Indiana Jones And The Temple Of Doom Review

MPAA Rating: PG
Released: 1984

After the smashing success of Raiders of the Lost Ark, Steven Spielberg, George Lucas and Harrison Ford returned to create a sequel… or more accurately, a prequel, since the happenings in the Temple of Doom took place before the events in the original film.

Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom is generally the most maligned entry of the Indiana Jones trilogy, oft condemned for its darker imagery and storyline, the annoying nature of its secondary characters and its graphic violence. But is this criticism justified? Let's find out in the Feature Attraction.

Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom finds our favorite archaeologist and action hero in the jungles of India, accompanied by a ten-year old sidekick, Short Round (Jonathan Ke Quan), and a reluctant blonde partner, Willie Scott (Kate Capshaw). There they discover a tribe whose village has been destroyed by a cult headed by the ominous Mola Ram (Amrish Puri). Adding to their hardships, the village children have been kidnapped and put to use as slave labor, and their tribal treasure that harbors immense magical powers has been stolen.

Luckily our swashbuckling hero agrees to retrieve the stolen treasure and free the children, much to the constant protestations of Willie. The first leg of their journey leads to a luxurious palace, where they enjoy an infamous feast with their host that consists of delicacies such as bugs and monkey brains. But their hosts, despite their broad and patronizing smiles and welcomes, are less than cooperative about helping Jones discover the location of the slave children.

Almost by accident they discover a secret passage within the temple that leads to an underground temple: the infamous Temple of Doom. Here children work endlessly in the slave mines while Mola Ram and his disciples, called Thuggees, engage in such barbaric practices as ritual sacrifice.

Can Indiana Jones reclaim the village treasure and free the children from the wrathful Mola Ram? Well, given that he survived to fight the Nazis in the original it's obvious the answer is yes, but the film still offers plenty of exciting fun as we watch the events unfold.

Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom was steeped in controversy due to a couple graphic scenes of violence, the foremost of which was the infamous scene where Mola Ram pulls the still-beating heart out of a victim's chest before sacrificing the man in a pool of lava. In fact this was one of the two movies responsible for provoking the creation of a PG-13 rating (the other film being Gremlins).

While it's true that some more sensitive viewers might turn away at the scene, I disagree that this entry was significantly more violent than the original. Raiders of the Lost Ark contained no shortage of bloodshed such as bullets through heads, people being splattered with plane propellers and of course the finale where angry spirits melted the flesh off a Nazi's face. I think people were more sensitive to the violence this time around because it was less gleeful than the original. Whereas no one minded bumbling Nazis getting their dues, the dark atmosphere in this film made the violence seem more potent.

The storyline is a significant departure from the original, but while it's significantly darker it still contains the same flashes of humor that made the first entry so popular. I think Lucas and Spielberg were wise to tweak the formula of the first, because it kept the series feeling fresh rather than just another rehash of Raiders of the Lost Ark (a fate that the third movie in the series, The Last Crusade, suffered). Just as The Empire Strikes Back was the darkest entry of the original Star Wars trilogy, The Temple of Doom is the darkest entry of the Indiana Jones trilogy.

Finally we come to the secondary characters, which some viewers found highly annoying. Personally I enjoyed Short Round – his comic interludes really worked for me, which surprises me since I generally hate children as sidekicks. As for Willie Scott, the complaints that Kate Capshaw offered little to the film besides grating hysterical screaming and whining is unfortunately true. Whether a weakness with the script or actress, it's hard to say, but she's not nearly as captivating a female companion to Indy as Marion/Karen Allen was in the original.

That one flaw aside, The Temple of Doom brings the goods almost as well as the original. Harrison Ford is still at the top of his game as the sportive adventurer that mixes equal parts action and mischief, and the action scenes are brilliant and feverish in pace. Two scenes in particular stand out among the series best: a mad-dash mine cart fight/race and the final confrontation between Indiana Jones and Mola Ram on a rickety bridge over an abyss.

So while some viewers didn't like the harsher atmosphere of this prequel, I think Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom comes extremely close to capturing the same magic as the original. It falls a bit short of perfection due to the grating nature of the heroine, but it remains a better film than the third in the trilogy.

Movie rating: 9 stars

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