Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark

 One of my greatest joys as a divorced dad is to introduce my kids to movies that had a massive impact on me when I was growing up. Some of these films my children merely tolerate, although for me, they definitely still hold up. I'm thinking of Ghostbusters, the Blues Brothers, and even Dirty Dancing. Others they decide that they really quite enjoy, for example my son got into Star Wars and introduced me to the Mandalorian. This movie was the first time I really did not feel satisfied with something from my childhood. Yes I watched this when I was a kid and yes I probably loved it, but in my humble opinion it does not hold up. There are going to be questionable parts about any movie that is almost 40 years old, but with this one I think there's just too much. There's too much random violence, so much so that my son was asking me are you sure that this is a movie for kids and I had to say well it's not exactly four kids, but it's supposed to be a family adventure movie. Then there was the very strange relationship between Indy and Marion which many people have talked about now but even my son who is at this point 11 years old asked me what exactly is their relationship and then when I explained it he was like ew. Then the whole idea of having someone who claims to be an archaeologist but just goes around stealing treasure from grave sites and doesn't do any archeology whatsoever seems a bit absurd at this point in time. And as horrifying as some of the special effects were at the time, they just don't hold up. And I know that this is an unusual opinion to have I'm completely aware of that, but I think that there's just so many better Steven Spielberg movies, for example Jurassic Park or Jaws. It may even be that in the indiana Jones franchise there are better movies, but after watching this one it doesn't motivate me to watch the rest.

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