Enter Harrison Ford as the globetrotting archaeologist Indiana Jones in the Lucas/Spielberg collaboration Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Set in 1936, Raiders follows Jones as he attempts to retrieve the lost Ark of the Covenant (on behalf of the U.S. government) before the Nazis get a hold of it — it seems the Ark may contain the power to make any army who possesses it invincible. Along the way, he teams up with former love interest Marion Ravenwood (Karen Allen), who owns a medallion which could uncover the location of the Ark, and Egyptian digger and friend Sallah (John Rhys-Davies).

The plot, however, serves more as a framework for a series of cliffhangers in the style of Saturday matinee adventure serials, and in that sense it’s cut from the same cloth as Lucas’ own Star Wars. For example, the film opens in the jungles of South America, and by the end of the sequence, Jones has faced tarantulas, snakes, dart-blowing natives, rivals, traitors and cunningly constructed booby traps (including the famous rolling boulder — an iconic image that encapsulates the film in only a handful of shots). As he continues to face increasing dangers in Nepal and later Cairo, each sequence seems deliberately designed to end with the audience wondering, “How will he get out of this one?!”

Like Star Wars before it, Raiders is fashioned from our collective memories of adventure movie clichés, but also like Star Wars, it doesn’t simply stitch tropes together in a haphazard fashion; instead, it synthesises elements in such a way so that the film itself becomes an archetypal example of the very genre it’s trying to ape. Raiders is as much a classic as the films it imitates.

But credit must be given to screenwriter Lawrence Kasdan, who took the ideas generated by Lucas and Spielberg and (remarkably) transformed them into a coherent narrative. While the space epic Star Wars was purely Lucas’ project, Raiders was a truly collaborative effort, combining Spielberg’s warmth with Lucas’ fertile imagination, and it was Kasdan’s skills as a screenwriter that unified the visions of these two men.

Spielberg’s direction is simply flawless. The film never seems too self-conscious or self-aware, so the reality of the piece (however fantastic it may seem) remains intact, but there are still enough subtle nods to the audience to keep things light and fun. The performances, meanwhile, never shatter the illusion — Harrison Ford in particular manages to create a character who is perhaps a distant relative of Han Solo and yet more intelligent, more well-rounded and much more capable of carrying a film.

The score, provided by John Williams, completes the package. Like his work on Star Wars and Superman: The Movie, Williams’ theme for Raiders is instantly recognisable, capturing the spirit of the film in a few short bars. The recurring motifs in the score evoke the required moods beautifully, and it really is hard to imagine the film working as well as it does with any other composer on board.

In fact, one suspects that by removing any one member of the team of Lucas, Spielberg, Kasdan, Ford and Williams, the film would not have been the creative success that it was. Remove Kasdan and you end up with the Indiana Jones sequels, which, while fun and entertaining, either felt muddled or rehashed; remove Spielberg and you potentially end up with Return of the Jedi (although Irvin Kershner served a similar function to Spielberg on The Empire Strikes Back, also resulting in greatness). But put these five men together and you’re almost assured a masterpiece.

Raiders of the Lost Ark is about as good a popcorn movie as they come. There are no grand themes being explored here (besides, perhaps, the human lust for power and the consequences of hubris — an oldie but a goodie), but in any case, the film’s function is one of pure entertainment, and that it overwhelmingly achieves. That it manages to maintain a respect for the intelligence of its audience all the while is an accomplishment in itself.

It is Los Angeles in 2019, and within the urban decay are four rogue “replicants” — sophisticated androids that are virtually indistinguishable from humans. Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford) is a former blade runner — a detective charged with tracking down and “retiring” (i.e. killing) rogue replicants — and he’s brought back on the job to retire the current four who are still on the loose.

Blade Runner is an important film for a number of reasons. Firstly, it helped to define the “cyberpunk” subgenre: its world was a grimy, sprawling urban landscape fused with high-tech industry, and this became the paradigm upon which so much science fiction was later built. Secondly, its themes of humanity, creation and the nature of memory are dealt with seriously but never in a heavy-handed manner. And finally, it’s yet another case of a film that was relatively unsuccessful at the time of release but whose influence was so marked that it’s now regarded as a classic almost by default.

This is the work of an auteur whose vision so dominates the film that it could never have been made by anyone else. The sets are exquisite, with the lighting and cinematography striking just the right mood for any given scene, and every shot, every frame, every cut announces that This is a Ridley Scott film. This is the sort of cinematic experience whose images linger long after the credits roll — if one word describes Blade Runner, it is “haunting”.

There are, however, flaws that cannot be ignored. There is a rather detached feel throughout that keeps the audience at arm’s length, and this is only compounded by the romance between Rachel (Sean Young) and Deckard, which is never quite convincing. The love scene in particular is rather awkward and (it could be argued) borders on being a rape fantasy. Still, these are minor quibbles when examining the film as a whole.

The most interesting twist in the Blade Runner saga is that now, 25 years after its initial theatrical run, comes Scott’s so-called “Final Cut”, itself 15 years after the apparently misnamed “Director’s Cut” of 1992. This is, without a doubt, the definitive version of the film, combining the best qualities of the prior cuts while subtly tweaking areas that still needed some attention. Never do the changes feel gratuitous (unlike the special editions of certain other beloved science fiction films of the era), although some are still radical if you’re comparing this to the 1982 theatrical cut: as with the Director’s Cut, Ford’s voice-over narration is missing, and the unicorn dream is still included. Both alterations are, in my opinion, for the better, but purists should note that the theatrical cut is available on DVD with certain Blade Runner boxsets.

Ultimately, then, is Blade Runner — in any cut — a perfect film? No. Is it a great film? Yes, and already that sets it apart from most other films released in the intervening years.

Director George Lucas, who had great success with American Graffiti just prior, filled his screenplay with everything swimming around in his subconscious from childhood entertainment: westerns, adventure serials, comic books, fairytales, samurai films, war films, pulp science fiction and anything else that sprang to mind. Yet everything in Star Wars seemed to exist in a coherent universe, where princesses could exist alongside bounty hunters and fighter pilots. In short, he concocted the most delicious blend of fantastic imagary that bounces around a ten-year-old boy’s head and then splashed it on cinema screens everywhere.

The plot, furthermore, followed closely the monomyth as detailed by Joseph Campbell but never felt written-by-the-numbers. Instead, the audience seems to be partaking in a ritualised retelling of an ancient story dressed in the tropes of 20th century pop culture, and it’s this dual nature of the film — contemporary, yet timeless — that no doubt lead to its massive popularity and longevity. We all knew the sources of inspiration and so it was immediately familiar without being strictly derivative. This was the Hero’s Journey for pop culture junkies.

What was particularly striking was the spirituality bubbling just under the surface. The bad guys, the Empire, seemed atheistic (with the exception of Darth Vader), whereas the good guys, the Rebellion, were fighting to restore humanity and compassion back to the governing body. The Rebels embrace the nature of the Force, a kind of panentheistic belief system that is never fully detailed but instead given to the audience in the broadest of strokes to maintain its universality. Here is a world divided not just between wizards and warlocks, but also between the religious and the anti-religious — the compassionate and the cold-hearted — with the common man concerned more with tending to his family’s needs than anything else. This film is as relevant today as it was 30 years ago.

Amidst all this is a universe brimming with life that mostly exists just beyond the frame: desert scavengers that squeak and titter in an alien tongue as they capture unsuspecting robots; a dark, smoke-filled cantina that occasionally breaks into sudden violence which doesn’t really seem to affect the flow of conversation between its drunk, otherworldly patrons; a shoe-box-sized robot that scurries around a space-station until startled by the growl of an approaching captive. None of these touches of whimsy are strictly necessary, but all give Star Wars its unique character, as does the camp dialogue and often hammy delivery. This is not a comedy, bur neither is it a serious film — it’s a postmodern adventure movie with a science fiction gloss.

Of course, Lucas didn’t stop there — I’ll get to the subsequent films later. But Star Wars was the first, and it set in motion a juggernaut that fuelled the imaginations of audiences the world over. Perhaps we can forgive Lucas any later missteps for this one shining achievement.