Raiders of the Lost Ark and the franchise that followed, modernised the serial films of the early twentieth century, in an action-adventure film that has just turned 40 years old. Directed by Steven Spielberg and written by Lawrence Kasdan, Raiders of the Lost Ark is based on a story by George Lucas and Philip Kaufman, which first introduced us to Harrison Ford’s iconic character of Indiana Jones. In 1936, Indiana Jones (Harrison Ford), a renowned archaeologist and expert in the occult, is hired by the U.S. Government to recover the long-lost Ark of the Covenant, which is believed to still hold the Ten Commandments. Unfortunately, Hitler’s agents are also after the ark. Indy and his ex-flame Marion Ravenwood (Karen Allen) escape from various close scrapes in a quest that takes them from Nepal to Cairo.