All of the Indiana Jones movies have an inventive opening shot that matches the Paramount logo. In Raiders of the lost ark quests Ark , it’s a distant mountain shrouded by jungle mist. In Kingdom of the Crystal Skull , when things went off the rails, it’s a pile of dirt, complete with a computer-generated gop
Spielberg’s biopic of notorious con artist Frank Abagnale, Jr. opens with real footage from his appearance on the game show To Tell the Truth . Leonardo DiCaprio is inserted into the footage, but everyone else featured is from the actual show from 1977. Opening a movie in 4:3 aspect ratio with footage from a ‘70s game show was an unexpected and inspired move by Spielb
(Lucas resisted casting Harrison Ford for a while, because he didn’t want him to become the Robert De Niro to his Martin Scorsese , but eventually, he couldn’t deny that Ford was perfect .) For Marion, they considered Michelle Pfeiffer, Debra Winger, Mary Steenburgen, Valerie Bertinelli, Jane Seymour, and Barbara Hers
Spielberg’s filmmaking has all the hallmarks of great action cinema: inventive setups, increasingly raised stakes, well-constructed suspense , clarity of movement in the framing and editing, and most importantly, a palpable sense of
Arachnophobes scared of films featuring spiders and insects must have freaked out watching the opening of Raiders, when both Indy and Satipo discover tarantulas crawling all over them. It's a nerve-wracking scene, especially considering that the spiders are, in fact, real. However, they aren't native to South America, where the opening scene takes pl
Munich , Spielberg’s cinematic retelling of Operation Wrath of God, the Israeli government’s response to the 1972 Munich Olympics massacre, opens with an intricate tracking shot that frames each of its components perfectly. It opens on a gate, then two hands appear on it and a man climbs up to peer over. When the rest of his group arrives, he drops from the gate to join them. This is all conveyed through camera movements and angles, courtesy of cinematographer Janusz Kamiń
Jumping off Harrison, you and he have such a great on-screen relationship with you playing the warped mirror of him. How was it working with him on set and creating this history? Because there's so much alluded to, but very little actually said in the scr
There was a different kind of intensity. Because of 1941, the intensity was in the speed with which we had to make it. Steven has spoken about this quite a bit since, but it taught him that you didn't need to take all the time he was taking in making a movie before; that he could work fast without losing the quality. They had all sorts of clauses in their contract between each other, Steven and George, to make sure that Steven came in on time and under budget - which he did. It was a very fast shoot, in the sense that in Tunisia in the heat there, Steven would run between setups. The film crew was the same film crew that I'd been working with on Dogs of War immediately before in Belize, which was hot too - and humid heat. But in Tunisia, they were falling asleep at lunchtime in their food because Steven was just running them ragged. As soon as he said "Cut!" in one set, he would run across the sand to the next set and say, "Alright, I'm here! Next." He drove the thing like a steam eng
You know, I go back to it. I mean, I very rarely to say to myself, "Gee, I think I'll watch Raiders of the Lost Ark." But there are often screenings of it that I get invited to, and I get asked to introduce it or to do a Q&A afterwards. There's one I'm going to do this August. So, usually when those happen, I will sit with the audience and watch it again. Because often, I haven't seen it for a while, and I just want to have the same experience that they're having with them. I would say I usually will end up seeing it once a year, or maybe sometimes twice a year. It's a film that follows through my life. There's a lot of films I've made that I saw when they came out and haven't seen them since. But this is this is not one of those; this is one that has stayed very much a part of my life experie
The entire premise of Raiders and the Ark of the Covenant is just one facet of the Indiana Jones franchise that makes no sense . Many Bible scholars and average Christians were left scratching their heads in the first act when Marcus Brody talks about the powers contained in the Ark. According to Marcus, the Ark is capable of making its wielders invincible, leveling mountains, and decimating entire regi
One of the most iconic scenes of Raiders of the Lost Ark is when Indy falls into the Well of Souls and encounters a massive cobra that flares its hood. It's a deeply tense scene that helps convey Indy's paralyzing snake phobia. Unfortunately, like the aforementioned tarantulas, the cobra in question is geographically incorr
Steven Spielberg and George Lucas auditioned a ton of different actors for the roles of Indiana Jones and Marion Ravenwood. For Indy, they considered David Hasselhoff, Tom Selleck, Michael Biehn (who would go on to play Kyle Reese in The Terminator ), Mark Harmon, Christopher Guest (who starred in This is Spinal Tap ), and A Star is Born ’s Sam Elli