The most iconic action sequences from the 'Indiana Jones' series

"It's not the years, honey, it's the mileage."

With 'Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny' landing in Irish cinemas on June 28th, we're looking back over the past four movies with a specific focus on what made the series such a hit - namely, Harrison Ford putting himself in harm's way and beating the crap out of people in exotic locations.

From fist-fights near giant propellers, to chases through the desert and beyond, all the way through to hiding out from a nuclear explosion in a fridge, Indiana Jones has always been synonymous with crazy stunts and action sequences. Here's our pick of five of the best.

5. The nuclear explosion from 'Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull'

It's a fair comment to say that 'Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull' was a pretty divisive movie when it first released, but over the years, opinions have softened somewhat. It's a movie that has some truly great moments, and one of them that stands out for us is undoubtedly the wide-eyed panic of the nuclear test firing scene. Naturally, the scene had a lot of people scoffing over the believability of surviving a nuclear blast in a lead-lined fridge, but the fact is that Dr. Henry Jones Jr. literally survived being thrown over the side of a cliff on a Nazi tank, being blasted with the wrath of the Ark of the Covenant, and dozens of other stuff.

One thing Spielberg has always had a handle on is a sense of horror in the 'Indiana Jones' series, and this is a really good example of that horror. The blind terror that Harrison Ford goes through as he's trying to find somewhere, anywhere, to hide while the siren gets progressively louder before diving into a fridge and locking it shut. The aftermath, however, is where we get to the core of 'Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull', with Indy looking at the mushroom cloud in silent awe. It's a new world, filled with man-made horrors.

4. The rock crusher fight in 'Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom'

Although 'Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom' does tend to have some problems in terms of its pacing and some of its content, one thing it has in spades is really great action set inside fantastically designed sets. Although the final rope bridge scene is a great example of the practical effects used in the series, the fist fight between Jones and the Thuggee overseer is equally worth mentioning and demonstrates how much more darker and intense 'Temple of Doom' was compared to 'Raiders of the Lost Ark'.

Pat Roach, who had previously starred in 'Raiders of the Lost Ark' in two separate roles, is Ford's opponent here and the manner in which Spielberg sets up the scene - showing the layout of where everyone is, and then the immediate threat of the rock crusher - again speaks to how well-directed the action is. It's violent stuff, and the action in 'Temple of Doom' was so intense that it eventually led to the creation of the PG-13 rating in the US just three months after the movie's release. When you watch this scene with the knowledge that it was a straight PG movie, you can see why that happened.

3. Fleeing the boulder in 'Raiders of the Lost Ark'

Harrison Ford famously did quite a number of his own stunts in 'Raiders of the Lost Ark', although a good number of shots in the truck chase here were carried out by a team of stuntmen, one of whom included Kilkenny native Martin Grace, who would later go on to become none other than the original Milk Tray man. Indeed, Grace was Ford's stunt-double during the boulder sequence in 'Raiders of the Lost Ark', hurling himself through spider-webs and narrowly escaping the boulder before landing into the Peruvian jungle and the assembled natives.

Like a lot of 'Raiders of the Lost Ark', the boulder sequence and the whole temple escape is based in part on the likes of 'Secret of the Incas' with Charlton Heston from 1954 and the serialised adventures that George Lucas and Steven Spielberg grew up with. You really get the sense of exaggerated action here, not to mention the fact that a giant boulder flying after someone has now become instantly recognisable and synonymous with Indiana Jones.

2. The Messerschmidt versus the birds in 'Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade'

'Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade' is remembered just as fondly for Harrison Ford's performance as it is Sean Connery. Even though there were only twelve years in the difference between them, Connery's fuddy-duddy professor was in stark contrast to Ford's all-action hero and often played for laughs. Indeed, it was Connery himself who made many of the comic suggestions throughout the movie, with Spielberg referencing Laurel and Hardy and screwball comedies of the '30s and '40s along the way.

This is most evident in the dramatic chase sequence that sees the Joneses being chased by a Messerschmidt and ultimately being defeated by a flock of birds. Connery tops off the scene with a terrific line about Charlemagne and strolls away casually with his umbrella, evoking a famous scene from the Irish-set 'Ryan's Daughter' by David Lean, Spielberg's idol. "Let my army be the rocks, and the trees, and the birds in the sky," says Connery, followed up by a moment of quiet admiration by Ford.

1. The fist-fight on the flying wing in 'Raiders of the Lost Ark'

The fist-fight in 'Raiders of the Lost Ark' between Harrison Ford and Pat Roach, and a small cameo from executive producer Frank Marshall as the Nazi pilot who gets bonked over the head by Karen Allen, is easily one of the best action setpieces ever put on screen. That's not an opinion, by the way - that's a fact. The scene is regularly cited as some of the most well-constructed pieces of action cinema ever made.

For a start, every piece of the scene fits into the other so that the whole thing is virtually seamless. Jones is trying to stop the plane from taking off because it's got the Ark onboard, and the big baldy mechanic just wants a fight because, well, why not? The fact that Spielberg came up with the whole scene on the fly, blocked it out pretty quickly, and it's now considered this iconic moment speaks to how incredible a director Spielberg truly is. In an interview with Empire Magazine back in 2014, Spielberg explained how the whole scene was a great example of cinematic improvisation.

"I had to stop myself before the sequence became an eight-minute-long one that George (Lucas) would cut down to three-and-a-half," Spielberg explained. The scene is also kind of startling compared to modern action cinema in that we see the protagonist, Jones, obviously losing and getting his ass handed to him by the German mechanic. He only wins by playing dirty and improvising, not to mention throwing sand in his eyes and letting a propeller take him out in the end. We're so used to seeing superheroes and the like easily dispatch bad guys like they're not even a remote threat, yet here we're seeing an action hero take repeated clatters in the face, bleeding, and winning by the thinnest of margins. This then adds to the real sense of threat and suspense.

Even though we know he's going to be fine at the end of it, it's the how and how close it's going to be that makes it so exciting to watch - even now, some forty-odd years later.