Holy Crap! I Finally Saw "Raiders of the Lost Ark"

Mark the date: September 6, 2009 - the day when the last person on Earth who hadn't seen Raiders of the Lost Ark finally sat down and watched it, and that person was me!

When Raiders of the Lost Ark came out I was 7 years old and just finishing the second grade. It looked boring to me. Looking at a list of movies released in 1981 I can tell you that I was more interested in seeing Superman II, Time Bandits, Clash of the Titans, Condorman, The Fox and the Hound, and of course The Great Muppet Caper. (For the record, my Mom did take me to The Fox and the Hound, and The Great Muppet Caper.) Raiders didn't even register with me as something that I would want to see.

It wasn't even until the second film, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, came out on video that I even realized that it was a sequel to the earlier Raiders. Then many years later I was in high school and the third film, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, hit theatres and everyone was all gaa-gaa over it coming out and I didn't even realize until that point that Indiana Jones was a major movie franchise. I've always been more of a comedy man so I really didn't have any intention of ever seeing any of these films.

Flash forward to last summer when the fourth movie, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, came out. With all it's media blitz hoopla, my son who was 4 years old at the time was a die-hard Indiana Jones fan before he had seen any of the movies. I took him to see Crystal Skull at the dollar theatre and he was hooked. Elias was Indiana for Halloween last year and the video game Lego Indiana Jones has been a popular disc in our Wii since last summer.

So...last night, after 28 years I finally saw the whole movie from beginning to end. And yes, I did enjoy it. It was really good. Of course, half of it I had seen reenacted in animated Lego form before and other parts I have seen played out a dozen or so times at the Indiana Jones Epic Stunt Spectacular show in Walt Disney World. So, several times in the movie I was like, "Hey, that part is in the show in Disney World!" Hey, Elias was just as excited as I was!

I can no longer hold on to my claim to fame that I had never seen Raiders of the Lost Ark. No longer will people's mouths drop open when I mention I'd never seen it. From now on, I'll only get that reaction when I tell someone that I've never seen Titanic...or The Godfather...or The Dark Knight...or...