Action Cliches

Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark 

Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark is one of the first grate action films. Made in 1981, directed by the legendary Steven Spielberg and starring Harrison Ford what more could you ask for in a film! The film set in 1936 about a renowned archaeologist and expert in the occult, Dr.Indiana Jones, is hired by the U.S. Government to find the Ark of the Covenant, which is believed to still hold the Ten Commandments. Unfortunately, agents of Hitler are also after the Ark. Indy, and his ex-flame Marion, escape from various close scrapes in a quest that takes them from Nepal to Cairo. This film though It may not have seemed like it at the time if full of clichés from saving the damsel in distress to having the “kryptonite” factor in this case snakes. 

Indy our hero is very masculine takes on 5 men with only a gun and a whip kind of guy much like the heroes of today for example in Batman begins(2005), Bruce Wayne (Christian bale) takes on a gang of prison harden convicts with no weapons and still comes out on top without a scratch on him. Unlike Batman, Indy gets beaten up a lot, but don’t worry he always beats the villain’s evil henchmen in the end. The villain or oppositional character in our film is a Dr. Rene Belloq a fellow archaeologist  but working for the “dark side” which is naturally the Nazis-  Steven Spielberg famously uses Nazis in his films to play bad guys as they need to back story, everyone knows that the Nazis are bad. The heavy accents of the villain has become one of the main clichés for defining the villains in films is used thought out the genres; form being used in the James bond franchise to the lion king (scar). 

Some of the best examples of a chase scene is in this film from Indy running to the rescue of a wicker basket trapped Marion and fighting of the evil henchmen to chasing a convoy of military trucks with only a horse. Although many of the classic chase scenes have been up graded to fast cars and free running (James bond) you can still see the basic outline of the classics in the modern action films today.