Blogs
on April 20, 2026
To celebrate 40 years of Raiders of the Lost Ark - and the 4K release of the Indiana Jones collection - Screen Rant connected with Allen to discuss her enduring experience with the film, from those early talks with producers to the experience of shooting a globe-trotting movie in bare f
The aesthetic can make for fun period pieces, but World War II itself has become a cliché. Today, setting a story during the war is seen as a shortcut to gaining audience sympathy since the genre’s simplistic morals are basically prem
A Himalayan bar with a drinking contest. The American bartender drinking a local heavyweight under the table. The already recognizable fedora-d silhouette walks into view. The introduction of Marion Ravenwood in **Raiders of the Lost Ark ** remains as vividly exciting and defining in 2021 as it did to audiences when the film first released in 1981. And, indeed, the scene had influence pre-dating that, being the audition script that Karen Allen screen-tested with when auditioning for the r
Pretty much every Bruce Lee movie has great fight scenes . Fans of fight choreography won’t be disappointed by Enter the Dragon or Way of the Dragon or even the incomplete Game of Death . But arguably the greatest movie in the Lee canon is 1972’s Fist of Fu
Spielberg’s filmmaking has all the hallmarks of great action cinema: inventive setups, increasingly raised stakes, well-constructed suspense , clarity of movement in the framing and editing, and most importantly, a palpable sense of
So, it was brought up to where I was working on a film in Northern California. It got brought up, and I had to read it in my hotel room with a courier sitting there, waiting for me to finish - and then I had to give it back to him. They took the script away, and I didn't read it for another two or three weeks or something, until they offered me the role. I accepted, and then they sent me anothet version of the script. But I was pretty bowled over when I read the script. I mean, it was the most fantastical story on paper. I don't know that you can do a film like Raiders of the Lost Ark justice on paper, but it was quite extraordinary to r
Similarly remaking a number of the core elements of the original Jurassic Park 's first sequel as Jurassic World remade Jurassic Park , the movie slipped further into algorithmic screenwriting in the eyes of many critics and fans al
Set at the height of the Great Depression, Walter Hill’s gritty, stylish directorial debut Hard Times stars Charles Bronson as Chaney, a bare-knuckle boxer who rises through the underground fighting scene with the help of a hustler named Speed, played by James Cob
Steven Spielberg doles out new information with every shot in the opening scene of Jurassic Park , slowly building up the suspense. It opens close on some trees, obscuring something. That something is tearing the trees out of the way, thundering towards us, bellowing booming noises. A couple of closeups then introduce terrified men wearing hard hats bearing the Jurassic Park logo. Some of them are ar
Like many female leads in action movies of the period, Marion Ravenwood is a proactive woman capable of fighting but still needs a man. A man who, in Indy’s case, she’s constantly irritated by and has legitimate reason to hate
Ever since Harrison Ford strode onto the silver screen with a fedora on his head, a bullwhip at his side, and a satchel slung over his shoulder, Indy has been one of cinema’s most beloved and recognizable ico
There are a bunch of different ways to choreograph a fight scene – like Bruce Lee’s real-life martial arts prowess or Quentin Tarantino’s in-camera editing – and these action movies exemplify the very best of on-screen fisticu
What follows is an intense dramatization of the massacre, in which the Black September terrorist group takes 11 members of the Israeli Olympics team hostage before killing them. The carefully planned opening shot reflects the carefully planned attack we’re about to see play
Since he’s based on the likes of Doc Savage, it shouldn’t be surprising to say that Indiana Jones is an outdated archetype. This isn’t just because explorers aren’t famous, but because of his attitude and manneri
Raiders of the Lost Ark and the rest of Indy’s adventures were inspired by the pulp serial that Spielberg and Lucas enjoyed as kids, which explains the movies’ many anachronistic elements such as unintentional rac
Adapted from William Goldman’s self-aware fantasy romance novel of the same name by Goldman himself, Rob Reiner’s The Princess Bride is a brilliant satire of fairy tales, taking the stock characters that are usually confined to the background of these kinds of stories and putting them in the spotli