"Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom" Talkback (Spoilers)

[Lord Dalek]

If adventure has a name, it must be Indiana Jones.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v92/lorddalek/indiana_jones_and_the_temple_of_doo.jpg

"Mola Ram... prepare to meet Kali... IN HELL!" - Indiana Jones


Release Date: May 23, 1984
Studio: Paramount/Lucasfilm LTD.
Director: Steven Spielberg, George Lucas (some sequences, uncredited)
Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1 (Panavision)
Starring: Harrison Ford, Kate Capshaw, Amish Puri, Roshan Seth, Jonathan Ke Quan

Plot Summary: Renowned archeologist and expert in the occult, Dr. Indiana Jones, is back in action in the 2nd Indy film. He teams up with a night club singer and a 12 year old named Short Round. They end up in an Indian village, where the people believe evil spirits have taken their children away after a sacred stone was stolen. Indiana agrees to try and retrieve the stone for the villagers.

COMMENTS?

Another installment in the continuing series of Spielberg talkbacks by yours truly.

THE DALEK/SPIELBERG TALKBACK SERIES:

Duel (http://forums.toonzone.net/showthread.php?t=188219)
The Sugarland Express (http://forums.toonzone.net/showthread.php?t=188808)
Jaws (http://www.forums.toonzone.net/showthread.php?t=189321)
Close Encounters of the Third Kind (http://www.forums.toonzone.net/showthread.php?t=189749)
1941 (http://www.forums.toonzone.net/showthread.php?t=190477)
Raiders of the Lost Ark (http://www.forums.toonzone.net/showthread.php?t=190703)
E.T The Extra-Terrestrial (http://forums.toonzone.net/showthread.php?t=191048)

[EinBebop]

My favorite of the series. I recognize that Last Crusade is the superior movie of the series, but this movie had just the right combination of thrills, creepiness, and fun to completely captivate my 10-year-old imagination, and it's one of the few movies from my childhood that's just as much fun to watch today.

And nothing in the whole series beats the thirty seconds of tension on the bridge when you realize Indy's REALLY NOT BLUFFING.

"Hang on lady, we going for a ride!"

[Wonderwall]

Few things are cooler than a man who can grab another man's heart out of his chest, while chanting.

[Michael24]

The Temple of Doom all-too-often gets an unfair shake. It's an Indiana Jones movie, so it's automatically better than most other films. I can't really find anything in it to complain about. It's got scares, it's got thrills, it's got it all. ToD was one of the very first movies I saw in the theater (my parents say I saw Raiders of the Lost Ark, but I have no memory of that). I was about five-and-a-half, probably a tad too young for it at the time, but it was a thrill ride like no other. The mine car chase is still one of my favorite action set pieces of any movie. I think the model work has held up pretty darn well.

Okay, my only complaint is that the soundtrack release is lacking. It needs to be reissued with additional tracks, the way Raiders was back in 1995. (But both are out of print. Why, I have no idea.) Perhaps the upcoming release of Indy 4 will put some things in motion since we'll be getting a brand new Indy score.

[Lord Dalek]

Okay, my only complaint is that the soundtrack release is lacking. It needs to be reissued with additional tracks, the way Raiders was back in 1995. (But both are out of print. Why, I have no idea.) Perhaps the upcoming release of Indy 4 will put some things in motion since we'll be getting a brand new Indy score.Well there are bootlegs with the whole score out there, but they aren't that great in terms of quality.

Temple of Doom is unique in that its the only Indy score to never see a domestic release on CD. The closest we got was a Japanese import in the mid-90s.

[Michael24]

Yeah, my CD is an import and all the liner notes are in Japanese. I also have the soundtrack on vinyl, but I think that was a domestic release. I always wondered why the CD wasn't released in the U.S. I never had a copy until about 2001 or so, when several used copies suddenly showed up at all the local Wherehouses.

Don't think I've ever seen a bootleg of ToD, but I did see a bootleg for The Last Crusade that is basically all the material left off the official release, along with the longer film version of the tank sequence, which I would really like to have. The CD version chops out the entire middle section.

[Gatomon41]

All the fun of the old pulp cliffhangers, in a well directed, well writen adventure movie. Sure, not as perfect as Raiders of the Lost Ark or The Last Crusade, but Temple of Doom is still awesome.

[PeterFries]

Shrieking kid, screeching woman and vicious racist overtones made for one of the most excruciating movies I've ever sat through.

I'd pay good money to never have to sit through this movie again. Truly horrible. Unwatchable.

After "Temple of Doom", I wrote off and steered clear of Spielberg until "Jurassic Park" was released, though I later saw and enjoyed "Empire of Sun" in a WWII literature and media course.

[Cortez2301]

I really liked this movie but the only thing I hated about it was Kate Capshaws character.I didn't like the scenes she was in except for the parts where every animal scared her.Other than that the movie had great action,great story and great acting (Kate was also a little bit off at times).I gave it 3.5 stars out of 5.

[Michael24]

and vicious racist overtones

I've heard people claim that over the years, but I've never seen it. Perhaps because one person claimed it, then people are looking for it whenever they watch it and "see it" because the notion is already planted in their heads. Kind of like the whole laughable "racist" debate around The Phantom Menace.

[Ragebot]

Okay, my only complaint is that the soundtrack release is lacking. It needs to be reissued with additional tracks, the way Raiders was back in 1995.

Oh, definitely. The instrumental arrangement of "Anything Goes" that plays at the end of the Club Obi-Wan scene is one of my favourite John Williams cues.

I also think that this film gets a bad rep. It's true that the screenplay by Willard Huyck and Gloria Katz (who also penned Howard The Duck and Radioland Murders) is pretty weak and doesn't really allow any of the characters to shine as they did in Raiders or Crusade. However,the scope and the exuberance of Steven Spielberg's direction is still visible in every frame of this film and more than makes up for the shortcomings of the script.

[Frozen]

Good to see Temple of Doom getting the plaudits it derserves. Great plot, great characters, the scariest villain in the trilogy, and once that light pans up Indy in the mines, the action NEVER STOPS. Excellent stuff.

[Michael24]

That's a great moment. That's when you're like, "Oh yeah, here we go." I love it! Camera pans up, Indy's standing there, camera dollies in on him with that pissed look on his face--WHACK! WHACK!--that Thugee slides back on the floor out cold. Right up there with Indy shooting the swordsman in Raiders.

[Classic Speedy]

My main issue with the film was that Willie Scott was a bad replacement for Marion Ravenwood from Raiders. While I understand that it wouldn't make sense for Marion to appear in Temple of Doom because it was a prequel, I found Willie's ditziness and shrieking got old very quickly.

And the other thing that bothered me about the film was it didn't have the perfect mix of action and comedy that Raiders and Last Crusade had. The film could've used a bit more comic relief.

Other than that, I liked Temple of Doom. Lots of classic moments, like the "poison you drank" opening, the mine cart ride, the tribal "pulling the heart out" scene (they NAILED the tension on whether Indy was under their trance!), and the high-rise escape on the bridge/cliffs. The set design for the film was amazing, too.

[ToOn~g@l]

Ah the Temple of Doom, another great Indiana Jones Film. I for one love the scene where they are having dinner at the temple and they are serving all these wierd dishes. Just watching their expression is priceless. I love how there is action left and right even though my uncle did ruin it for me when they fall out of the plane and onto the raft and explained the whole time about how it wasn't logical. Or was that Mythbusters. Oh well it was a fun scene any way.

[Michael24]

(they NAILED the tension on whether Indy was under their trance!),


That's because Indy was under their trance, until Short Round stuck him with the torch and it caused him to snap out of it. :)

[EinBebop]

I actually had the comic book version of this movie which had stuff a couple of things that were either cut or never filmed. One had Short Round working down in the pits, saw a guard get burned and woken up from the sleep, and then be dragged off to be put under again... which is why Short Round broke out and went and burned Indy.

[Michael24]

Too bad the DVD boxset didn't include deleted scenes. (Perhaps saved for a double dip when Indy 4 hits theaters or DVD?) My high school library actually had the novelization, so I checked it out one time to read it. There's a sequence, following the rescue of the slave children, that shows Indy, Willie, and Short Round creating a makeshift bridge over the lava pit for the children to escape. But then it breaks before they can use it, hence why the three of them are having to escape through the caves instead of getting out as easily as the children did. The "Storybook" I had when I was little (and still have) includes a picture from the scene of Indy trying to help Short Round across the bridge just before it breaks.

[EinBebop]

So rewatching temple of doom as part of the Indy marathon on the Epix channel tonight... a question that's always been in the back of my mind, and is suddenly now really bugging me....

Why is this a prequel? Have Lucas/Spielberg ever said?

My best guess is Marion... I've heard that originally Indiana Jones was going to be five movies... maybe they wanted Indy to stay with Marion after Raiders, but for whatever reason she didn't fit in the Temple of Doom, but then they ended up having to do Last Crusade without her anyway.

The fact that Indy and Marion reunited is the one thing I liked about the fourth movie, incidentally. I could never take my eyes off her in Raiders.

But wow, I've drifted off my original question... why prequel?

[Michael24]

Well, according to this (http://www.empireonline.com/indy/day10/), Lucas says they made it a prequel because they didn't want to use Nazis as the bad guys again. I'm not sure how strong an argument that is (weren't the Nazis around in 1935 just like they were in 1936?), but it's about the only thing I've ever seen regarding why ToD was a prequel.