He’s referring to Pauline Kael’s review at the time which said, in part, Despite its daring surface, Raiders is timid moviemaking: the film seems terrified of not giving audiences enough thrills to keep them happy. It’s an amalgam of Lucas’s follies—plot for its own sake, dissociated from character or drama; the affectless heroine, who’s a tougher version of Carrie Fisher’s spunky Princess Leia in Star Wars—and effects that Spielberg the youthful magician has already dazzled us with.
He’s referring to Pauline Kael’s review at the time which said, in part, Despite its daring surface, Raiders is timid moviemaking: the film seems terrified of not giving audiences enough thrills to keep them happy. It’s an amalgam of Lucas’s follies—plot for its own sake, dissociated from character or drama; the affectless heroine, who’s a tougher version of Carrie Fisher’s spunky Princess Leia in Star Wars—and effects that Spielberg the youthful magician has already dazzled us with.