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.

So it’s an incredible irony that Bay seems to have redeemed himself with Transformers, a film based on a line of toys of all things. Bay’s film not only delivers on its promise of a fun popcorn movie, it revels in its frivolity; this is the film that the abysmal Independence Day wanted so desperately to be, all those years ago.

As the Transformers mythology goes, two warring factions of giant alien robots — the benevolent Autobots and the evil Decepticons — left their homeworld of Cybertron for Earth, where their eternal battle continues. Here they take the forms of ordinary vehicles and devices: leading the Autobots is Optimus Prime, a heroic figure who transforms into a truck and gets to pontificate about freedom and the virtues of humanity, while heading the Decepticons is Megatron, who used to transform into a gun but in the film appears as a jet.

Any man who was a pre-teen in the mid-to-late ’80s probably knows all of this anyway. If nothing else, we all watched the animated series and have some vague expectations for the characterisation of each Transformer, particularly Prime and Megatron, but also fan favourites such as Bumblebee and Starscream. By and large, these characters are recreated fairly faithfully, but it’s true that the humans, not the Transformers, are the focus of the film.

Having the humans dominate proceedings would perhaps have been more problematic were the script not as fun or engaging as it is. There are moments of humour and whimsy sprinkled throughout the film that only occasionally fall flat — Bernie Mac in particular has a cameo that is absolutely hilarious (though potentially offensive to some). Full credit must be given, however, to Shia LaBeouf, who essentially carries Transformers during its slower scenes through sheer charisma alone. Also always nice to see is John Turturro in a supporting role, but the appearance of Jon Voight has to be the most surreal bit of casting since Orson Welles voiced Unicron in the animated Transformers film 21 years ago.

Of course, it’s the third act where the real robot-on-robot action occurs, and this is the payoff for all the exposition of the prior 90 minutes. A kinetic energy takes hold, and suddenly you’re watching two robots destroy the entire floor of an office building, for example, causing destruction and mayhem on such a scale that you can’t help but be awestruck. One can only assume that the sequel will be even bigger.

Sure, there’s a plot that’s buried beneath all this, involving metallic cubes, sexy love interests and pairs of glasses on eBay, but it’s just window-dressing to introduce the premise of this new franchise. Ordinarily, I’d feel insulted by this, but it’s done with such good humour that it’s hard to fault the film for not aspiring towards high art.

Maybe Steven Spielberg (as executive producer) is responsible for Transformers‘ sense of childlike giddiness; I don’t know. All I know is, it succeeds at being a fun and entertaining movie, and that’s all it should need to be.