Movies Like Raiders of the Lost Ark

Frequently asked about Raiders of the Lost Ark

Common questions people search for, with answers written by us at MoviesPack.

• Why does Indiana Jones close his eyes when the Ark is opened, and why does it save him and Marion?▾

  Belloq and the Nazis open the Ark expecting divine power they can harness, looking directly at it out of greed and reverence for their own purposes. Indy tells Marion to close her eyes and not look, intuitively understanding that whatever force the Ark contains should not be gazed upon by those who would exploit it. The spirits that emerge destroy those who look, while Indy and Marion survive by showing a kind of humility or respect by averting their eyes.

• What is the Ark of the Covenant and why do the Nazis want it?▾

  The Ark of the Covenant is a biblical relic — a gilded chest said to contain the original stone tablets of the Ten Commandments given to Moses. According to the film's lore, an army that marches before the Ark is believed to be invincible. The Nazis, operating on intelligence from an intercepted cable about Indy's research, want it as a weapon of war that would make their armies unstoppable.

• Why does Indy bother retrieving the Ark if the government just locks it away at the end?▾

  Indy's mission from the U.S. government is specifically to prevent the Ark from falling into Nazi hands, not necessarily to deliver it to a museum or scholarly study. Once the Ark destroys the Nazi expedition, the government takes custody of it and warehouses it, treating it as a classified object too dangerous to display or study publicly. The ending underscores the irony that the bureaucratic outcome Indy warned about — 'top men' — is exactly what happens, regardless of his efforts.

• How did Belloq know where to dig for the Ark if the Nazis already had one headpiece of the Staff of Ra?▾

  The Nazis had a headpiece fashioned for them by Indy's nemesis Toht, based only on one side of the medallion belonging to Marion's father Abner Ravenwood. The full headpiece has inscriptions on both sides: one side gives the height of the Staff, but the other side (which only Indy reads) instructs the bearer to subtract a certain number of kadam to correct the staff's length. The Nazis made their staff too tall and therefore dug in the wrong location, while Indy used the correct measurement to find the true resting place of the Well of Souls.

• What is the significance of the Well of Souls and the snakes inside it?▾

  The Well of Souls is a vast underground chamber beneath Tanis where the Ark was buried, described in the film as a place of the dead. It is filled with thousands of snakes — a detail that exploits Indy's famous ophidiophobia but also reinforces the sacred and deadly nature of the site as a place not meant to be entered by the living. The snakes serve as guardians, and Indy's dread of them throughout the film is a recurring character vulnerability that humanizes the otherwise unflappable hero.