When "Raiders of the Lost Ark" was released in the early 1980s, I saw the movie in the theater and wanted to be an archaeologist. I wanted to travel the world, especially Egypt, whose pyramids always fascinated me. It wasn't until several years later that I understood that archaeology is not about going out and fighting the Nazis and retrieving artifacts described in the Bible or having poisonous darts shot at you as you run through a jungle before escaping in a plane with both "Reggie" and the pilot of the plane carrying you to safety. Upon learning that I wouldn't be brandishing a whip and fighting a guy prior to him being slaughtered by a plane propeller, I decided to not be an archaeologist. I also remember seeing the movie for the first time and detecting the bullshit coming out of the government officials who assured Jones that "top men" would be analyzing the Ark of the Covenant that he had risked his life to retrieve.
I will be honest about one aspect of that first movie and seeing it for the first time: I didn't know who the Nazis were or, for that matter, why they were bad dudes. I was only on the earth for 4208 days [11 years, 6 months, 1 week, 1 day] and had just completed the 5th grade. In our American History class, we had talked about the settlers who crossed America to California, not the horror of World War II. I was only able to just see the Nazis as bad guys, not as the murderous regime they truly were.
https://www.sapiens.org/archaeology/indiana-jones-real-archaeologist - As Dr. Jones returns to the big screen, a real archaeologist acknowledges the movie franchise's shortcomings while espousing its merits
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