THE ARK KNIGHT RISES

MEET INDIANA SMITH, GHOSTBUSTING KUNG FU PLAYBOY… WAIT, WHAT? AS THE MAN IN THE HAT HEADS BACK TO THE BIG SCREEN, SFX UNEARTHS THE BIRTH OF A HERO

- NICK SETCHFIELD

UP ON THE SCREEN, A horse gallops in pursuit of a speeding truck. Its rider wears a hat and is armed with a coiled whip. As beast and vehicle draw level the man in the hat leaps from the saddle of his mount. We’re witnessing an electric piece of stunt work – the smallest error in timing could be fatal. One heart-stopping second later he clings to the side of the truck as the wheels race and rattle beneath him. Our daredevil hero has dazzled us again.

Familiar? Of course. But this isn’t a celebrated action beat from Raiders Of The Lost Ark. We’re watching Chapter 11 of Zorro Rides Again, the 1937 Republic Pictures serial that promised “12 punch packed episodes” for the Saturday matinee crowd. George Lucas knew this sequence well. Immortalised on a lobby card, it provided direct inspiration for Raiders, a movie crafted as tribute to all those plucky, breakneck adventures that thrilled him as a kid.

“What inspired me to make Raiders was a desire to see this kind of movie,” Lucas stated in 1981. “You sit back and say, ‘Why don’t they make this kind of movie any more?’ And I’m in a position to do it. So I’m really doing it more than anything else so that I can enjoy it. I just want to see this movie.” 

SMITH AND JONES

If distraction has a name, it’s Indiana Jones. Or should that be Indiana Smith, Lucas’s original choice of moniker for his tomb-plundering hero? Perhaps, at first, there was no name, simply an itch – an urge to escape the pain of scripting a sprawling interplanetary saga the world would ultimately know as Star Wars.