Why Raiders of the Lost Ark is kino

It's a pretty fantastical movie that obviously shouldn't be taken too seriously. I mean they've got a Nazi army in Cairo in 1936 with panzerfausts and goofy flying wing airplanes. But I argue that it works so well because it does a good of giving the characters relatively realistic motives and abilities.

Cairo 1936.

Right from the start it's already already establishing just what level of badass Indy is. He finds Forrestal's body and mentions how good he was. This tells us if Indy survives he must be even better, but also shows us that he's worried because he knows he's not indestructible.

When he gets back home he proposes going to Marrakesh to steal the idol back from Belloch. The other guy is like "no listen we're going to do even more based than that instead".

Marion is the kind of empowered woman that dumb millenial c*nts imagine they could be. She's cunning and resourceful but also completely helpless if she gets stuck in the wrong situation. She's aggressive with a dash of arrogance and half a cup of crazy but still feminine. She doesn't need a man to tell her what to do but she'll grudgingly follow if one has a good idea. And most importantly she doesn't try to beat men with her upper body strength like foids in post-1990s movies always do.

Karen Allen is incredibly sexy throughout the whole movie even though she's usually fully dressed. Foids take notice: Not being a bimbo is actually really attractive.

Indy is much the same. He reminds me of Phillip Marlowe. He's a really smart guy, pretty tough, knows a thing or two about trouble. But he's not Superman. He lost the idol because Belloch was better at politics and finding allies. He can't win a fist fight with the big buck bosche. He's always either one step ahead or behind of the enemy, using his wits and struggling desperately to keep up. Compare that to millennial slop like the dogshit Jack Reacher tv show where the guy can do anything because he's bigger than everyone else and has magical intuition.

Peepee Powell is my favorite Marlowe.

Belloch is great too. Dude just wants to learn more about God and how the universe works. They can actually have themes more profound than capeshit's "dae think being evil is bad" because the adversary has a motive that we all share and is usually considered a good thing.

A radio for talking to God? My foot is gonna communicate with your butt.

Then there's the Nazis, who Belloch manipulates into being his minions. Unlike him these guys are cartoonishly evil, so we can have our cake and eat it too. Talk with Belloch and slaughter mindless krauts with an SMG. It works because the Nazis really were that cartoonishly evil.

Nazis. I hate these guys.

Finally we get to the really powerful characters in the story. The final boss is God, who is like... imagine you're playing SWTOR and there's a world boss who is level 200. In the end you realize that while we squabble over a box there is someone way more important really calling the shots.

And then the final final boss is the glowies. They have immense power because they're the kind of people who are responsible enough to just put the box away and not open it. God I wish that irl today responsible people actually had power.

Putting the box in another box and returning it to the state it was found in. Really is a Rod Serling/Saki tier ending.