Raiders of the Lost Ark - Trivia, Questions and Fun Facts

[discussimdb]

Fan of Raiders of the Lost Ark or just want to share your movie knowledge? This topic is dedicated to all trivia and questions related to Raiders of the Lost Ark

[marc]

Before Paul Freeman was cast, another British actor, Jonathan Pryce, who was then not well-known in the film world, was considered for Belloq.

[jessica]

The last line to be added to the script was Dietrich's "I am uncomfortable with this Jewish ritual" because after reading through the script, the Screenwriters realized that there was no mention of Jews or the Nazis' hatred of them.

[gerald]

Wolf Kahler was born in Kiel, Germany in 1940, four years after his character Dietrich's death.

[caroline]

Indy's line to Marion when they are on the ship ("It's not the years, honey, it's the mileage") was ad-libbed by Harrison Ford.

[sara]

Steven Spielberg admitted in the "Making of" DVD that watching the stage hands preparing the Well of Souls set by laying out the thousands of snakes nauseated him, even to the point where he nearly wanted to puke a few times.

[gerald]

Indiana Jones has two Herbert Johnson Poet hats in this film. He has a grey dress hat (seen in the shot of him boarding the plane to Nepal, and in the ending scene on the steps of the Capital building) and the iconic brown "work" hat.

[kyle]

The island where the Ark is opened, based on the map used during the sub's transit, appears to be the island of Christiana in the Aegean Sea.

[nora]

Indy being dragged under and then out behind a moving truck is a tribute to Yakima Canutt's famous stunt in John Ford's Stagecoach (1939). In fact, it was a stunt that stuntman Terry Leonard had failed to pull off the year before in The Legend of the Lone Ranger (1981). He was thrilled at the chance of having another shot at it, but only agreed to do it if his friend and colleague Glenn Randall, Jr., was driving. The truck was specially constructed to be farther off the ground than normal to allow clearance for Indiana Jones to pass underneath safely, and the center of the road was also dug out. In Great Movie Stunts: Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), we see on the camera slate that the camera was set at twenty frames per second instead of the traditional twenty-four. In other words, the shots were done in "fast motion", so the truck was not really moving as fast as depicted on-screen. Harrison Ford was actually dragged behind the truck for some of the shots, badly bruising his ribs. When asked if he was worried, Ford quipped: "No. If it really was dangerous, they would have filmed more of the movie first." During the chase, Harrison Ford dispatches all three of his stunt doubles, all of whom are playing German soldiers. Terry Leonard plays the driver of the truck, who gets punched out of the cab by Ford. Vic Armstrong and Martin Grace play soldiers hanging onto the side of the truck before being knocked off.

[scarlett]

The opening scene in the lost South American temple was partly based on a classic Disney Ducks adventure, written by legendary artist Carl Barks, many of whose comic books have inspired George Lucas and Steven Spielberg. Exploring a lost temple, Donald Duck, his nephews and Scrooge McDuck must evade a succession of booby traps like flying darts, a decapitating blade, a huge boulder, a tunnel flooded with a torrent of gushing water, etc., in the story "The Prize of Pizarro" ("Uncle $crooge" no. 26, June-August 1959), which hit the newsstands when Lucas and Spielberg, both avowed fans of that comic book, were respectively fifteen and twelve years old. Another Barks story, "The Seven Cities of Cibola" ("Uncle $crooge" no. 7, September 1954), has a native American lost city, and a valuable idol that triggers a giant round rock to smash everything in its way.

[wesley]

In 1980, Photoplay Film Magazine reported that Robert Duvall was having meetings with Steven Spielberg in London for a role as a Nazi, in his new untitled project.

[ken]

Alfred Molina's first credited screen role. His first scene on his first day of filming involved being covered with tarantulas.

[christina]

Brody states that the Pharoah Shishak (Shoshenq) invaded Jerusalem in 980 B.C. Historians actually date his reign from 943 to 922 B.C., and Solomon's as 970 to 931. According to the Bible's chronology, this would mean Shishak invaded around 926 B.C., five years after the death of Solomon.

[scarlett]

The insert scene where the small capuchin monkey gives the Nazi salute to the German spies was part of the film's post-production pickup schedule, an allotted time to re-shoot or tweak scenes from the principal production shoot, supervised by George Lucas at Elstree Studios in London. Although the animal trainers had trained the monkey to perform the move prior to the shoot, they couldn't get the monkey to do it during a take. At first, the animal trainers were tapping the monkey on the head to get a reaction, but days dragged on, and the monkey didn't do the proper salute. Finally, they resorted to dangling grapes with fishing line just off camera to provoke the monkey, and that was what got the little actor to do a good take. The final shot in the film is the monkey reaching for the grapes just above the frame.

[dustin]

Numerous characters die as a direct result of Indiana Jones's actions (or omission of action), but he only deliberately kills eight people (1. He shoots the Mongolian in the bar. (2. He shoots the Egyptian swordsman. (3. and 4. He shoots two Arabs on the truck carrying explosives. (5. 6. and 7. He runs the Nazis in the utility vehicle off a cliff. (8. He runs over the Nazi with the truck. By those guidelines, it's possible that Marion intentionally kills more people than Indiana. She shoots the Sherpa in the bar and a bunch of Nazis from the tail gun of the plane. It's unclear exactly how many Nazis she kills, but there are at least seven in the back of the transport, and she appears to kill them all, which would at least tie her body count with Indiana's.

[michele]

George Lucas initially created Indy with the name of Indiana Smith. Steven Spielberg didn't like using the name Smith, and convinced Lucas to make the surname Jones instead.

[albert]

Harrison Ford, Wolf Kahler and Michael Sheard appeared in Force 10 from Navarone (1978). In same film, also appeared Michael Byrne, who played Vogel from Gestapo in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989).

[kim]

Frank Marshall: Pilot of the flying wing. All the stuntmen were sick on the day that Marion hits the pilot of the Flying Wing over the head, so producer Frank Marshall agreed to do it. Unfortunately for him, the shot took three days, and a lot of it involved him sitting in a cockpit that was in excess of one hundred degrees.

[tom]

Filming of Jones boarding a Boeing Clipper flying-boat was complicated by the lack of a surviving aircraft. Eventually, a post-war British Short Solent flying-boat formerly owned by Howard Hughes was located in California and substituted.

[bryan]

George Lucas directed a few second unit shots, in particular the monkey giving the Nazi salute.