John Williams – Raider’s March
Please consider donating to Behind the Black, by giving either a one-time contribution or a regular subscription, as outlined in the tip jar to the right or below. Your support will allow me to continue covering science and culture as I have for the past twenty years, independent and free from any outside influence.
An evening pause: From one of the best films ever made, Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981). As I wrote about it at the time for a comic book fan group, it recognizes that there is good and evil, and that there is something in the universe that casts judgement on each. Such concepts had and continue to be largely rejected by modern intellectualism, at our peril.
Hat tip Edward Thelen.
Raiders, is an excellent movie. -First-date with my future wife, and at her preference.
I think our modern intellectualism is not that powerful. All of these films, Star Wars, Raiders, Even Pirates of The Caribbean, all of them play against that very backdrop! All of these films make millions of dollars! Why? Because right in our guts, we resonate to these underlying truths. We all know, at a very deep level, that there are good guys and bad guys and we all KNOW that the Good Guys ALWAYS face stiff odds. And we like it that way. Because we love our heros. No Evil? No Heros. Those films flop, because most people don’t resonate to that.
If you love ROTLA, as I do, then don’t watch this episode of the Big Bang Theory:
“The Raiders Minimization”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cfUUGrSMmxI
The tone of the horns is splendid in this version.
I, too, was (am) enamored with Raiders. I couldn’t find fault with any aspect of the film.
That brings me to the most disappointment I ever had in a movie, and that was the followup. When I heard there would be a second Indiana Jones movie and that it was going to be a prequel I was ecstatic. That meant that Belloq and the nasty “I know you will” Nazi could return! We might get the story of Indy and Marion and Professor Ravenwood. The possibilities were endless.
Instead, we got a screaming mess of a Goonies movie that had absolutely no reason to even be placed “in the past”. Leaden and unfun.
I’m thinking the difference was Lawrence Kasdan.
eddie–
Yes– the follow up movies went in an entirely different direction, in my opinion. . They sorta degraded into a caricature of themselves, and not in a way I found appealing.
(I do however enjoy the “Back to the Future” franchise, possibly because they made II & III at the same time, and I’m a sucker for time-travel tales.)
(I am waiting for “them” to completely ruin Star Trek.)