Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984)

 Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom is my favorite entry in the "Indiana Jones" saga. "How is this possible?" you might ask. After all, Raiders of the Lost Ark is an all time adventure classic with a strong love interest (Karen Allen as Marion) and a memorable finale with awesomely gruesome face melting action.  And how can I even suggest that Temple of Doom is better film than Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade? That film has Sean Connery as Indy's dad, while Temple of Doom has Kate Capshaw as the extremely annoying night club singer, Willie Scott, and, even worse, a kid sidekick named Short Round. Hell, it could be argued that Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is a superior movie than Temple of Doom. Sure, it features Indy's annoying illegitimate son Mutt, but at least it doesn't have a hysterical female in it. Well, calm down for a second and I will explain to you why The Temple of Doom is my favorite film in the series.Hell, I even concur that Raiders of the Last Ark and The Last Crusade are superior movies, but I personally find Temple of Doom to be the most entertaining film out of the bunch, warts and all.

Willie Scott-

Most fans absolutely loathe the character of Willie; she's extremely petty, superficial, and cowardly; it seems every two minutes she's screaming about something. She's particularly loathsome in the first half of the film, constantly shouting at Indy and extremely insensitive to the customs of the Indian villagers. Yet, Willie is probably the only female in the entire Indiana Jones saga that actually has a character arc. At first glimpse, Willie is step down from Marion Ravenwood, the female protagonist from Raiders of the Lost Ark. Marion was the complete opposite of Willie, plucky, intelligent, and able to hold her own in a male oriented world.  Willie is used to the life of luxury, being a famous night club singer and all, whereas Marion is  more worldly and street savvy, she is the daughter of an archaeologist and has spent most of her life in complete shitholes; the bar she owns at the beginning of the film is a complete dive, filled with all sorts of reprobates. Yet, despite her strong and feisty demeanor, Marion is constantly in need of being rescued. Even her most heroic scene, she knocks out a German that's about to shoot Indiana, ends with her needing to be rescued. She maybe a stronger female lead, but she is still a nuisance. On other hand, Willie's cowardly ways in completely consistent with the character we are introduced it the beginning of the film. Her forte is the ritzy night life of Shanghai, she has lived a pampered existence, therefore it makes perfect sense that this character would complain almost nonstop when forced to endure the hardships of the jungle, or would be spooked by practically every animal she encounters, she is completely out of her element. Hell, if I had to walk through a tunnel populated with BIG BUGS, I would probably be in hysterics as well. However, Willie's adventures with Indiana transforms her into a more compassionate person, one who is able to empathize with the suffering of others, instead of turning her back on them. She may be a screamer, but she does work up enough courage to walk through the bug infested underground tunnels of Pankot palace, and does save Indiana and Short Round from certain death.

Short Round -

I've always liked the character of Short Round, which is odd given that I usually cringe whenever a child sidekick is introduced in any action series, for instance I absolutely detest the character of Robin, the Boy Wonder. Yet, Short Round is actually a pretty wise kid and is able to hold his own in fight scenes. There iss also a nice dynamic between Harrison Ford and Jonathan Ke Quan, the two of them seem to genuinely enjoy one another's company, and it's easy to believe that Indiana Jones would take this kid underneath his wing. He also allows us a glimpse into Indiana's softer side; he is like a big brother/surrogate father to Short Round. It greatly humanizes the character of Indiana Jones and helps separate him from the one dimensional indestructible bad asses that have dominated the action film genre in the past twenty years.

Mola Ram -

As great as Raiders of the Lost Ark is, it's lacking in the villain department. Belloq, a French archaeologist and Indiana's rival, is too spineless to be a real threat. Whereas Toth, a bald headed, bespectacled Nazi, is relegated to the role of henchmen. Mola Ram, the bug eyed high priest of the Thuggee cult, is genuinely frightening. He is the kind of villain that will give you nightmares; he wears a ceremonial headdress that has horns protruding from its sides and a shrunken human head on top. Of course, his most famous feat is the ability to rip the hearts out of still breathing humans. Mola Ram even successfully (if only briefly) converts Indiana Jones to the dark side, by turning him into a mindless slave. Amrish Puri has a great screen presence and lends a real sense of menace to the proceedings.

Indiana Jones Gets to Be the Hero-

It's been argued, rather successfully, that Indiana Jones is a pretty ineffectual hero in Raiders of the Lost Ark, almost everything that happens in that film would have occurred whether Indiana Jones was there or not. Indiana doesn't defeat the villains at the end,  the Ark of the Covenant does the job for him. It is actually a nice, unexpected twist that deviates from the norm, but in terms of character development it is fairly unsatisfactory. The term Deus ex machina often gets thrown around while discussing the ending of Raiders of the Lost Ark, but that's not entirely true, the Ark from the very beginning is set up as being a dangerous relic of God that isn't to be taken lightly, Marcus Brody even warns Indiana about this very point. The ending of Raiders of the Lost Ark is the pay off to everything we have been told from the get go.
In The Temple of Doom, Indiana Jones is unquestionable the hero, he defeats Mola Ram and frees the child slaves from the clutches of the Thuggee. It's more traditional ending, but it's satisfying just the same. If the audience spends two hours rooting for a character, they sure as hell want to see him come out on top by movie's end.

Steven Spielberg and George Lucas Take Chances.

What I appreciate most about Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom is that it's not a simple rehash of the first film. The opening credits clue the audience that Temple of Doom is going to be a completely different movie than Raiders of the Lost Ark. Instead of opening on a dangerous trek through the jungle, Temple of Doom begins with a musical number (modeled after Busby Berkeley), a Mandarin version of "Anything Goes" sung by Willie. The opening scene from Raiders of the Last Ark is a mini movie in it's own right and is fairly extraneous to the main narrative. It's main function is to introduce the antagonist, Belloq, but it's not a necessary scene overall. If Spielberg would have opted to cut it out of the film, the audience wouldn't have been any the wiser.

 In Temple of Doom, the night club scene sets the narrative in motion. He meets up with Chinese gangster Lao Che and Willie just happens to get in the way. Indiana Jones escapes the Lao Che's clutches by jumping out a window; he takes Willie with him, because she's holding an antidote to a poison that Lao Che has tricked him into drinking. The land in the back of a car, which is being driven by Indiana's kid sidekick Short Round. They manage to elude Lao Che and make it to the airport, where Indiana has chartered an airplane.  However, after Indiana closes the airplane door, it is revealed  the plane is one of Lao's and that the pilots are working for him. They parachute out of the airplane, while Indiana and company are asleep, and drain the fuel tank. Through a set on contrivances, Indiana Jones and companions use a rubber raft to parachute out of the plane, they end up in a poor Indian village.

Instead of pitting Indiana Jones against Nazis, he is up against the Thuggee cult of India. Granted, the Nazis were more of worldwide threat, but the Thuggee (as depicted in this film) are absolutely ruthless to the point that even children aren't exempt from their wrath, this makes them a far more frightening adversary.
Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom is a much darker film than Raiders of the Lost Ark, Spielberg tries to balance this out with more scenes of comedy relief (provided by Willie), but the middle section is something out of H.P. Lovecraft. We are shown a poor man's heart getting ripped out of his body by Mola Ram, and, through some ancient magic, he survives the ordeal only to be lowered into a pit of lava as sacrifice to the god Kali.

Indiana briefly loses his soul to Mola Ram's magic, only to be awakened from his trance like state after Short Round burns him with a torch. Mola Ram is searching for the  two missing Sankara stone s(there are five total) that supposedly will bring him great power. To achieve this goal, he enslaves children from nearby villages and has them mine for the stones. Willie comes fairly close to being the next sacrificial victim, until Indiana and Short Round intervene. These are fairly grim moments, but then again, it's never really in doubt that Indiana is going to triumph in the end. Still, it's amazing to see such graphic violence in a PG movie. It was the heart ripping scene in this movie and the microwave scene in Gremlins that lead to the creation of the PG-13 rating.

Best Action Set Pieces.

In my opinion, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom has the best action set pieces in the entire series. There are wonderful moments in Raiders of the Lost Ark, Last Crusade, (and yes even) Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, but for my moment none of them can top the mine cart chase in Temple of Doom. The mine cart chase is Spielberg at his best; he seamlessly combines miniature work with footage of the actors. Even more impressively is that the audience is able to follow the action with relative ease; we know where characters are in relation to one another.  A lot of action scenes today tended by a bit muddled and hard to follow, images fly by in rapid succession (shots often last less than a second) and the filmmakers often do a piss poor job of establishing the spatial relations between the characters.
There's other great moments as well:
Indiana standing in the middle of a rope bridge (with the Sankar stones in a sack), while Mola Ram's henchmen close in on him from both sides. He tries to bluff his way out of it by threatening to drop the stones into the river below, but Mola Ram only laughs, saying they will eventually find them. The only option Indiana has left is to cut the rope bridge in half with a sword he has lifted from one of the Thuggee. Indiana secures himself to the bridge by wrapping his leg around a rope suspender and then cuts it in half, sending Mola Ram's men plunging to their doom in the crocodile-infested river.

Indiana and Short Round have finished their trek through the bug infested underground tunnels of Pankot and come upon a chamber. Short Round accidentally sets off a trigger mechanisms that causes the roof of the chamber to slowly closely in on our protagonists. If that weren't enough, spikes begin to emerge from the floor, either they will be crushed to death, or impaled.   Their only hope of escape is to have the hysterical Willie pull a lever that will reset the trap. However, the lever is located in a hole that is infested with huge bugs.

Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom is loaded with wonderful cinematic moments and this why is my favorite film out the series. Once seen, they are absolutely hard to forget.

Credits:
Cast: Harrison Ford (Indiana Jones), Kate Capshaw (Willie Scott), Jonathan Ke Quan (Short Round), Amrish Puri (Mola Rum), Roshan Seth (Chattar Lal), Philip Stone (Captain Blumburtt), Roy Chiao (Lao Che), Raj Singh (Little Maharaja), Dan Aykroyd (Weber).

Director: Steven Spielberg
Screenplay: Gloria Katz, William Huyck. George Lucas (story)

Running Time: 118 min.