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40th Anniversary of Indiana Jones: How a Movie About a Nazi Revenge Fantasy Made a Revolution in Hollywood
Spielberg dreamed of directing James Bond, George Lucas convinced him he had something "much better," Harrison Ford kept getting hurt in filming and the result was a historic hit, which continues to impact the film industry to this day.
How was the world famous archaeologist born?
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Indiana Jones
Steven Spielberg
George Lucas
Harrison Ford
The Vinitsky era
Friday, 11 June 2021, 00:01 Updated: 00:20
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Congratulations, indie (Photo: Netflix)
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Good friends Steven Spielberg and George Lucas had a tradition.
Whenever a movie of one of them was released, they would run away from the reviews and ticket sales numbers for a quiet weekend in Hawaii.
There, on the beach, they would build a castle invested in dance and if it had survived the first wave coming in its direction - it would have been a sign for them that the film would succeed.
This superstition / superstition was born in the summer of 1977. Lucas migrated to the island nation just as the space opera to which he devoted his entire life, "Star Wars - Episode 4: New Hope" has hit theaters.
He was joined on the trip by his wife in those days and the film's editor, Marsha, as well as boyfriend Spielberg.
There, on the golden and beautiful beach, after Lucas heard that "Star Wars" was a historic hit, he started to let go, started smiling and talked to Spielberg about their next projects.
"I told George that even though I was rejected for the first time, I would try again to convince the studio to allow me to direct a James Bond film," the veteran director said of his life dream at the time.
"George replied to me 'Stephen, I have something much better than this.'"
Lucas began telling Spielberg about an idea he developed into what would later become "Pirates of the Lost Ark," the first film in the Indiana Jones series, which celebrates tomorrow, June 12, 40 years round.
"We did not even leave the beach and I had already committed to directing the film," recalled the enthusiastic Spielberg.
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Trailer of the Lost Box (The movie is available on Netflix and YES)
Indiana Jones 'character began to be built on Lucas' creative head as early as 1973, when he was working on the film that made him a rising star in the Hollywood skies, the comedy "American Graffiti". Lucas hoped to do what is known in film parlance as a "Type B movie" - a cheap movie that would recreate the adventure and heroic cinema he loved in his youth: "I asked myself 'what movies did I really like as a kid?' Near the premiere of "Pirates of the Lost Ark."
First, he named his star Indiana Smith - Indiana named after Marsha's dog, Smith 'as a homage to Nevada Smith', the main character and the name of Western starring Steve McQueen. But work on Indiana Smith was abandoned when Lucas moved on to star in "Star Wars," until a few years later he sat down with another friend, filmmaker Philip Kaufman and together they put together the plot for the film for about two weeks.
Kaufman was, among other things, the one who persuaded Lucas to drop the idea that indie would be, like James Bond, the idol of women and nightclubs.
He is also the one who suggested that the film focus on the lost box, which is the Ark of the Covenant, after hearing about its mythical story from his dentist.
This concept fitted in perfectly with Lucas' desire to present a world-class struggle between Indiana and the Nazis in the mid-1930s over valuable historical items, an area of great interest to Adolf Hitler.
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How did the Ark of the Covenant come into the picture?
(Photo: Giphy)
For several years, Lucas also hoped that Kaufman would be the one to direct the film, but this was not possible and so Spielberg landed on the director's chair. Terry from the disappointing "1941", "Pirates of the Lost Ark" got Spielberg back on track and during filming, during breaks, he talked a lot with Melissa Matheson and told her the plot lines of his next film.
Mathyson Peace be upon her came to the set of "Pirates of the Lost Ark" to visit her partner and later, her husband of about two decades - Harrison Ford. She gathered all those Spielberg ideas and started putting together a script. "ET - A Friend from Another Planet" came out exactly a year after "Pirates of the Lost Ark".
For Spielberg, although the Lost Ark entered the picture even before he joined the project, "Pirates of the Lost Ark" provided him with a perfect opportunity to produce a Jewish fantasy about revenge on the Nazis, who think they can use the symbol of Jewish holiness to take over the world. Not really the situation.
And if "Nazi revenge fantasy" sounds familiar to you, it's probably because you saw the "disrespectful bastards" of all of us's neighbor and Spielberg's big fan, Quentin Tarantino.
During the filming breaks, Spielberg invented "ET."
(Photo: GettyImages, Pascal La Segarten)
In the end, it was Spielberg, Lucas and young screenwriter Lawrence Casdan who locked themselves in the office for a few weeks and worked on the script. They changed the family name from "Smith" to "Jones" and invented some moments that became legendary, including the famous ending scene, a beautiful tribute to the last scene of "Citizen Kane."
"Pirates of the Lost Box" finally hit theaters in the summer of 1981, after a long period in which the film industry suffered a sharp drop in revenue. He finished his first weekend at the top of the rankings in the United States and Canada and the huge success continued in the following weeks, even though the film competed with tough rivals like "Superman 2", "For Your Eyes Only" from the James Bond series and others.
For no less than nine consecutive months, "Pirates of the Lost Ark" remained in the top 10 of American movies and it is estimated that it sold 77 million tickets in the country where about 230 million people lived at the time.
Or in other words: one in three Americans saw "Pirates of the Lost Ark" in theaters between the summer of 1981 and the spring of 1982.
The reviews were also praised and the return came in the form of winning five statuettes at the Oscars.
Unfortunately for the film, he actually lost all the big awards, including for best film and even for music, at the end of a terrifying battle against "Chariots of Fire" and the famous melody of Vangalis from the opening of that film.
Another box office-breaking production.
Lucas (Photo: GettyImages)
So what made "Pirates of the Lost Ark" so successful and a movie that even today you can sit back and enjoy? Above all, this is a film that simply made a revolution and is easy for us to watch in 2021, because huge parts of the modern cinema we know are based on it. The style, the rhythm, the music, the story - every element in "Pirates of the Lost Ark" has been imitated and restored countless times in the last four decades.
"Pirates of the Lost Ark" is simply the perfect combination of the classic studio cinema genre films, on which Lucas was based when he came up with the idea, and modern cinema, which began to develop in the United States from the mid-1970s thanks to influences from Europe and "school generation", nicknames Of the creators who came from film schools and among them can be found Spielberg, Lucas and also Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese, Brian de Palma and others.
With sensitivity and art, Spielberg produces in "Pirates of the Lost Ark" a breathtaking, dramatic, suspenseful and entertaining film in the right places, but also one that suits the spirit of the period in which it was made. The Pirates of the Lost Ark is another milestone in the American nation's attempt to overcome the traumas of the previous decade in the early 1980s, which mainly included the end of the failed Vietnam War and the scandalous Watergate affair. Under the new president and former studio film actor Ronald Reagan, America tried to rewrite history and narrative to arrange for itself a "happy ending."
Because of this, Indiana Jones is portrayed as a man-man, barely scratched despite everything he goes through, charming, smart, adventurous and one who can overcome any problem, anywhere in the world.
If the film is indeed a kind of Jewish fantasy, then the character of Indie, who went on to the sequels, is a colonialist fantasy, about a world in which the American leads the natives to happiness.
The complaints that have been heard about "Pirates of the Lost Ark" over the years have touched on this - after all, Jones himself "robbed" the film of valuable objects that are not his, but belong to backward countries.
Not scratched, man-man (Photo: imdb)
Spielberg and Lucas were not thrilled by these reviews and managed to produce a huge hit. They did so largely thanks to the accurate casting of the lead actor for the role of Indiana Jones - Harrison Ford. At first, Lucas was afraid to cast the biggest thing that came out of Star Wars. He preferred a name that was lesser known at the time and in any case did not want him and Ford branded as the new "Scorsese and De Niro", the ones working together on all their films.
The carousel of names that were candidates for the role is endless and it is not clear where the line between imagination and reality is drawn here, but over the years those mentioned included Bill Marie, Steve Martin, Jack Nicholson, Jeff Bridges, Nick Nolte and even Tom Selk, who was Marsha Lucas' favorite. Beet was very interested in the role, but was also committed to his CBS series, "Magnum, a Private Detective." The TV network refused to allow him to shorten the filming of the season in favor of starring in the film and he was forced to give up, just before an actor strike broke out that would have allowed him to be Indiana Jones. Apparently to this day he cries about it.
In desperation, Lucas offered the job to Ford, who got excited and left history. Between 1980 and 1984, one Harrison Ford film was released each year: "Star Wars - Episode 5: Empire Strikes Back," "Pirates of the Lost Ark," "Blade Runner," "Star Wars - Episode 6: The Return of the Jedi." And Indiana IIIA Miracle and the Cursed Temple "- one of the most dizzying runs in the history of cinema, one that has made him the greatest actor in the world.
Became the greatest player in the world.
Ford (Photo: GettyImages, Michael Buckner)
The filming was not easy for him and Ford, who insisted on performing most of the stunts himself, was injured and injured again and again.
He escaped from a giant ball rolling in his direction, a 6.7-foot-high rock weighing 140 pounds, formed of fiberglass, plaster and wood (Spielberg admitted over the years: "I was an idiot who let Harrison do this stunt"). Ford blocked the air vent and the plane plunged into the water from a height of about six meters, with only luck he and the pilot remaining intact.In another case, in a scene at the Nazi airport, the plane "out of control" got on Ford's foot and caused a small tear in the straps.
But nothing was as bad as the snakes. About six thousand snakes from all over Europe were brought in for the benefit of the scene with them and not just Jones repeatedly declaring in the film that he "hates snakes". Among other things, they had ten cobras hanging around on the floor and just before the filming started, the team revealed to Spielberg that the serum against their venom expired two years ago. The production had to be halted until a new serum was flown specifically from India and the studio doors remained open throughout filming, with an ambulance waiting at the ready, "in case of tragedy," as Spielberg put it.
Finally, Ford barely survived the snakes and in this scene you can see how he is dressed from head to toe so that they do not get close to him (it was Karen Allen, who plays Marion, who was braver and agreed to be photographed barefoot). What almost knocked the star down was the heat in Tunisia, which served as Cairo for the benefit of the film. For about a month, in a heat sometimes approaching fifty degrees in the desert, the production staff of "Pirates of the Lost Ark" collapsed one after another,Including gastric poisoning and heat stroke.
This Ford caught on just as preparations were being made for a grandiose action scene - a battle in the heart of the market between Indiana and his whip and the Sword Wizard.
The plan was to devote three working days to this scene alone, but Ford simply failed to function and barely got to his feet.
In a quick consultation between Spielberg and producer Frank Marshall the alternative solution was found and with the help of just seven shots one of the most famous scenes ever was quickly filmed, in which the exhausted indie simply shoots an opponent ready for battle.
Caution, Ball (Photo: Screenshot, Screenshot)
There's a lot more to write about the effects of "Pirates of the Lost Ark", a film that swept an entire industry behind it and reinvented (re?) The cutting edge of action movies, combining history, comedy, drama, world travel and more.
Since the canvas is short, probably the best way to sum it up is to simply tell that just this week the esteemed director James Mangold began filming the fifth film in the series, 14 years after "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull."
That Spielberg piece was disappointing and this time he's moving to the role of one of the producers, but the bottom line is clear:
even forty years after we first met him, we want to continue spending two and a half hours at the movies with Indiana Jones.
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