Favorite Scenes of All Time: #2-The Map Room (Raiders of the Lost Ark)

Raiders of the Lost Ark is my favorite film of all time, just eeking out The Shawshank Redemption, The Empire Strikes Back, The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly and Children of Men. It's one of those movies that just manages to hit all of the right notes at all of the right times, and even during the slow scenes, the pacing is so expertly done that it never feels like it drags. It has characters I love, moments I will always remember, music I can never forget, and the epitome of what a strong female lead should be in films (before Kingdom of the Crystal Skull ruined her at least). It has every element I could want in a film, action, adventure, romance, comedy, horror, suspense, and an overarching story that simply boils down to good vs evil.

In my mind, it's a perfect film, and it has mastered the hardest trait for a movie, it has transcended time. If you pop in the Blu-Ray of Raiders, it looks just as good today as it did the day it was made over thirty years ago, a feat that even the greatest films in history rarely achieve. Every single scene is a masterpiece, and every scene can be a case study for film students in how to properly light, direct, score, and edit a moment in film. It even manages to nail the concept of the fourth act by giving us a brilliant additional twenty minutes or so after what could have easily been the resolution of the film on the ship (namely the opening of the Ark). Despite all these amazing moments in film history however, one scene stands out in my mind as better than the rest, the map room scene.

I can't describe what makes this scene resound so powerfully for me, it doesn't have any deeper meaning, any important character arcs, or any groundbreaking special effects, but it still stands out to this day as one of those moments in film that everyone knows and loves. It's just a scene of a guy standing around with a stick, and yet it's been parodied countless times, and many people like myself hold it in regards as probably the greatest scenes in film history. It just does everything right, and uses a score that still gives me goosebumps when I hear it to this day. There isn't much more I can say about how brilliant this film is, but if a picture is worth a thousand words, then this scene is easily worth a million.