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Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom
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Fardreamer's Review
Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom Review
Overall 4.00 of 5
(by 1 user)
Indy series takes a dark turn in the Temple of Doom!
Steven Spielberg fan, movie lover, Star Wars fan of the 1977 Generation, into movies that tell a great story, Indiana Jones aficionado, Movie guru
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MAY
7
2008
Intended to be an homage to the campy, shot-on-the-cheap action-adventure serials of the 1930s or, as they're sometimes known, "cliff-hangers," producer George Lucas' Indiana Jones series mixes elements from those stunt-filled "Saturday afternoon matinee" flicks with the techniques and special effects used to make Lucas' Flash Gordon-inspired space-fantasy series Star Wars.
Indeed, although the Indiana Jones series isn't one continuous storyline on the surface, it also mimics its Star Wars counterpart's emotional arc of sandwiching one very dark chapter of the saga between two more-or-less upbeat ones. Like The Empire Strikes Back, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom places its characters in a hellish situation. (And, as Lucas himself later admitted, maybe it was a bit too dark and hellish.)
Unlike Empire, the second film in the quadrilogy - Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull opens in theaters on May 22, 2008 - is not a follow-up to the first movie but rather precedes it, and its placement in the Indy timeline spawned the term "prequel" to explain why it's set in 1935 rather than, say, 1937.
As in Raiders of the Lost Ark, producer Lucas (who also wrote the story), director Spielberg and screenwriters Willard Huyck and Gloria Katz take a page from the series' other inspiration (James Bond) and start Temple of Doom at the tail end of a previous adventure, this one involving Indy's retrieval of a Chinese emperor's mortal remains for a shady Shanghai gangster named Lao Che (Roy Chiao).
In a Busby Berkeley-like musical number in Shanghai's swanky Club Obi-Wan, Temple of Doom's
prologue introduces viewers to the film's "Indy Girl," an American singer named Willie Scott (Kate Capshaw); singing Cole Porter's "Anything Goes" in Mandarin and wearing a tight red and gold red dress, she definitely makes an impression on Indy (Harrison Ford), the audience, and (as luck would have it) Spielberg, who would later marry Kate Capshaw in real life.
Willie: Aren't you gonna introduce us?
Lao Che: This is Willie Scott; this is Indiana Jones, a famous archaeologist.
Willie: Well I always thought that archaeologists were always funny looking men going around looking for their mommies.
Indiana Jones: Mummies.
Things get really interesting when Lao Che and his gang attempt to first cheat Indy of his fee for finding the remains of the long-dead Chinese emperor, then when that fails, they try to poison the archaeologist/adventurer. In a comical-but-scary-and-violent setpiece showdown, Indy and Willie escape from Lao Che and his goons. aided by Indy's pre-teen sidekick Short Round (Ke Huy Quan).
At the Shanghai airport, they board a trimotor aircraft Indy and Short Round had booked passage on in advance, and they believe they're safe, but it's one of Lao Che's air-freight planes, and the crew has orders to get rid of the troublesome archaeologist and his two companions.
Willie: You know how to fly, don't you?
Indiana Jones: Um, no. Do you?
After surviving a parachute-less egress from the crashing trimotor over the Himalayan Mountains, Indy, Short Round, and a very reluctant Willie make their way to a remote village in India, where the elders tell the lost trio a tale of woe and darkness; the "evil of Pankot Palace" has returned, and the village's Sankara stone, an artifact infused with supernatural properties, has been stolen by the evil ones.
ndy is at first reluctant to go on this quest for yet another mythical artifact, but when the villagers tell him and his two companions that the followers of Kali have stolen their children, Jones agrees to pay the new Maharajah of Pankot a visit. His interest is piqued when a dying young escapee arrives at the village and hands Indy a scrap of cloth with a fragment of tapestry. Reading its Sanskrit inscription and by looking at the pictographs on the cloth, Indiana discovers that the villagers' sacred stone is one of five Sankara stones, left to men by the Hindu god Shiva. When a puzzled Short Round asks Indy what a Sankara stone represents, he replies, "Fortune and glory, kid. Fortune and glory."
But Indy's quest for "fortune and glory" takes a disturbing turn when the trio reaches Pankot Palace. The prime minister, Chattar Lal (Roshan Seth) appears to be just another Oxford-trained Indian bureaucrat, but in reality he's one of Kali priest Mola Ram's (Amrish Puri) lieutenants. Soon, Indy, Short Round and Willie go from honored guests to prisoners when they discover the goings-on behind the high walls of Pankot Palace.
Eel Eater: Ah, dessert! Chilled monkey brains.Although Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom is an enjoyable adventure film, its dark tones (both in storytelling and visual terms) and a few gory scenes involving a disgusting banquet and a human sacrifice makee it my least favorite entry in the series.
And even though it was rated PG in May of 1984, the criticism over the violence and gore caused director Spielberg to be one of the advocates of the PG-13 rating that the Motion Picture Association of America created within months of the film's release.
[cutting between Indiana and Willie's rooms]Indiana Jones: "Palace slave"...
Willie: "Nocturnal activities"...
Indiana Jones: *I'm* a conceited ape?
Willie: "I'll tell you in the morning"...
Indiana Jones: I can't believe this.
Willie: He's not coming.
Indiana Jones: She's not coming.
[pause]
Indiana Jones: I can't believe I'm not going.
To its credit, the movie has much of the same "channeled Preston Sturges-Ben Hecht" mix of witty repartee and spectacular action set pieces of Raiders of the Lost Ark, and Harrison Ford plays the many sides of Indiana Jones' personality in a multi-layered manner, showing off his very alpha-male side yet making him human and vulnerable at the same time.
As for the "Indy Girl," Capshaw is a bit annoying at first with her whiny "I don't want to be in this mess" attitude, but her undeniable sexiness and all-American girl looks eventually hook Indy (and many viewers), especially in the "nocturnal activities" botched romance sequence..
Also adding to the excitement is the music by composer and frequent Spielberg collaborator John Williams; the familiar "Raiders March" is back, of course, but it's not overused and its supplemented by several new themes, such as the very Chinese-styled "Short Round's Theme" and a concert-hall favorite, the rousing "Parade of the Slave Children." Dark cues also accompany the scenes set within the titular Temple of Doom, usually performed by the orchestra with a mostly male chorus.
All in all, despite the darker atmosphere and its sometimes intense content, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom is still one heck of a cinematic thrill ride. Not as much fun as Raiders or Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, but still worth watching and adding to one's video library.
Last edited on May 07, 2008
Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom is recommended by Fardreamer
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