Why Raiders Of The Lost Ark Is The Best Indiana Jones Film

It is and they should not have made Crystal Skull and the Dial of Destiny. Should have left it with Indy and Dad riding into the sunset....

In the history of movies, most stories were "one time tales."

The movie was meant to end at the perfect point in the lives of the characters -- an adventure only lived once, a horror story only endured once.

There were not SUPPOSED to be more sequels.

Now, Raiders of the Lost Ark was soon revealed by George Lucas as "first of series of adventures" but, as so often..the first was best. A standalone classic about a once in a lifetime experience.

And yet...look what happened:

Temple of Doom -- the Nazis were removed as villains, the Thugees became a "racial issue" to the critics and the story was gross in a "pre-teen nerd" way(of which Spielberg had been proudly such.) Also: the tomboy female lead was switched to never-stops-screaming scaredycat.

The Last Crusade -- a stroke of genius in telling us that James Bond (the best one) was Indy's father, and a new chance for Sean Connery to cash in on his "father figure roles" in the wake of The Untouchables. And they brought the Nazis back. But that very move rather converted Last Crusade into a literal "re-tread" of Raiders. The truck chase in Raiders became a tank chase here. And Spielberg started to look old hat and repetitive. Still some great action -- I thought the motorboat chase and fight was good exciting.

The Crystal Skull-- decades after yet ANOTHER perfect ending(into the sunset), we return and the once studly and sometimes shirtless Harrison Ford shows signs of age. The one interesting angle(once moving the story into the fifties) was to replace the Nazis with the Russian Commies -- not always allowed villainy in Hollywood but certainly murderous enough (under Uncle Joe Stalin) to count as bad guys. Still, it wasn't the Commies that sunk Crystal Skull -- it was too much CGI, too much space aliens, too much Shia LaBouef(who in no way summoned up Indy's macho handsomeness and strength as his son) and too fuzzy a plot.

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