Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984)

Of the original trilogy, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom is the least fondly remembered.  It’s a prequel which departs somewhat radically in tone and in cast from its two companions, and it contains a few very ill-advised creative decisions, about which director Steven Spielberg has said that the best thing to come out of the film was meeting his wife Kate Capshaw.  But on revisiting, there’s more about Temple of Doom to enjoy than not, though it’s still far from the other two in my eyes.

A year before the events of Raiders of the Lost Ark, Indiana Jones (Harrison Ford) careens off the heels of one adventure and into an Indian village where the children and a sacred stone have been abducted by the sinister forces of Pankot Palace.  His compatriots, lounge singer Willie Scott (Capshaw) and pint-sized Short Round (Ke Huy Quan), follow Indy into the eponymous Temple of Doom, where they face the brainwashed hordes who obey the devilish Mola Ram (Amrish Puri).

Let’s say the obvious – the film is culturally insensitive to the max, if not unspeakably racist.  It deals heavily in the “white savior” archetypal narrative without challenging that trope in the least, to the point where we literally have a British cavalry arriving just in the knick of time.  Now, it’s possible that Spielberg is playing with the old adventure serial formula from the 1920s and 30s – as suggested by some cliffhangery moments like the inflatable raft parachute over a cliff – and it does give him some of the ookier moments of the movie like the chilled monkey brains dessert, but the fact that the film seems at times virulently demeaning of India is a bit troubling.

The other major issue with the film is, perhaps surprisingly, Kate Capshaw’s performance.  After Karen Allen’s deft and empowering female lead in Raiders, Capshaw’s Willie Scott is a colossal step backwards.  She’s fantastic at screaming her lungs out and standing around rather uselessly, and if that’s the character the filmmakers really wanted to create, kudos to them.  But the result is something akin to the worst excesses of the “Bond girl” stereotype over in the James Bond franchise (to which, to be fair, both Spielberg and George Lucas claim Indiana Jones is partially indebted).  She is largely unwatchable and impossible to sympathize with, and I can’t help but wish Indy and the filmmakers had left her behind on this adventure.

Now for the good news:  I actually liked the film much better than I thought I would.  I’ve been going back and rewatching the films in order, and usually when I do this I skip over Temple of Doom in order to get to the vastly superior (and probably perfect) Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.  This time, however, I’m glad I stopped off in 1984, because the film does a number of things very right.  For one, the character of Indiana Jones is very well-developed in this film, following a compelling arc from an obsession with “fortune and glory” to a more sobered approach to archaeology and sacred artifacts.  Ford does great work as the protagonist, who’s still heaps of fun to watch.

And for all the cultural insensitivity at play in the film, it does give a very well-crafted tone to the film.  For any of the viewer’s qualms about Temple of Doom, it more than lives up to its name (and the PG-13 rating it inspired).  This original trilogy does seem to be a series of three masterpieces in setting a mood: the first, a sense of high-stakes adventure amid danger; the third, a rollicking romp through the feel-best action comedies.  Here, the tone is nearly relentless dread amid dingy and red-tinted sets; the darkness of the film pays off the character’s arc in a dénouement in which (spoilers?) all balance is restored and good triumphs.  In this sense, Temple of Doom uses its own gloom to say something important about morality.

That, and it’s an enjoyable ride along the way.  In terms of dark second installments in a trilogy, it’s not The Dark Knight or The Empire Strikes Back, but it is a film that, I think, deserves revisiting from older fans who brushed it off in their youth because it wasn’t as lighthearted as its companion films.  Surprisingly, the best part of the film on this most recent viewing wasn’t the infectious fun of Short Round (who remains a scene-stealer of the highest order and gets one of the best moments when he tells Indy, “You’re my best friend”) – it was the fact that Temple of Doom isn’t a creative failure.  It’s a much smarter film than it seems, and I’m surprising myself by how much I liked it.  I went in expecting to review it very much in the “Yes, but...” vein, but instead I’m coming away with a resounding thumbs-up.

Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom is rated PG.  It’s probably the most intense of the four films, dealing with a human-sacrificing Thuggee cult who is fond of removing their victims’ hearts and then dropping them into a pit of lava.  There’s an aborted seduction scene in which “primitive sexual practices” are discussed, and Indy gets in one S-bomb.  Other scenes of violence – fistfights, shootings, stabbings, and being eaten by alligators – play out with either fake-looking or no blood.