If Adventure Has a Name, It's Indiana Jones

Since the advent of the Digital Video Disc format in the late 1990s, there were two long-awaited movie trilogies: the Classic Star Wars films and the Adventures of Indiana Jones. The former was finally released on DVD on Sept. 21, 2004, and in November 2003 Lucasfilm Ltd. and Paramount Pictures issued the four-DVD Indiana Jones set.

The Adventures of Indiana Jones consists of the first three films of the George Lucas-Steven Spielberg collaborative creation, 1981's Raiders of the Lost Ark, 1984's Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, and 1989's Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. Rounding out the set is the Bonus Material disc, which includes making-of documentaries, featurettes, trailers, and links to the Indiana Jones DVD site.

Raiders of the Lost Ark, by far, is the best of the three films. Inspired by the serial films of the 1930s and '40s, it was actually one of the two projects conceived by George Lucas in the 1970s after he wrapped up American Graffiti in 1972. 

One was a space-fantasy adventure inspired by Flash Gordon, and the other was the more Earthbound archaeologist/adventurer named (at first) Indiana Smith. Of course, Lucas developed the Star Wars concept first, but even as he and Spielberg were vacationing in Hawaii in the summer of 1977, Lucas pitched his idea of the raiders of the Lost Ark as the two filmmakers built a sand castle on the beach.

Based on a concept by Phil Kaufman, Lucas' story and the screenplay by Lawrence Kasdan pit the daring archaeologist Indiana Jones (Harrison Ford) against Nazis and Rene Belloq (Paul Freeman), a rogue French archaeologist who has a habit of crossing paths with Indy and often beating him to other coveted relics. Hired by the U.S. government to locate an item called "the headpiece of the staff of Ra" after Army Intelligence intercepts a Nazi message which ties the piece to Abner Ravenwood, a former mentor of Indy's, our hero deduces that the Germans are really looking for the Lost Ark of the Covenant.