The Best Adventure Movies: Raiders of the Lost Ark

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Outside Magazine, June 2005

Outside Goes to the Movies
A Perfect 10
Raiders of the Lost Ark

By Steven Kotler & The Editors

5. Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)
Archaeology as blood sport! Who doesn't want to live (at least for 115 minutes) in a world where ancient treasure is hidden in a tropical cave booby-trapped with auto-firing poison darts, bottomless pits, and a giant stone ball? Almost 25 years later, Spielberg's Raiders still has us dashing off to the Andes, Nepal, or Cairo.

Writer George Lucas set out to pay homage

"One of my favorite scenes is in Never Cry Wolf, when a bush pilot takes a young researcher named Tyler into the Canadian Arctic. The engine goes out and Tyler frantically asks, "What's wrong?! What's wrong?!" As the pilot grabs a wrench and starts climbing out the plane window to fix the problem, he shouts, "Boredom, Tyler—that's what's wrong! And how do you beat boredom, Tyler? Adventure!" I think about that line a lot, especially when someone asks me, "What's wrong?""—Dean Karnazes, Ultramarathoner

to 1930s adventure-pulp heroes like Doc Savage and the Phantom but ended up transforming the genre into a modern pastiche of fun and ever wilder and more perilous exploits. At the onset of World War II, booty-hunting professor Indiana Jones (Harrison Ford) races against the Nazis to find the Ark of the Covenant—resting place of the Ten Commandments and, supposedly, the power of God. Dr. Jones is a master in extreme environments, but his charm comes from the same reluctant-hero gene pool as that of Ford's Han Solo, in Star Wars. He'll rappel into a den of poisonous snakes and chase down a military convoy on a horse—but only because he has to. Plus, there's something about the badass simplicity of making a bullwhip your multitool.

Next Page: The African Queen

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