As much as any Spielberg film before or since, Raiders of the Lost Ark is a pure exercise in style, an assemblage of can-you-top-this action set pieces held together by the thin tissue of old-fashioned romance and historical hokum. But more often, Spielberg’s gift for lighting and framing, reaction shots and visual sleights-of-hand make the deepest impression: the opening dissolve from the Paramount logo to a South American mountaintop, the soft golden light emanating from a coveted idol, Indy’s unmistakable shadow darkening the doorway of his ex-lover’s bar in Nepal, the sunset silhouette of an archaeological dig in Cairo, the sly comedy of the villain’s medallion-scarred hand revealing itself with the “Sieg Heil” salute.Īnd on and on and on. Granted, a few of the more lasting images from Raiders cost a lot of money, like the bookends of Harrison Ford’s archaeological adventurer, Indiana Jones, outrunning a giant boulder in the first action sequence and the stop-motion face-melting of a Nazi super-villain as God punishes him for his hubris. As with all Spielberg films, the least expensive touches are the most significant. The second lesson is trickier, because attempting to replicate the bigness of Raiders – its globetrotting locales, its historical backdrop, its wall-to-wall action sequences – misses nearly everything that makes it great. The first lesson is “be Steven Spielberg”, which is understandably difficult for other film-makers to manage, since there can only be one director with his deft, seemingly intuitive feel for image-making and storytelling on a large scale. The number in parentheses is the year the movie (or show) takes place.Many more tombs have been raided in the decades since Raiders became a box-office phenomenon in 1981, including sequels of variously diminished returns, but none has recreated the same level of excitement and magic, and most have taken away the wrong lessons from it. You get bonus points if you can fit The Last Crusade’s 1912 intro into your Young Indiana Jones Chronicles rewatch. Only two changes to the order here, but they’re key: The prequel TV series goes first, and Temple of Doom (which takes place a year before Raiders of the Lost Ark despite coming out three years after) bumps up a slot. With this viewing order you get a mostly complete view of Indy’s life. Watching Indiana Jones movies in chronological order Image: Paramount Pictures The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008).The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles (1992-96, including four TV movies).The number in parentheses is the year the movie (or show) was released. The only real outlier here is the prequel TV show, but this way you get a sense of where the franchise was when that came out. This one’s straightforward - just the order in which they came out. Here’s two viewing orders for you to choose from: Watching Indiana Jones movies in release order Photo: CBS via Getty Images Looking to watch the Indiana Jones movies and the prequel TV series, The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles? You can watch them all on Disney Plus and Paramount Plus, with the exception of Dial of Destiny - at least while it’s still in theaters. John Rhys-Davies returns to reprise his role from the first and third movies, while Antonio Banderas, Boyd Holbrook, and Toby Jones fill out the rest of the cast. Harrison Ford returns for Indy’s latest adventure, this time along with Phoebe Waller-Bridge, as they seek to stop Mads Mikkelsen’s Nazi scientist Jürgen Voller. With the newest entry in the Indiana Jones saga, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, around the corner, what better time than now to revisit the previous movies (and television series) in the franchise?
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