Indiana Jones and The Temple of Doom (1984)

Indiana Jones and The Temple of Doom (1984)

8/10

Starring

Harrison Ford
Kate Capshaw
Amrish Puri
Roshan Seth
Philip Stone

Directed by Steven Spielberg

I have seen The Temple of Doom more times than I can count. I just never tire of seeing Dr. Jones trying to stop the Kali priest, Mola Ram, from ripping out his heart.

The movie has wonderful visual effects, especially the heart removal scene where Mola Ram pulls out the heart of the human sacrifice and we behold the beating heart in his hand while the individual is still alive. Then the heart catches fire as the sacrifice is lowered into a fiery death hole. That scene is a huge high for me.

The Kali-Ma slave blood ritual, where Jones is forced to ingest blood to become a Kali-Ma slave, was the low point for me. His zombie behavior back to his normal self-seemed too wishy-washy.

Although its initial release faced heavy criticism for the intense violence, child slavery, black magic, and ritual human sacrifice, over time it has gained critical acclaim, now holding an 85% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom was released in 1984 and is the second film in the Indiana Jones franchise. Although it came three years after Raiders of the Lost Ark, the events in Temple of Doom are set before Raiders, making it a prequel. Temple of Doom was set in 1935, Raiders of the Lost Ark in 1936, and The Last Crusade in 1938.

The movie’s plot has our protagonist, Jones, team up with Short Round, a Chinese eleven-year-old sidekick. Also at Indy’s side is a nightclub singer named Wilhelmina "Willie" Scott. Together, the three of them are persuaded to help save a village from destruction and recover their Sankara stones, which were the source of the village’s good fortune.

The children of the village have all been taken and used for labor by Mola Ram, a demonic Thuggee priest. He uses the kids to search for the remaining Sankara stones in order to bring about the rise of Kali, who will then rule the world.

The movie was a financial success, but many attributed its darker tone to the breakups both George Lucas and Steven Spielberg were going through at the time.

It also faced criticism in India for its portrayal of the goddess Kali, who is shown as evil in the film. The food served at the palace, baby snakes, eyeball soup, beetles, and chilled monkey brains was also seen as culturally inappropriate, as these aren’t part of Indian cuisine.

It won Best Visual Effects at the Academy Awards.

All I can say is this is a movie I’ve come to love and accept as a classic. A must-see in the Jones series.

It beats Raiders of the Lost Ark entirely when it comes to plot. In Raiders, if Indiana Jones hadn’t interfered, everything would have played out the same. His interference only delayed the Nazis from finding the Ark which they eventually did and dying from opening it, which still would’ve happened anyway.