Raiders of the Lost Ark turns 40 and it's still an unqualified masterpiece - Ars Technica

I spilled my popcorn at the very first jump scare: our hero, Indiana Jones, triggered a booby trap while tracking a Peruvian fertility idol, and a skewered, decaying skeleton popped into the frame!

It was the top-grossing film of that year and didn't leave theaters until the following March, ultimately grossing $354 million globally.

Even director Steven Spielberg has said he considers it the most perfect film in the franchise.

George Lucas had wanted to make an homage to the serial adventure films of his youth since 1973, and came up with the idea of a globe-trotting adventurous archaeologist named Indiana Smith.

(Indiana was the name of Lucas' Alaskan Malamute, which became a throwaway quip at the end of 1989's Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade: "We named the dog Indiana!") He got distracted by other films, including Star Wars, released in 1977.

That same year, Lucas was vacationing in Hawaii with Spielberg, and pitched his Indiana Smith idea.

Spielberg convinced him to change the last name to Jones, and eventually came on board as director.

Lucas had originally conceived Indy as something of a womanizer and Kung Fu expert, with Spielberg suggesting he could be a gambler or an alcoholic—just to make him fallible and vulnerable, and to bring some lighter comic touches to the character.

Spielberg, Lucas, and Marshall were looking for an actress who could hold her own against the swashbuckling Indiana Jones, bucking the typical damsel in distress stereotype.

Because of the tight schedule, Spielberg couldn't indulge in very many takes—usually only three or four, although he later said this constraint kept the film from being pretentious.

Allen has said Marion was 16 and Indy was 26 at the time.

But a 2008 oral history of the film reports that Lucas suggested Marion was 11; Spielberg protested, saying "She had better be older." (Ya think?) Allen recently defended the age difference, insisting that the exact nature of the relationship was deliberately vague, and the two may have only "kissed a few times"—which would have been a big deal for a starry-eyed teenager of that era.

Despite all of that that, University of California, Berkeley, archaeologist Bill White ruefully admits that Indiana Jones made him want to become an archaeologist in the first place.

Given Raiders' box office success, a sequel was soon forthcoming: 1984's Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.

Alas, the franchise stumbled yet again with 2008's Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, although we did get Karen Allen's return as Marion, Cate Blanchett as a deliciously evil villain, and the useful film trope "nuking the fridge" as an updated term for "jumping the shark" (inspired by a particularly implausible scene).

A fifth Indiana Jones film (as yet untitled) just started filming earlier this month, with James Mangold (Logan) replacing Spielberg as director.

 Ford, now 78, is returning as Indy, so he will not be passing the bullwhip to Shia LaBeouf, who played Mutt, his son with Marion, in Crystal Skull. Phoebe Waller-Bridge and Mads Mikkelsen have been cast in undisclosed roles, and both Allen and Rhys-Davies have expressed interest in returning as Marion and Sallah, respectively.

In the meantime, to mark the film's 40th anniversary, Paramount has released a 4K Blu-Ray collection of the first four Indiana Jones films for your home viewing pleasure, and all are available for streaming.