It’s appropriate that the movie begins with a pan down from the night sky, filled with stars, that settles on a familiar forest landscape. It symbolizes E.T.’s arrival on Earth from up there. It also straps us in for a movie that brings science-fiction concepts to our doors
Steven Spielberg and George Lucas auditioned a ton of different actors for the roles of Indiana Jones and Marion Ravenwood. For Indy, they considered David Hasselhoff, Tom Selleck, Michael Biehn (who would go on to play Kyle Reese in The Terminator ), Mark Harmon, Christopher Guest (who starred in This is Spinal Tap ), and A Star is Born ’s Sam Elli
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
Like many female leads in action movies of the period, Marion Ravenwood is a proactive woman capable of fighting but still needs a man. A man who, in Indy’s case, she’s constantly irritated by and has legitimate reason to hate
In reality, archeologists take great pains to keep their dig sites as intact as possible. Indy, on the other hand, demolishes a Peruvian and Egyptian place of worship over the course of Raiders of the Lost Ark quests Ark . Sure, he had to escape certain death hence the collateral damage but he’s still terrible at preserving ancient structures for future generations’ bene
"Snakes...why did it have to be snakes?" Indiana Jones’ fear of snakes is one of his defining characteristics, and it’s put to excellent use in the narrative of Raiders of the Lost Ark when Indy enters the Well of Souls and finds that it’s filled with hundreds of hissing cobras and pythons. However, as it turns out, neither Harrison Ford not Steven Spielberg are afraid of snakes, so it’s unclear where exactly this character quirk came from. It was a good thing for Ford and Spielberg, because it meant that they could focus on their work during the snake-infested sce
Spielberg’s filmmaking has all the hallmarks of great action cinema: inventive setups, increasingly raised stakes, well-constructed suspense , clarity of movement in the framing and editing, and most importantly, a palpable sense of
Framed by a grandfather (Peter Falk) reading the story to his grandson (Fred Savage), The Princess Bride briskly moves from scene to scene in an escapist adventure anchored by such wonderful actors as Robin Wright, Cary Elwes, Mandy Patinkin, Wallace Shawn, and André the Gi
While it takes place a few years before global war broke out, Raiders of the Lost Ark was still made with World War II firmly lodged in its mind. As if the Nazis didn’t make things obvious enough, Indy and his friends represent the Allied Forces that would later team up to end the
An action movie is perfectly passable if it has a couple of fistfights and explosions and a wisecracking hero, but the very best movies that the genre has to offer go above and beyond with visceral camerawork, breathtaking stunts, and sharp storytelling driven by action. Directors like John Woo and James Cameron have brought an artfulness to action cinema that legitimized the ge
When James Cameron was hired to write and direct a sequel to Ridley Scott’s masterfully crafted sci-fi chiller Alien , he knew he couldn’t make a horror movie that would come close to matching the greatness of Scott’s masterpie
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
Raiders of the Lost Ark overflows with iconic moments, with its prologue being one of the best opening acts in cinematic history . Here, Indy braves a trap-filled temple to get his hands on an ancient artifact. Because of how effective this sequence was, it became the subject of parody ever since it was first seen in cine
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
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
The unique seven-act structure of Lawrence Kasdan’s screenplay harks back to the bite-sized plot progression of those serialized adventure tales, while the production design perfectly recaptures the aesthetic of those early serials with a modern filmmaking