as it ends. Where many might see a mindless, albeit well executed action/adventure movie, is actually quite well thought out. It’s little pieces like this that make Raiders of the Lost Ark the most competent movie ever made.