Alright, in the first scene when Indiana Jones appears, the sequence goes like this: There are some very bad Soviets (their badness was established earlier). They open the trunk of a car and pull one guy out and toss him to the side. They then reach in and pull out a fedora and toss it on the ground. A second guy is pulled from the car. We don't see the second guy. We only see his feet in a long shot with the fedora in the foreground. The feet stagger a little, straighten up, walk to the hat. A hand reaches down and picks up the fedora The camera follows the fedora up the body where Indiana Jones places it on his head, cue theme music, spell is cast, my childlike Indiana Jones fanboy-dom is in full force. Considering this and that the movie brought back Marion Ravenwood, how on earth did it manage to be so bad? Laraine as Indi
Don't get me wrong. The opening sequence of "Raiders" with thousands of year old booby traps still working perfectly and Indi managing to avoid them all is one of the greatest bits in all of film. I don't go to Indiana Jones for realism. I like escapist fantasy, but this went too far. One of the best descriptions of the movie I heard was that Indiana Jones used to be a clever, talented man who cheated death; this movie turned him into an invincible superhero. I'll put it still a hair above Temple of Doom, solely on the strength of the return of Marion, but this movie definitely detracts from the legacy of Indiana Jones. I think I'll just show my kids Raiders and try to keep them from the knowledge that the others were ever made as long as possible.
