Raiders of the Lost Ark: The Adaptation Directed by Chris Strompolos and Eric Zala.
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But when you see Raiders again, after the initial rush of adrenaline has worn off, it turns out to be as dreary and creaky as a roller coaster in winter. That aching black hole in the center of the screen is Harrison Ford’s take on Indiana Jones: not a character, barely a set of attitudes, really nothing more than a hat, a bullwhip, and a smirk. In every scene he’s careful to convey the message that he thinks this whole thing is a joke and there’s absolutely nothing at stake. When Indy is in danger—when, for instance, he’s dragged under a truck in one of the movie’s interminable chase scenes—the most Ford can muster in his close-ups is irritation at the crap he’s forced to put up with for the sake of a paycheck.
That’s what makes Raiders of the Lost Ark: The Adaptation such a shock. This legendary video is nearly a scene-for-scene, shot-for-shot, line-for-line reimagining of the original movie, made in the 80s by a bunch of teenagers in Mississippi. It’s had a furtive existence over the years, passed around in bootleg copies and occasionally shown at public screenings of dubious legality. But recently it’s been accessible via the file-sharing protocol BitTorrent, so at last you can download a copy for yourself. I’m not telling you to do that, you understand. I’m just passing along the information. The Adaptation may be, as its creators maintain, a devoted fanboy tribute, or it may be, as I suspect, an astonishing, unconscious act of subversion. But mainly it’s a gigantic intellectual property theft.
In other words, the making of the video was itself a kind of Indiana Jones adventure. That’s why Raiders was a particularly good choice—it would probably have been a lot tougher to sit through their version of Raging Bull. There are even times when the making-of excitement spills over into the action on-screen, and you find yourself thinking this Raiders is better than the original.
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