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The Adventures of Indiana Jones (Raiders of the Lost Ark/The Temple of Doom/The Last Crusade) - Widescreen Customer Reviews (130 - 132 of 140 Reviews)

I usually just RENT DVDs...
Not in the case of this trilogy! I had to have the highly anticipated release of the Indiana Jones box set. Raiders of the Lost Ark is arguably the greatest action/adventure film ever made. The second film in the series (Temple of Doom) was extremely weak in my opinion, and didn't live up to it's groundbreaking original. However, the magic of the first film was recaptured for Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, which was almost as good as Raiders. As for the DVD box set, it features loads of extras on a 4th disk that boasts documentaries on the making of the trilogy, and the sound/stunts/magic behind the films. All in all, I am VERY happy with this box set given it's fairly cheap price. Not since the Alien and Godfather sets were released has there been such a feature packed product accompanied by 3 amazing films. If you are a fan of the series....you owe it to yourselves to add the Jones box set to your collection.

On DVD at last
This set of DVDs contains one of my all-time favorite movies and its two sequels. On the merits of the original movie alone, this boxed set gets five stars. The remainder is almost supplemental.

Raiders of the Lost Ark is a classic adventure movie, an almost flawless film that introduces Harrison Ford as Indiana Jones, archaeology professor and treasure hunter in the 1930s. Recruited by the government to find the Ark of the Covenant (containing the remains of the Ten Commandments), Jones soon runs afoul of the others seeking the Ark, in particular the Nazis and his arch-nemesis, Belloq. Belloq is actually the best villain in the entire series, an amoral archaelogist whose ambition seems to be to become Jones, so he is always seeking to emulate Indy's professional and romantic successes.

Temple of Doom -easily the weakest of the three - is supposedly a prequel to Raiders. It is not so much action-packed as action-crammed, with so much fighting and fleeing that there is no real time for any real characters. The villains are second-rate and the cute kid sidekick is annoying, but most grating is Kate Capshaw's character who is thoroughly unpleasant and pales in comparison to the much more interesting Marion Ravenwood in the first movie. There are also contradictions created by this movie taking place earlier than Raiders: how can Indy be so skeptical of the supernatural in Raiders if he has previously undergone the Temple of Doom adventures?

The Last Crusade returns to the spirit of the original movie, bringing back old characters and situations. Although there is no Marion, we do have Sean Connery as Indiana Jones's father. The two of them are racing against the Nazis to find the Holy Grail. If not quite as good as the original, it is still a decent movie.

This is not so much a trilogy as a series, the distinction being that a trilogy is essentially one long story (like Star Wars or the Matrix) and a series is a sequence of individual stories focused on the same characters (like James Bond or the Lethal Weapon movies). As a series, each movie must be judged on it own merits, and as such, this is a set of one great, one good and one so-so movie. The supplemental materials are interesting, but if you skip them, you aren't missing a whole lot. Buy this set for Raiders (which you can't get by itself), and maybe The Last Crusade.

The greatest adventure of all time!
Conceived by two of the greatest film-makers of our time, George Lucas and Steven Spielberg's inspired concept to remake the old 50s TV serials into a swashbuckling action adventure movie proved to be one of the best ideas in Hollywood since Zorro. RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK, and the two subsequent sequels; INDIANA JONES AND THE TEMPLE OF DOOM and INDIANA JONES AND THE LAST CRUSADE did massive box-office success and propelled star Harrison Ford to super-stardom in the 80s. Adored by fans, RAIDERS is perfect movie making. And while some purists claim that TEMPLE OF DOOM is the lesser of the trilogy, the action quota is higher than that of the excellent LAST CRUSADE. Together, these 3 movies have become some of the most famous and still greatest adventures in cinema history.

RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK is my all-time favorite movie. And one major reason is the incredible opening ten minutes. The ominous jungle setting, Spielberg's brilliant framing revealing the man in the hat. A mysterious cave with booby traps, shady guides who chicken out thus upping the impending threat, Indiana's swagger as he strides into the eerie cavern. Dangerous spiders, avoiding fatal spikes, carefully walking up to the antiquity, then it's grab and run as the cave begins to collapse, the hero betrayed by the shifty guide, dodging arrows, swinging over the chasm with whip, sliding under the quickly closing wall, the shifty guy is dead, and as he picks up the artifact an immense boulder starts thundering after the hero with ever-increasing pace, he swings out of the way cheating death by seconds... only to be faced by his arch nemesis, Belloq, and is forced to relinquish his precious find to the fiend. A tense moment, and suddenly twenty natives race after the hero, shooting arrows after him. Swinging on a vine to safety accompanied by John William's heroic score, he catches his plane. Cinema par excellence.
The success of RAIDERS is in the genius of it's design. No film since (Not even the sequels) has ever managed to pull off the idea of the whole film being one fantastic string of action sequences without being tedious or repetitive. The story is the best of the three movies, with Indy chasing after the lost ark of the covenant before the nazis get there. Here Spielberg shows why he is the best at what he does. And similar to another work of art in the Spielberg cannon; JAWS, John Williams is the 'fifth actor' in the film, with his brassy, heroic score underlying the action and continually giving momentum throughout the entire running time.
As all fans know, Spielberg originally wanted to direct a Bond movie. With Lucas' great writing and Spielberg steady hand, they not only blitzed the 007 movie of the same year, but ushered a whole new generation of film-makers, inspired and influenced to raise the bar in action movies.

INDIANA JONES AND THE TEMPLE OF DOOM follows the standard trilogy rule: the second movie is the darkest. Like THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK, the second adventure (Or third, since this is actually a prequel) sees Indiana in much darker territory. This time around, Indy's plane crashes in India, where he has to retrieve the stolen Shankara stones and save the children of the village. The action is the film's high point, especially the Shanghai action scene (Set in club Obi Wan) and the fantastic mine car chase. However, it does lose points with it's over-indulgence in dark horrors with human sacrifice and torture. Spielberg himself has said that when he watched it, he felt it was too violent. Compared with recent films, it seems somewhat tame, but still retains it power. But it is comic book violence after all, and therein lies the idea of the film. It's just a movie. But a very good one.
For the third installment, the dream team of Spielberg and Lucas came up with another inspired idea. With the casting of Bond vet Sean Connery as Indiana's father in INDIANA JONES AND THE LAST CRUSADE, a new layer of hitherto unseen emotion and clever humor makes this one a fantastic entry in the franchise. the action is great, and Indy's dad calling Indy 'Junior' never fails to be funny. This time, Junior is on the trail to find his father, who was kidnapped by the nazis in a plot to find the Holy Grail. Indy must rescue his dad and the race is on to find the artifact before it falls into the wrong hands. While there are less action set-pieces than in RAIDERS, when they do come, they are amazing. Thrilling boat chases, plane chases, the tank chase, and the finale, a fitting end to the most incredible trilogies of all time. No wonder there's still talk of Indy 4. I can hardly wait...

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