Friday, August 10, 2012

Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark

One of my favorite movie trilogies!!

Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark
Plot
-In 1936, an archeologist named Indiana Jones is a professor of Archelogy who is in the jungles of South America looking for a rare gold statue. After he finds it, he sets off a deadly trap, leading him to him running for his life to escape being crushed by a gigantic rolling ball. He manages to escape not not before being caught by a French archelogist named Rene Belloq, who asks for the statue.

-Later on, back at the university, he hears from a museum curator named Marcus Brody that there is a biblical artifact called the Ark of the Covenant, which is reputed to hold the actual Ten Commandments. He travels to Nepal because he hears someone he knows, a woman named Marion Ravenwood, knows something. She is a bartender in a Nepalese bar and she accompanies him to find the Ark. He also travels to Egypt to find out more about it.





-And it turns out that he is not the only one looking for it. Rene Belloq is looking for it because he believes that the Ark is a radio, a radio to communicate with God. And also, the Nazis are looking for it, to possess divine powers from above. And when the Nazis and Belloq finally open the Ark, they find not the Ten Commandments, but soon death. Ghosts of demons fly out and suck the life out of everyone there, except Indy and Marion, who keep their eyes closed so they don't see what's in it. They are the only survivors of it.

Cast
-Harrison Ford: Indiana Jones
-Karen Allen: Marion Ravenwood
-Paul Freeman: Rene Belloq
-Ronald Lacey: Arnold Toht
-John Rhys-Davis: Sallah
-Denholm Elliot: Marcus Brody
-Alfred Molina: Satipo
-Wolf Kahler: Colonel Dietrich
-Fred Sorenson: Jock
-Don Fellows: Colonel Musgrove
-William Hootkins: Major Eaton

Did You Know?
-The first choice to play Indy was not Harrison Ford, but Tom Selleck
-In order to get the sound of snakes slithering, sound engineer Ben Burtt stuck his fingers into a cheese casserole
-The leather jacket Indy wears was brand new. There were 10 leather jackets for wear and tear in this movie. In order to get his jacket to look aged, the costume department aged it artificially
-The hat Indy wears comes from a hat shop called Herbert Johnson in Saville Row, London. It was the shop's Australian model hat
-This was Alfred Molina's film debut. His first scene was being covered in tarantulas
-The spirits escaping the Ark were actually mannequins filmed underwater with a fuzzy lens to get a very creepy, ethereal effect
-While filming in Tunisia, everyone was sick, except director Steven Spielberg. He avoided getting sick by eating Spaghetti O's
-The scene where Indy is going to fight the massive, robe wearing marauder in the marketplace was not in the original script. He was originally supposed to use his whip on him, but instead shot him. Him and everyone else was sick with food poisoning so Ford suggested that and Spielberg liked it.
-The idol that Indy takes at the beginning is of a fertility goddess. She is a squatting woman giving birth
-The submarine docking area Indy breaks into is not a set, but an actual German U-boat area in La Rochelle, France. It is left over from WWII, complete with grafitti on the walls and everything pristinely preserved.

1 comment:

  1. I LOVE this movie too! :D I have seen it so many times I have lost count. It is so much fun and the action is great.

    -James

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