Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984)

While on the whole not really a horrible film, it’s still a giant leap down from the inspired intelligence that was the driving force behind the crowd-pleasing Raiders of the Lost Ark.  It seems this time around, Spielberg and company made a decision to take the scenes that provoked the most audience reaction in Raiders and give us mostly that for two hours straight.  More humor, more stunts, more creepy creatures, and more gore.  If there’s a lesson that can be learned from Temple of Doom (its originally scripted title was, “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Death“, but that last word was thought to be a turn-off for the family-friendly dollars they were seeking), it’s that less is more, as the cheap laughs and the pervasive nastiness runs rampant all over what could have been another winning adventure if played with the subtle hand that led its predecessor to box-office fortune and award-winning glory.

While a sequel to Raiders of the Lost Ark, it’s really a prequel, set in 1935, a year before, with story-writer George Lucas deliberately wanting to showcase an independent adventure that avoids encroaching into the Nazi territory that had been so prevalent in the first entry.  Lucas had originally wanted the setting to be a Scottish haunted house, but Spielberg was fatigued from his experience with Poltergeist that he didn’t want to revisit “haunted house” material any time soon, so the setting was changed to a temple in India.  Indiana Jones (Ford) finds himself in Shanghai (Macau substituting) on the hunt for a precious diamond, but gets in over his head, chased out of town with his assistant, a young boy nicknamed Short Round, and Willie Scott (Capshaw), a ditsy, blonde, nightclub singer.  Having to make a hasty exit into the Himalayas from a crashing airplane, Indy and friends find themselves in a starving village in India, who see their visitors as saviors destined to save their children who they believe have been taken away by resurrected forces of evil at a formerly abandoned palace.  The trio set off for the palace in search of lost children, a sacred stone…and fortune and glory.

Out is the terrific writing of Lawrence Kasdan, hot from his stints on the original and The Empire Strikes Back, who had become one of the most sought-after talents in town writing a terrific noir-ish thriller like Body Heat and a fantastic generation-defining dramedy like The Big Chill, both he also directed. Kasdan was asked back, but turned it down because he didn’t like the premise or the mean-spirited nature of Lucas’s story treatment.  Coming in to flesh out Lucas’ vision for the story are the husband-wife team of Willard Huyck and Gloria Katz, Lucas’ friends from his days studying film at USC, having written the screenplays for American Graffiti and its sequel, More American Graffiti, as well as uncredited work on Lucas’s crowning film-making achievement, Star Wars. Huck and Katz were big fans of the Cary Grant/Douglas Fairbanks film from 1939, Gunga Din, which also featured adventurers and a Thugee murder cult, with banter and Hollywood glamour.  Side note: the character name of “Short Round” followed the tradition of Lucas in naming a character on a beloved dog’s name; as Lucas had an Alaskan Malamute named “Indiana”, Huyck’s dog was named “Short Round” (named after a character in a favorite movie of his, 1951’s The Steel Helmet, and Spielberg’s dog was named “Willie”.

Summing up why Temple of Doom is still a worthwhile watch despite its considerable flaws is easy.  We like the character of Indiana Jones, and with Harrison Ford’s charisma taking center stage, it’s hard not to be entertained a good part of the time.  The special effects are just as impressive as the first time around, absorbing the viewer in with lavish sights, sounds, and sets.  The stunt work is also up to the high standards set in Raiders, with lots of fistfights, falls, and good choreography.  Of course, John Williams provides another memorable score, adding its own unique flavor with an Indian flair, in addition to the usual Indy theme.

Still, all of this is just bells and whistles, and not necessarily the only ingredients if you want to make a good film.  Even with the high production values and the immense talent involved, where the producers erred is in thinking audiences wanted more action, more thrills, more scares, and more danger than before, and in the process, the subtle touches and wry intelligence have been replaced by bloated spectacles, cartoonish situations, and a largely depressing subtext involving child slavery and gory masochistic rituals involving hearts being ripped out of bodies and fiery human sacrifice that undercut much of the fun and excitement.  Even the attempts at humor run nastier, with a banquet sequence full of gross-out jungle courses on the menu (live snakes, eyeball soup, and monkey brains), and lots and lots of ooey, gooey bugs to traverse and trample on the way into the inner chasm of the temple’s domain. 

There’s also a hokey quality that runs throughout Temple that was mostly missing in Raiders, made infinitely worse by some terrible characterizations, most notably with Willie, played with maximum shrill by future Spielberg wife, Kate Capshaw.  Although it would become obvious that Capshaw must have stolen Spielberg’s own heart, having married her later (though that relationship would wait – Spielberg was set to become a father and marry Amy Irving, with whom he was reunited romantically while in production for Temple of Doom), other actresses were in consideration, including, most notably, Sharon Stone (who would later come to some fame for being in the knock-off the following year, King Solomon’s Mines). Jonathan Ke Quan, billed as Ke Huy Quan, was a refugee from Vietnam who accompanied his brother, who was seeking the part in an open casting call. The casting crew were smitten by Quan’s charm and ability to make friends, even though his English was not very strong.

Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom would become one of two Spielberg-produced films in 1984 that would raise the ire of parents groups who felt that, along with Joe Dante’s Gremlins, that the PG rating on films was now too broad so as to include much fare that were too violent for most pre-teen children.  To counter these feeling, the MPAA would devise a new rating for “hard PG’ efforts that were on the harsher side, dubbed PG-13, meaning that the films were suitable for older, more inured kids and adults.  Spielberg would go on to describe these efforts as his attempt to purge the demons — his dark side — out on the screen that were plaguing him at the time in his personal and professional life, as he was just out of his break-up with Amy Irving and Lucas himself was writing the story during his divorce from his first wife Marcia – they both felt depressed and on edge. To stem the tide of the complaints, Paramount Pictures would run its advertisements with the disclaimer that that the film may be too intense for young children.  Further backlash toward the film would come from its depictions of children in peril and abuse for entertainment, the trite use of a weak and needy female lead, and its stereotypical (some claim ‘racist’) depiction of the people of India, both rural and royal, as inherently uncivilized and inclined to a savage nature.  In fact, it was shot in Sri Lanka, because the government in India could not endorse this depiction of their country, as well as the notion that the goddess Kali is evil, and the film, for a time, was banned from playing there.

Despite its lower critical ratings and controversy in its levels of sadistic violence, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom would prove very lucrative for all involved, taking in over $333 million worldwide (nearly matching the overall take of Raiders), on a mere $28 million budget.  It would go on to be the number three film of 1984, bested by the Eddie Murphy breakthrough, Beverly Hills Cop, and the juggernaut comedy, Ghostbusters.  Despite its box office success, where Lucas and Spielberg would take a hit is in the merchandising, as its toys and accompanying product tie-ins were severely overproduced, perhaps due to the aftertaste of the film’s bleak and disturbing subject matter.  Though still a success by most measures, Spielberg has always felt a bit uneasy about the film’s dark tone and extremes, claiming that the third entry, 1989’s Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, was to made as an apology to Indiana Jones fans for Temple of Doom, even though most accept the film as genuinely entertaining.  Spielberg did get a wife out of the deal, so I’m sure he wouldn’t really take it back if he could.

However, there are the elements and scenes that make Temple of Doom worth every penny of the price of admission, though many of those were conceived of for Raiders of the Lost Ark, but were cut out prior to production.  From the lush, Busby Berkeley-esque opening musical number (an idea that Lucas, Huyck and Katz had for their unfinished script for The Radioland Murders (which would get made in 1994)  — “Anything Goes”, sung in all but the chorus in Mandarin Chinese), to the thrilling mine car race (though the obvious use of miniatures is a detraction), and the exhilarating rope-bridge showdown, there’s a lot to like in between some of the overbearing attempts to entertain with an “Anything Goes” attitude.  It delivers on entertainment, albeit with a high amount of overhead, and if that’s all you expect, Temple of Doom gives you enough laughs, chills, and thrills to warrant multiple viewings, as long as you’re willing to overlook the often distasteful shock and schlock approach to adventure.

Qwipster’s rating: B

MPAA Rated: PG for violence and disturbing images (would definitely be PG-13 today, and in fact, partly led to its creation)
Running Time: 118 min.

Cast: Harrison Ford, Kate Capshaw, Jonathan Ke Quan, Amrish Puri, Roshan Seth
Director: Steven Spielberg
Screenplay: Willard Huyck, Gloria Katz