Tag: #IndianaJones

  • Personal Review: Raiders of the Lost Ark (Part 3)

    This is a series, as I showed this movie to my daughter for the first time over the weekend, and I will share her reactions to it. This might be the last part…

    Raiders of the Lost Ark is my favorite action movie, in case you missed that from the past two days. Over the past weekend, I showed the movie to my daughter, who is now at the age that I first saw it way back in 1983/84. It clearly is very natural to want to share things with your child that you hold as important, and I also think it’s equally normal for children to want to learn about what their parents think is important. For my daughter to understand me better, she does need to know about Raiders, MST3k, and The Beatles. (Books are a completely different subject, as the kid is just now learning how to read, so we are several years from that subject.)

    As we finished Raiders on Saturday night, and after she told me the melting faces scared her, I knew that she would have questions, as she is a very curious six-year-old. What she asked me was: “What is the Ark? Why does it kill people if you open it? Why did ghosts come out of the Ark? Is it magic like the Infinity Stones? What are the Ten Commandments? Why did the Egyptians hide the Ark?” With these questions, I discovered a very glaring difference between my childhood and my daughters; at her age, I was well versed in Bible stories, and my kid has no idea what is in the Bible.

    I was raised in a VERY Catholic home, and when I was a kid, I went to Sunday school, CCD, and had my own illustrated children’s Bible. I said my prayers with my mother at night, and would even “read” Bible stories from a little red Gideon’s Bible, though I was just repeating stories I had memorized. With this background, when I first saw Raiders, I saw the Biblical implications all over the story. When my daughter watched the movie, none of that was apparent to her. It was just a magic box that you shouldn’t look at when it’s open.

    My wife and I have made a conscious choice to not raise our daughter Catholic. In both of our lives, religion has played a divisive role, didn’t necessarily prepare us for living in this world, and front loaded us with so much guilt, which we are still working through. For me, I really dislike how the Catholic Church, and most religions honestly, treat women, and I don’t want to raise my daughter in a faith tradition that makes her a second-class citizen in the eyes of God.

    I wasn’t expecting that religion would be the final conversation I would have with my kid after watching Raiders of the Lost Ark, but I am glad that it happened. I am happy that we started talking about what different people believe, we talked about the traditions and history of Judaism, and what the Old Testament and the New Testament are. I want her to make her own decisions when it comes to religion, and they only way for that to happen is for her to ask questions.

  • Personal Review: Raiders of the Lost Ark (Part 1)

    This might be a series, as I showed this movie to my daughter for the first time over the weekend, and I will share her reaction in a follow up post.

    Raiders of the Lost Ark is my favorite action movie. Even though I knew about the movie from my older brothers telling me about it, and seeing clips on TV, I didn’t see the whole movie until it was on cable; I’m sure it was a free preview as my parents didn’t get the extra movie channels. I know I saw it before Temple of Doom came out, which would means I saw it before the summer of 1984, so I was either 6 or 7. What I can remember about watching it for the first time, was the feeling of having no idea what would happen next! Just being totally sucked into that movie.

    And that has become the bar that I judge all action movies by. The older I get, the lest often it happens, but when I land  on a movie where I can’t figure it out, or I get sucked in to the point that I don’t know what will happen, I get to relive that experience of sitting on the edge of the couch wondering how Indy will stop that truck full of Nazis and get the Ark back.

    Much has been written about Raiders, but I think it is important to point out that this movie was still early in Spielberg’s career, which I feel like he still had something to prove, With the help by the great cinematographer Douglas Slocombe, there are shots using lighting, shadow, and depth that are pretty arty for an action movie. Sadly, action directors seem to have moved on to prefer spectacle, I am sure due to the success of Raiders, and have lost touch with using image, through action, to forward the story. If you can remove an action sequence from a movie, and it doesn’t change the plot, then your action scene is meaningless.

    As I watched Raiders again this weekend, which was like visiting an old friend, I put my focus on the stuntmen. All of those guys hanging off trucks, being set on fire, climbing, jumping and throwing punches. The practical effects that had a human connection. It’s an authenticity that movies struggle to have today. Don’t get me wrong. I like that planets can collide, and worlds can be dreamed up that are breathtaking in their artistry. But, if you are going to have a guy get dragged behind a truck, I want to see a stuntman do it.