Karen Allen Interview: Raiders Of The Lost Ark 40th Anniversary

John McTiernan’s Die Hard is the perfect action movie. Bruce Willis’ everyman underdog portrayal of John McClane makes for the quintessential action hero , while Alan Rickman’s delightfully theatrical performance as Hans Gruber makes for the quintessential action movie vill


When Raiders of the Lost Ark story Guide Ark was first sent to the censors to be rated, it was hit with an R rating, because the MPAA felt that the melting face at the end was too graphic. The producers really wanted a PG-13 rating to allow it to become the box office hit that it would eventually become , so a layer of fire was added on top of the shot of the melting face to make it less horrifying and it was given a PG-13 rating. Steven Spielberg didn’t want to cut the melting face scene altogether, because he felt that it was the most impressive special effect he’d ever seen up to that po

All of the Indiana Jones movies have an inventive opening shot that matches the Paramount logo. In Raiders of the Lost Ark , it’s a distant mountain shrouded by jungle mist. In Kingdom of the Crystal Skull , when things went off the rails, it’s a pile of dirt, complete with a computer-generated gop


"Snakes...why did it have to be snakes?" Indiana Jones’ fear of snakes is one of his defining characteristics, and it’s put to excellent use in the narrative of Raiders of the Lost Ark when Indy enters the Well of Souls and finds that it’s filled with hundreds of hissing cobras and pythons. However, as it turns out, neither Harrison Ford not Steven Spielberg are afraid of snakes, so it’s unclear where exactly this character quirk came from. It was a good thing for Ford and Spielberg, because it meant that they could focus on their work during the snake-infested sce


In the interim, audiences can reintroduce themselves (and their children) to the awesome spectacle of the first film. Even 40 years later, it's one of the best adventure films ever made , but it also contains a ton of hilarious goofs and mistakes that managed to make their way into the final product. Some are blatantly obvious, while others need to be pointed out, but all of them are worth attent


The entire premise of Raiders and the Ark of the Covenant is just one facet of the Indiana Jones franchise that makes no sense . Many Bible scholars and average Christians were left scratching their heads in the first act when Marcus Brody talks about the powers contained in the Ark. According to Marcus, the Ark is capable of making its wielders invincible, leveling mountains, and decimating entire regi


**I grew up on Raiders of the Lost Ark , and absolutely love it. Revisiting it again before talking to you just hammers home how well it holds up and how well it's aged. Do you often revisit it? Is it a movie you go back to, or do you not like to watch your own stuff

It's so cool that you got to know Marion doing the bar scene, because it's such an amazing introduction, and Marion is such a powerful character who really holds her own. And it was a level of characterization - if you compare it to Bond, which Indy was riffing on - that was head and shoulders above the others. How did you bring that energy and vibrance to the charac


Steven Spielberg’s original choice for the role of Sallah, Indy’s international contact who functions as the movie’s comic relief, was Danny DeVito. DeVito was interested in playing the role, but ultimately, the production conflicted with his shooting schedule for Taxi . John Rhys-Davies played Sallah in the end and, although DeVito would’ve done a fine job with the character – especially since he’s Raiders ’ comic relief and DeVito is hilarious – Rhys-Davies’ take on the character was great. Years later, when Raiders had inspired a long slew of copycats, DeVito played a similar comic relief character in a similar action-adventure movie, Romancing the Stone , alongside Michael Doug


Yes, those scenes where I am barefoot, which there are a lot of when I'm in that white dress, for the most part. It's very fanciful that I put on that white dress and a pair of high heels out in the middle of the desert. And then I seem to lose my shoes entirely in the Well of Souls. It's interesting. I don't know exactly how I got through being barefoot for all of that. Certainly, in the Well of Souls with all the snakes, it was very challenging. There were a lot of snakes there, and I had nothing on my teeth and nothing on my legs - once the skirt gets ripped, the bottom half of my legs is also completely bare. So, it does feel very much like I have no protection against the fire and the snakes and everything that was going on. I don't know, you just rise to the occasion, as they say. When you're an actor, they throw all these circumstances at you. You just have to sometimes take a deep breath and see it as a part of the adventure. What can I say? I guess I'm a good sp


Steven Spielberg and George Lucas auditioned a ton of different actors for the roles of Indiana Jones and Marion Ravenwood. For Indy, they considered David Hasselhoff, Tom Selleck, Michael Biehn (who would go on to play Kyle Reese in The Terminator ), Mark Harmon, Christopher Guest (who starred in This is Spinal Tap ), and A Star is Born ’s Sam Elli