Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark

Stream on Disney+

Runtime: 1 Hour and 56 Minutes

Rated PG

The one that started it all! The giant boulder chase, the ark of the covenant, Nazis, archeology, and the famous theme music. It’s all here, just like you remember it from your childhood, except the face-melting finale seems far less real and scary now than it did when I was a kid in the 80s.

Themes:

Archaeology, travel, adventure, love, trust, fedoras, the occult, the Bible, the past, hurt, faith, arrogance, value, history, the Ark of the Covenant, Nazis, partnerships, betrayal, snakes, mysteries, trustworthy friends, judgment, playing God, science, and relics.

Language:

B*stard - 1 B *tch - 1 D*mn - 3 Hell - 2 Sh*t - 1 Religious Exclamation - 4

Stuff to be aware of: “Snakes, why did it have to be snakes?”

Alcohol and Drugs - One scene takes place in a bar, and a female character beats a male at a drinking game. Later, a similar contest happens in a tent between a man and a woman.

One man smokes from a hookah in one scene, and a different man smokes a cigarette in a different scene.

Scary - In the opening scene, characters end up with tarantulas all over their backs. A dead body is attached to a trap spike that comes out of the wall. The dead man’s face falls towards Indiana.

In the Well of Souls, there are a lot of snakes. In one scene, there are a ton of old corpses. There are “screaming sounds” made, and some of them fall toward Miriam. One has a snake slithering out of its mouth.

In the final scene, when the ark is opened, spirits (or maybe ghost-like angels?) come out, and everyone dies.

Sexual - A group of tribal men’s bare butts are seen as they run away from the camera. In a classroom scene, a female student blinks, revealing that on her eyelids are written the words, “love you.” She is flirting with her professor, Dr. Jones.

In one scene, Miriam changes into a dress. A man watches her take her bra off in a mirror. The audience sees her bare back, but that is all.

Dr. Jones and Miriam kiss multiple times. When they are on a ship, late in the movie, she kisses him multiple times, and Indiana is seen without his shirt on. Indiana appears to fall asleep, but they wake up in the same room. When they wake up, Miriam’s dress, which she was wearing, is hanging over a shelf, and her bare shoulders are seen.

Violence/Gore - There are multiple fight scenes and people who are killed, but I will try to mention the more intense ones here.

In the opening scene, a companion of Indiana’s is seen with a spear through his neck and forehead. His eyes are wide open, and he is bleeding heavily. After this, a man falls forward, dead with darts in his back.

During the bar fight scene, a man takes a hot poker from a fireplace and holds it up to a woman’s face. A man gets shot in the head and catches on fire. After this, most of the bad guys get shot; one of them bleeds from the mouth. One character picks up a hot medallion and burns his hand.

During a fight scene in an Egyptian market, multiple guys get beaten up, and a man gets stabbed with a sword. The sword is taken back out of the man, causing blood to flow. Indy shoots a man who does some fancy sword work. He then shoots a man driving a truck in the head and another guy who falls off the side of the truck.

A monkey eats a poisoned date and then is seen dead.

During a fight scene involving a plane, a huge man is killed by the propeller blade. Blood splatters all over the plane. The man and Indiana both end up with cuts and blood on them.

During a bit car chase scene, multiple guys get thrown from cars, punched, and are seen falling off cliffs and rolling down hills. Indiana gets shot in the arm during this scene, and blood splatters on the windshield. At one point, Indiana ends up on the front of a truck and is eventually dragged by the truck. Next, a man gets run over, and his arms and legs are seen popping up in the air as he does so.

In the final scene, when the Ark is opened, most characters get their faces and bodies melted. This scene is pretty unrealistic looking, but blood, muscle, and skeletons are seen. Multiple people get a light shot through their bodies and are killed. One man explodes, but it kind of resembles a cake exploding in the microwave.

Other - Nazis are a big part of the movie. The flag is present in some scenes, and some characters say “Heil Hitler.”

Overall: “We have top men working on it right now.”

Seeing It With Your Family

These classic movies that many of us 80s kids grew up watching are the reason I started my site. Indy’s first big-screen adventure may be a bit rougher as far as language and violence go than you remember it. Aside from the face-melting finale, the cursing and violence probably aren’t much more than most Marvel movies these days.

What I Thought

The 1980s gave us (or continued) so many great movie franchises, and Harrison Ford as Dr. Indiana Jones is one of the greats. I would say Raiders of the Lost Ark and Last Crusade are the two best. It’s because of these movies that many of us dreamed of being archeologists, but once we found out that there are no temples with giant boulders to explore, we moved on to going into ghost extermination or time travel.