Why Can't All Movies Be This Awesome At Thirty?

It was thirty years ago this month (on the 12th to be precise) that Raiders of the Lost Ark was first released to theatres.

Raiders of the Lost Ark is one of my favorite movies ever. In fact, if you stuck a gun to my head and made me name my absolute favorite movie of all time, I would waffle between this and Ghostbusters until you blew my brains out. But what is it about this globetrotting adventure film that makes me love it so? What makes it superior to every other action/adventure movie ever made? Well, today I’m going to try and answer those questions while imparting just how much I love this freaking movie.

I’m going to go about this glowing tribute (hey, no one said that this would be an impartial analytical essay) to the Greatest Adventure Movie Ever Made by comparing Raiders to For Your Eyes Only, the twelfth James Bond movie and the fifth starring Roger Moore in the role of the famous secret agent (wait, shouldn’t that be an oxymoron?) 007. Why For Your Eyes Only (FYEO)? Well, to start out it is in the same genre as Raiders (Globetrotting Action/Adventure… a rather specialized category, really). Secondly, it was released at roughly the same time as the first Indiana Jones adventure (roughly two weeks later on June 24th, meaning it also turned 30 this month) making it a good example of a contemporary competing movie. Third, FYEO is a good example of a movie of its type as the Bond movies had been setting the standard for nineteen years prior in the action/adventure genre. And last but most importantly, the James Bond franchise was a major influence on the Indiana Jones franchise (along with all those old adventure serials of the 30s and 40s). In fact, James Bond has been called “the father of Indiana Jones” by Steven Spielberg no less (and in a side note, Sean Connery would of course play Indy’s dad in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade). So it is interesting to compare the movies of both the “parent” and “child” franchises back to back and show how Raiders basically blew away the competition back in 1981… and all of the years after, actually.

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Before I begin I want to stress that I am not going to mindlessly bash For Your Eyes Only in order to lionize Raiders and I don’t hate the film. In fact, it’s one of my favorite Bond movies and a vast improvement to the franchise after the horribly goofy, over-the-top MST3K fodder that was Moonraker. Director John Glen really brought the series back to earth (haha) and toned down about 90% of the silliness of the previous Moore outings (it’s still Roger Moore though you are still going to get some stupid moments). FYEO is my favorite Roger Moore Bond movie and one of the best in the Bond series. The fact that Raiders of the Lost Ark is a superior film does not reflect badly on For Your Eyes Only; on the contrary it just goes to show how extraordinary and sublime Spielberg’s magnum opus is.

Oh, and I’m not even going to worry about spoilers with either of these movies. If you haven’t seen For Your Eyes Only, go out and rent it – it’s a good Bond flick. And if you haven’t seen Raiders of the Lost Ark, crawl out from whatever rock you’ve – ah, you know what? If you’re reading this then you are both a member of a sufficiently advanced modern society and above the age of six, in which case you have seen Raiders of the Lost Ark.

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Let’s begin our movie comparison by starting with our main characters: James Bond and Indiana Jones. First up: Roger Moore as James Bond in For Your Eyes Only. Moore really is too old to play Bond even by this point but it *almost* works in this film (it would become ridiculous with the succeeding Octopussy and his last outing A View to a Kill in which he looks positively *mummified*) as he plays 007 as someone who is about one year away from retirement. This reflects in his performance: Moore comes off as an experienced agent with a reservoir of knowledge and wisdom as well as an almost avuncular demeanor. Watch the scene where he persuades Melina Havelock to postpone her vengeance on the killers of her parents so he can find out what’s behind the whole plot and help them both. It just might be Moore’s best bit of acting ever; he comes across not as some playboy secret agent trying to talk his way into a young woman’s bed (like he normally does) but as a concerned man trying to prevent another human being from being hurt.

A lot of people like to hold up Sean Connery as being the greatest Bond ever but I don’t think his 007 could have pulled this scene off; he was too cold, ruthless, and horny (and keep in mind that doesn’t mean that Moore is my favorite Bond, in fact far from it). But, you say, what about badassery? Being nice to grieving girls is nice and all, but James Bond has to kick major ass or he’s just a government employee who gets to travel a lot and eat nice food. Well, Moore gets his biggest badass moment in his entire run as 007 when he kicks a car off a cliff – with a despicable criminal hitman inside.

Badassssss!

So there’s that. Overall a very good movie for Roger Moore, even if he is too old to be playing a British super-spy.

In contrast Harrison Ford in Raiders comes off as having just the right mix of youth and experience as archaeology professor cum globetrotting adventurer Indiana Jones. Even though not a spry young man (Ford was in his late thirties when he made this) he doesn’t seem to be ready for retirement either – remember, “it’s not the years, it’s the mileage.” Ford convincingly displays Indy as a perfect mix of the physical, tenacious, intelligent and academic, as a man who can teach a college class one minute and jump off into the deserts of Egypt to battle Nazis the second (actually, how the hell has he not been fired from his teaching job by now?). He can be both tender and hard, sometimes towards the same person: notice how he’s barely apologetic towards a woman he is implied to have deflowered while she was still underage.

Even after she hits him.

Even though one of the “good guys” his whole career revolves around robbing the sacred treasures of multiple groups of people for the intellectual profit of the Western World (although this admittedly is what archaeology basically was back in the 1930s). He kicks major ass like Bond but messes up too. I guess what I’m trying to say is that Indiana Jones is portrayed as a fleshed out, flawed human being in contrast to the nearly perfect invincible superhuman James Bond (who really has no foibles except indulging in too much casual sex, which is not portrayed as negative by the movies and actually shown as a positive thing). In addition, Harrison Ford has a screen presence that Roger Moore doesn’t have. Now, it’s nowhere near the level of Toshiro Mifune or Klaus Kinski (oh god, no) but it is there. You can see why he went on to stardom.

"Trust me."  Wouldn't you trust him?

Howsabout the leading ladies? Well, FYEO's Carole Bouquet is certainly lovely as Melina Havelock, and has a great combination of intensity and lethal determination to kill the murderers of her parents: just look at the look on her face right after their assassination scene. Electric! However, she can be a little stilted at times and she doesn’t have much of a personality outside of the whole “rampaging revenge” thing. She only smiles genuinely twice in the entire movie. She has some chemistry with Roger Moore, although with his age and more avuncular personality in this installment it comes off as more (haha) of a platonic friendship, which is nice… until the very end where they’re kissing each other and skinny dipping with it being suggested that sex is going to happen later. Argh! They had a chance to do something different with a Bond movie and they fell back on “Bond has sex with the lead Bond Girl at the end” crap. Was it that imperative to keep up tradition (TRADITION! Uh, sorry, although Topol *is* in this movie, people. Had to be done!)? It really does make the woman a reward for Bond saving the day, which is just outdated and sexist and… screw it. If I start to talk about sexism in James Bond movies I’m gonna be here forever. Speaking of which Bond of course beds more than just Carole Bouquet in this movie, although it is only one and someone is closer to his age. Oh, and I can’t talk about For Your Eyes Only without pointing out that James Bond is sexually assaulted by a fifteen year old girl. Which is freakin’ hilarious.

I love the look on his face too.

Awww.

Raiders of the Lost Ark, of course has Karen Allen as Marion Ravenwood who sizzles in her scenes with Harrison Ford. Allen does a better acting job than Bouquet (although it could help that she’s a native English speaker) even if she does get whiny at a few points (although nowhere near as bad as Kate Capshaw in the next Indy movie, Temple of Doom… uuuugh I’m getting shivers just thinking about it right now). Although Marion doesn’t have the driving motivation that Melina does, she makes up for it with more personality. And she’s cute too! Karen Allen is my favorite Indy woman (and a lot of other people’s too, which is why she returned for Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, in which she is still cute).

A hero is only as good as the villains he faces, and – ah, you know what? Screw it. No analysis is needed. Raiders wins hands down. It’s the Nazis. It’s the fuckin’ Nazis. You can’t do any better when it comes to movie villains than the Nazis. Greek smugglers/Soviet agents don’t even compare to the Nazis. You could make the protagonist of a movie a baby-raping, cross-burning, puppy-decapitating cannibal lawyer and the audience would still root for them if they were beating the crap out of Nazis. On an interesting side note, Julian Glover who is the main baddie in FYEO went on to play the main baddie (who like Kristatos in FYEO starts out seeming like a good guy oddly enough) in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, who collaborates with...

Nazis!

Visual effects, too, is a no-brainer. You have Richard Edlund melting the heads off of, you guessed it,

Nazis!

Music… screw it, I don’t want to write about this either. John Williams’ score for Raiders is one of the greatest ever written, a timeless rousing piece of music you want to listen to over and over again. Bill Conti’s “score” for FYEO is a piece of dated disco dreck.

Which leads me to the biggest reason that Raiders of the Lost Ark is a superior film to For Your Eyes Only, and every other adventure movie for that matter… it’s timeless. When you watch FYEO you can tell when it’s been made – it is obviously a product of the early eighties. In fact it practically screams this at you from the get-go, with Sheena Easton wailing the title song over the by now standard credits (I think Maurice Binder gave up on actual creativity after the sixties – “Okay… naked babes, and guns, more naked babes, more guns… shimmery things, more babes… aaaand done.”). This is actually a fallacy of nearly all Bond movies, actually. Using popular singers of the day will inevitably date your movie (except of course for Thunderball, Live and Let Die and Goooooldfingaaaaaaaah!). The opening to Raiders by contrast is, well, timeless… simple and effective. It doesn’t stop the movie for three minutes to force you to read credits (and look at naked chicks)… it plays the credits while already getting you into the story. And that leads me into the next biggest thing that makes Raiders superior… it’s not forced. It feels very organic, very natural… it flows well, from one situation to the next.

FYEO feels like a series of set pieces strung together with plot, each talky story portion serving to link each stunt and action sequence to the next. Not that this is a horrible thing, after all the stunts and action scenes in Bond movies are usually very, very awesome (and there is no exception here). And admittedly FYEO’s plot is a very good one, involving intertwining themes of vengeance, betrayal and deception. But the execution just seems to be a little… choppy compared to Raiders.

Although it does have a really cool Citroen car chase.

And maybe this is what also what helps make Raiders timeless… there’s no dated style of filmmaking here. Yes, it followed from the blockbuster style of the seventies (which Spielberg helped to invent) and itself influenced the action movies of the eighties… but the final product is one that is hard to pin down to one time period, at least for me. And this isn’t just nostalgia talking, because I can look to some of my other favorite movies from the time period and point out how dated they are. Ghostbusters (which I mentioned earlier) was obviously made in the eighties. Ben-Hur is very obviously a fifties film. Raiders of the Lost Ark is one of a handful of movies (a couple of other examples being The Empire Strikes Back and Alien) that are truly non-dated and timeless.

So, with all of the trumpeting of how superior Raiders of the Lost Ark is over For Your Eyes Only, does the Cold War adventure of Agent 007 manage to do anything better than the classic tale of the search for the lost Ark of the Covenant? Well, yes. I have to admit that the stunts in Raiders, while very, very good aren't quite as good as the ones in FYEO. Look, the stunts in Raiders are awesome – the shots of Indy crawling under the truck and being dragged behind the truck are classic and makes me say, “Woo! This is awesome! I’m having so much fun watching this!” But the first time I watched the part of FYEO when Bond is climbing up the side of Kristatos’ mountain fortress the palms of my hands literally sweated and I had a death grip on my chair. When Bond is kicked off the cliff by a henchman and falls about two hundred feet on his rope, I think I forgot to breathe.

I also winced in pain during the “keelhauling” sequence where Bond and Melina are dragged on a rope by the villain’s boat through shark infested waters (this sequence is actually from the book Live and Let Die). Every time Bond broke off a piece of razor-sharp coral with his body – ouch.

Well, anyways, happy birthday, Raiders of the Lost Ark (and you too, For Your Eyes Only!)… you are truly one of the greatest films ever made and one of my absolute favorites. I will always thrill to your spectacular action scenes, boo your despicable Nazi villains, marvel at your awesome special effects and laugh whenever Indy shoots that Arab swordsman guy.

Hahahahaha!

Next Week: Something different.