It was exactly this kind of thrilling movie making that George Lucas and Steven Spielberg wanted to recreate for a modern audience, but only on a much bigger scale. Lawrence Kasdan got the idea and wrote a script that incorporated all the excitement, action and adventure that the two movie makers wanted.

Next was the casting of the main hero. Initially the role was given to Tom Selleck, from the Magnum P.I. television series. Selleck was all set to do the role, but filming schedules collided between the TV show and the movie, and reluctantly he passed on the role. This in hindsight was probably the biggest career mistake that Tom Selleck ever made, because the role of Indiana Jones eventually went to Harrison Ford, who as we all now know, made it his signature role.

The plot of the film is fairly straightforward. Indiana Jones is a “Professor of archaeology, expert on the occult, and how does one say it, obtainer of rare antiquities” who gets hired by the US government to stop Nazi Germany from acquiring the fabled Ark of the Covenant. Indiana Jones may seem like a mild mannered professor when he is on campus. But when he puts on his fedora hat, leather jacket, khaki clothes and bullwhip, he suddenly transforms into the roughest, toughest adventurer there ever was.

Jones first heads out to Nepal to find his old mentor Abner Ravenwood, who holds a medallion that maybe the key to unlock the chamber where the Ark of the Covenant is kept. As luck would have it, Ravenwood is dead, but the medallion has been passed on to his daughter Marion, a feisty and volatile girl, who also happens to be an old flame of Jones.