Even the MPAA ratings board loved it

Rating: 10/10 (13 January 2005)

I bring up the ratings board because, like the two films that followed it, Raiders of the Lost Ark seems to have been granted almost unprecedented leniency in the rating. People get shot, stabbed, poisoned, murdered, blended up by airplane propellers, a head explodes, another head has the skin melted off of it like candle wax, there are corpses and all manner of other horrible things, and yet the movie gets a PG rating. I watched Raiders of the Lost Ark, The Temple of Doom and The Last Crusade one after the other yesterday, and early on found myself wondering what it was about The Last Crusade that earned it a PG-13 rating when both movies before it were shockingly violent and bloody for PG films.
Our introduction to Indiana Jones is much like most of the time that we spend with him, a nonstop roller coaster ride of adventure, where one thrilling situation leads right into the next. He is sort of what every kid fantasizes that adult life is really like, a constant adventure punctuated only by the times when he has to teach class, pretending to be a normal working adult and hiding the fact that he's a world-traveler who constantly risks life and limb in order to get precious artifacts into museums where they belong. This is the kind of thing that makes you want to be an archaeologist.
The movies all take us to exotic locations and immerse us completely in thrilling adventure, as Jones gets himself into one dangerous situation after another in search of ancient historical artifacts. It's surprising that it wasn't until the third film that he goes after the Holy Grail, but each film starts off with scenes of adventure that rival even the best opening action sequences from any of the James Bond films.
The Ark of the Covenant represents everything that Jones got into archeology for in the first place, as he mentions early in the film, and he has to race against time in order to obtain it before it falls into the hands of the Nazis. The film displays exactly the right amount of comic relief to counteract the viciousness of Jones' pursuers who, as we know, are not above torturing and killing in order to get what they want. The characters in the movie are wonderful, with Karen Allen portraying Marion Ravenwood, Jones' ex-girlfriend who ends up his partner on his quest for the Ark and, my favorite, John Rhys-Davies as another helper along the way. Some of the best scenes in the movie involve Rhys-Davies when they're all in the desert, at the site in which the Ark supposedly rests.
Speaking of the best scenes, some of them are not the ones that take place when Jones first arrives in Nepal. The fight scenes that take place when he and Marion get separated in the marketplace are heavily over-rehearsed and completely unconvincing, but I'm still willing to accept them because the scene as a whole is so much fun. The scene where Jones casually shoots the swordsman in front of the crowd has been one of my favorite scenes in the movie since I was a kid, although when I watched it yesterday I noticed that every single extra in the scene reacts wrongly except for a single person. One person immediately turns and runs terrified into the crowd away from the shooting, while everyone else throws their hands into the air and dances around as though they're celebrating. I hope someone found that one extra and offered sufficient congratulations.
The movie is set against the backdrop of Nazi Germany under the control of Hitler, who wants the Ark recovered for himself at all costs, so it's Indiana Jones and his two partners trying to recover the Ark and survive the onslaught of all of Germany's military might. The movie is put together in the same manner as the old Saturday adventure serials, this time with bigger adventure and more danger.
(spoilers for all three films ahead!) What I especially respect about the movies is that they avoid going too far. It's a difficult line that they walk, too, because you can't have a movie like this that delves too deep into the meaning and existence of a lot of the things that Jones searches for without risking failure. Many adventure films seek certain things that, if they are shown, will immediately look fake (like the aliens in Mission to Mars), and if they're not shown they risk failure by giving the feeling of leading the audience on without payoff at the end. All three (thus far) Indiana Jones films ultimately end up with Jones' failure to obtain the artifacts that he is seeking, but he has still been successful in his missions. It's not an easy thing to accomplish in any story, but these movies are more concerned with the thrill of the chase and the knowledge of when success has truly been achieved rather than getting too close to the objects at hand. Bravo.