Indiana Jones star Karen Allen explains controversial Raiders of the Lost Ark line

Indiana Jones star Karen Allen has explained a line from Raiders of the Lost Ark that, in recent years, some have found controversial.

Speaking to UPROXX, the actor, who played Marion Ravenwood in the 1981 action-adventure classic, dug into the early relationship between her character and Jones (played by Harrison Ford).

Though Ravenwood and Jones’s offscreen history is never fully laid out in Raiders, it is heavily implied that the two had a romance when she was underage. Ravenwood is also the daughter of Jones’s former mentor, Abner Ravenwood.

“I was a child. I was in love,” her character shouts at Jones.

“You knew what you were doing,” Jones retorts.

“I think I say I was 16. I don’t know. That’s always what I imagined is she was 16, he was 26. And he was her father’s student. And it’s left very mysterious,” Allen told UPROXX for the 40th anniversary of Raiders.

“So we don’t even know what it is. I mean, they could have kissed a few times, and she was just completely bowled over, and he could have just not wanted to get involved with someone so young,” she added.

“And maybe my father would have been furious at him. I mean, what’s great about it is we don’t know what the circumstances are. So she obviously cared deeply for him. He may have cared for her, too. But, in the end, decided it was a dangerous situation and he didn’t want to be involved.”

Allen continued, saying that she felt their history seemed “quite innocent”.

“I mean, I guess, when something is as vague as that, you can colour it any way you want to colour it. I’ve tended to colour it, sort of, that it was quite innocent. When she says, ‘It was wrong and you knew it.’ I mean, I think maybe he led her on in some way. But when she says she was a child, I think she meant she was 16. Something like that.”

Allen did not return for the follow-up films, Temple of Doom (1984) or The Last Crusade (1989). But she did make a surprise appearance in 2008’s Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.

Ford is currently filming the untitled fifth installment in the franchise.

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