Shameful film series #1 - Raiders of the Lost Ark

I'm currently participating in a little online experiment where people post movies they're ashamed they haven't seen, and others pick what movie on their list they should watch. So far I've watched five films, and next week will be watching the sixth.

Raiders of the Lost Ark (Spielberg, 1981)

 Raiders is one of those films that's an instant classic. Even if you haven't seen it, its best scenes are so popular that you've seen endless parody and homages of them. Inspirted by 30s and 40s swashbuckling heroes, Indiana Jones (as pretty much everyone who has even a passing interest in movies knows) is an archaeology professor who travels to strange, perilous lands to retrieve priceless and rare artifacts. In Raiders, he has to keep the Ark of the Covenant and its mysterious power away from the Nazis while trying to outwit his archaeology rival. So it has a smart, witty hero who can squeeze out of any trap and weild both a gun and a whip, exotic locations, and some of the most menacing villains ever: Nazis.

So why didn't I really like this film? I could blame part of it on the ubiquity of homages to this film (the race against the giant ball in the temple and the face melting at the end being the most famous), but that's not entirely true. While watching it, I could see on a technical standpoint that the action almost never stopped, but emotionally, I felt like I had been there and done that already, even though I can't recall exactly what. I think part of the problem might simply be the genre; maybe I'm just not into the swashbuckling type.

But I think another reason doesn't have to do so much with film, but with cartoons. When I grew up, the 90s, saturday morning cartoons reigned supreme, whether they were classics like Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck, or newer ones like Batman and Animaniacs. I guess the heroes I grew up with were either witty goofballs like Bugs or Wakko, or quieter, subtle heroes like Batman, and so Indy just doesn't grab me as much. Or maybe other cartoons filled the niche that Indy filled with most other people; the only example that comes to mind at the moment is The Adventures of Jackie Chan (which I remember giving up on after a season or so), but that show had the sort of artifact hunting combined with mysticism that Raiders has.

Of course, there's always the simple answer that I just hate fun.