Raiders of the Lost Ark story Guide Ark helped solidify Steven Spielberg as a legendary Hollywood film director , and the film's legacy can be felt to this day. Harrison Ford is currently in the middle of shooting the fifth film in the franchise and aside from a few setbacks, all seems to be going according to p

Steven Spielberg doles out new information with every shot in the opening scene of Jurassic Park , slowly building up the suspense. It opens close on some trees, obscuring something. That something is tearing the trees out of the way, thundering towards us, bellowing booming noises. A couple of closeups then introduce terrified men wearing hard hats bearing the Jurassic Park logo. Some of them are ar

This turned out to be one of Woo’s greatest movies, Hard Boiled , starring Chow Yun-fat as badass cop Tequila Yeun. The climactic hospital shootout is one of the most iconic action sequences ever s

Released on June 12, 1981, Raiders of the Lost Ark (later re-titled with the "Indiana Jones" moniker) became a hit with audiences and critics alike - going on to become an all-time classic . Thanks largely to George Lucas and Steven Spielberg, the movie has inspired generations of filmmakers and analysts to attempt to unearth what makes it so everlast

Schindler’s List , Steven Spielberg’s harrowing cinematic portrait of the horrors of the Holocaust, opens with a completely black frame. Then, a match is struck, dimly illuminating the fingers holding it as it lights a can

The third Indiana Jones movie returned the title character back to a story much more in tune with what audiences loved and remembered the most about Raiders of the Lost Ark and fared far better with crit

Then, a wider shot reveals the thing that was ripping through the trees: a large truck, carrying a heavy-duty cage. It slowly becomes apparent that there’s a dinosaur in the cage, and these guys aren’t equipped to handle

After the first Mad Max movie presented a bleak dystopia in a somewhat recognizable near-future, the second one dived head-first into a barren post-apocalyptic wasteland ruled by gas-guzzling villainy. Mel Gibson returns to the role of Max, tearing across the desert in his V8 Interceptor, looking for a fight worth fight

Simply put, people of non-Western nationalities are shown as exotic caricatures at best and non-white bad guys at worst. The Hovitos tribe, Toht’s Nepalese gunmen, and the Egyptians only exist to hinder or help Indy, having little to no agency to speak of. While their depictions are a product of the archaic adventurer genre’s trappings, the racially insensitive subtext can’t be igno

The aesthetic can make for fun period pieces, but World War II itself has become a cliché. Today, setting a story during the war is seen as a shortcut to gaining audience sympathy since the genre’s simplistic morals are basically prem

That particular snake is a Monocled Cobra and is not native to Africa, where a large part of Raiders takes place. The Monocled tends to hang out in Southeast Asian countries like Thailand, Bangladesh, and Cambodia. It would have been more fitting if the film had featured an Egyptian Cobra, which not only is more geographically correct but also features a more distinctive hood patt

Jaws opens with a point-of-view tracking shot through the ocean. It could be the point-of-view of the shark, but it looks a lot like the point-of-view of a snorkeler. When we watch this scene as an audience member, we’re taken back to memories of swimming in the ocean. With John Williams’ ominous score playing over it, building suspense, we’re terrif

Bruce Lee starred in a ton of classic action movies, from Fist of Fury to Game of Death to The Way of the Dragon , but arguably his most iconic work is the final movie he completed before his untimely passing: Enter the Drag

It has everything a Bond fan could hope for : globetrotting action sequences, quippy one-liners, crazy gadgets, a megalomaniacal villain with a ridiculous plan, and a distinctive quirk — Goldfinger is the quintessential James Bond mo

Since he’s based on the likes of Doc Savage, it shouldn’t be surprising to say that Indiana Jones is an outdated archetype. This isn’t just because explorers aren’t famous, but because of his attitude and manneri

The last of the Jurassic Park movies with middling reviews was from Spielberg himself and centered on Jeff Goldblum's side character from the original movie, Dr. Ian Malcolm , as he travels to the previously-unexplored second island of the Park's prehistoric wo

Original cast member Sam Neill, nevertheless, does a great job of carrying the movie on his lonesome shoulders as fellow original main cast member Laura Dern sits shamefully wasted in the background as not much more than a ca

With explosive cinematography and action-driven storytelling and characters who never have to worry about reloading, John Woo has become arguably the most revered action filmmaker in the world. After making a few movies that glorified gangsters, Woo decided to make a movie that glorified the pol