10 Highest-Grossing '80s Movies Ranked Worst To Best
3. Raiders Of The Lost Ark
Year: 1981
Box Office: $245 million
Thanks to Steven Spielberg and George Lucas' dream-team and the perfectly observed homage to the adventure serials of the 1930s and '40s, the first Indiana Jones movie will forever feel like a timeless classic. And it's incredible how little the film has suffered from old age, despite heading towards its 40th birthday.
It is Spielberg's grandest adventure (though Jurassic Park is a close competitor in terms of his purest blockbusters) with one of the greatest cinematic heroes of all time in Harrison Ford's swash-buckling (if slightly illogical) professor. Like Han Solo, the character played on Ford's own developing status as a charming curmudgeon and Raiders is very much his star-making vehicle.
On top of him, the story is great and hugely imaginative, the action sequences are gripping and well-choreographed and it all combines to be the absolute archetype of the genre. If anything comes out now seeking to blend adventure and action, it looks to Raiders - and even if that's not conscious, you can be damn sure it's compared to this gold standard.
It's also delightfully concise, with zero fat, which is almost unheard of these days.