The Ending Scene to Raiders of the Lost Ark (1 Viewer)

[Professor Phobos]

(Spoilers, of course)


When the Ark ghost or spirit or angel or whatever it is gets angry, and the music changes?

I love that scene. So much. I think it's the finest climactic scene of any movie, ever.

 

[Quasar]

Yeah. I love that movie. My alltime fave action/adventure movie.

 

[Craig Oxbrow]

It's also a perfect horror scene in a not-supposedly-horror movie.

 

[Wakshaani]

Fun factoid ...

In City of Heroes, one of the first mission you can get with a magic origin is to fight the Fifth Column (Bunch of Nazi-wannabes) in order to get a crate with a Certain Number from a warehouse.

When you turn the crate in, your contact, who let you know that there was a VERY powerful artifact inside, asks, "You didn't look at it, did you? No ... no, clearly you did not."

Thought you'd appreciate that.

-- Wakshaani Jones

 

[Rhino]

My favorite description ever of that scene came from an episode of the 80s sitcom, Gimme A Break.

(paraphrasing)
Daughter: How can you not like ET? It's from the same guy who made Raiders of the Lost Arc. You loved Raiders.

Dad: I got to see a room full of Nazis melt. How could I not love Raiders?

 

[Mr. Teapot]

There's a few movies where a deus ex machina ending (in this case quite literal) works quite well. That's one of them.

And, as pointed out, everyone loves melting Nazis. Except, I guess, you know, Nazis. Then again, maybe they like melting each other.

 

[Professor Phobos]

Yeah. It just hit me. Indy loses- he basically gets thwarted every time, and in the end, he gives up.

And yet, when the movie ends, he's still the hero. Because he sure as hell tries.

 

[Kevin Mowery]

Yeah. It just hit me. Indy loses- he basically gets thwarted every time, and in the end, he gives up.

And yet, when the movie ends, he's still the hero. Because he sure as hell tries.

The only thing Indy really accomplishes in the entire movie is to keep the Nazis from killing Marion in Nepal. Everything else, the total effect of all his effort is nothing.

Indy stays home, the Nazis kill Marion and take the headpiece to the staff.

Indy goes on the quest, he saves Marion and the Nazis get an incomplete copy.

Indy stays home, the Nazis dig in the right place and get the Ark.

Indy goes on the quest, the Nazis dig in the wrong place, and he digs in the right place, but Belloq and the Nazis get the drop on him and get the Ark anyway.

Indy stays home or goes on the quest, God kills the Nazis.

Indy doesn't fail so much as he's really just the observer. The Nazis are defeated by their pride. In Last Crusade, you can make a better argument that Indy fails, since without him the bad guys would never have found the Grail Cave. The catch again, though, is that even if they could have found the Grail without Indy's help, their own greed would have defeated them in the end anyway. Indy is able to figure out the correct Grail, but if he hadn't been there, he wouldn't have needed to.

In fact, Temple of Doom is the only movie in which he finds a situation that wouldn't have resolved itself favorably without his help.

 

[Professor Phobos]

Well, to be fair, if he wasn't there at the end, he couldn't make sure the Ark falls into the hands of the US Government as opposed to the German one. I suppose that would have only meant more melted Nazis and the Ark falls into Soviet or American hands in 1945...

 

[Squid]

And how do you know that Indy hadn't just kept on trying that God would've done the Nazi-melty bit?