After 31 years, Raiders remains an outstanding experience brimming with remarkable characters, exuberant thrills, and captivating charm. In his debut, Indiana Jones is a rough and shadowy figure, nefarious, surviving by grit and wit. Dr. Jones does heroic things but he is not altogether heroic—he fights dirty but for good reasons.

While Raiders is, in many ways, an iconic and seminal Hollywood blockbuster, look back at the scale of the film's set pieces and consider how much excitement we get…