Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) movie poster

Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)

"The return of the great adventure."
ThumbScore
👍 91%Google users liked it ⓘ
Critics Score
🎬 90%
AdventureAction

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Where to Watch

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Director
Runtime
1h 55m
Rated
PG
Country
United States of America
Language
English
TMDB Rating
7.9/10 (13,451 votes)
Rotten Tomatoes
94%
Metacritic
86

Cast

Harrison Ford as Indiana Jones · 75% avg
Karen Allen as Marion Ravenwood · 74% avg
Paul Freeman as Dr. René Belloq · 70% avg
John Rhys-Davies as Sallah · 73% avg
Ronald Lacey as Major Arnold Toht · 79% avg
Wolf Kahler as Colonel Dietrich
Anthony Higgins as Gobler · 74% avg
Denholm Elliott as Dr. Marcus Brody · 79% avg

Is Raiders of the Lost Ark good?

Yes. 91% of real audiences liked it, by Google's archived audience score. Critics agree, scoring it 90%.

Where it ranks on ThumbScore

Rank in its genre
#39 / 1446 · Adventure
Rank in its year
#2 / 40 · 1981
Rank among its director's films
#3 / 35 · Steven Spielberg

By audience score, among films with 500 or more votes.

Overview

When Dr. Indiana Jones – the tweed-suited professor who just happens to be a celebrated archaeologist – is hired by the government to locate the legendary Ark of the Covenant, he finds himself up against the entire Nazi regime. Wikipedia ↗

About the Film

Raiders of the Lost Ark is a 1981 American action-adventure film directed by Steven Spielberg from a story by George Lucas, introducing the iconic archaeologist Indiana Jones, played by Harrison Ford. Set in 1936, the film follows Jones as he races against Nazi agents to locate the Ark of the Covenant — the biblical chest believed to contain the stone tablets of the Ten Commandments — before Hitler can harness its supernatural power as a weapon of conquest. The film was born from George Lucas and Steven Spielberg's shared desire to create a modern version of the serialized adventure films they had loved as children, combining the cliffhanger structure and breathless pacing of 1930s movie serials with the production values and filmmaking craft of a major studio picture.

Harrison Ford's performance as Indiana Jones — simultaneously heroic and vulnerable, brilliant and bumbling, equally comfortable in a university lecture hall and a booby-trapped temple — created one of cinema's most beloved and enduring characters. The film's action sequences, including the opening boulder chase in a Peruvian temple, the Cairo marketplace fight, and the truck chase across the desert, set new standards for practical stunt work and became some of the most imitated scenes in action cinema. John Williams's triumphant "Raiders March" became one of the most recognizable pieces of film music ever composed.

The film launched a franchise spanning multiple sequels, television series, theme park attractions, and video games, and its influence on the action-adventure genre has been incalculable.

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