In 1935, Indiana Jones arrives in India, still part of the British Empire, and is asked to find a mystical stone. He then stumbles upon a secret cult committing enslavement and human sacrifices in the catacombs of an ancient palace.
Around 1983, word came out that a new Indiana Jones film would be released in 1984, and my eleven-year-old self and all my friends were convinced that someone snuck into the warehouse that the Ark was stored in at the end of “Raiders,” and took off with it and that Indy would have to chase after them to get it back. The stories we came up with were fantastic, so you can imagine my disappointment when the film was released, only for it to have nothing to do with the Ark and Nazis. But once the opening scene in Club Obi-Wan began, I was immediately awestruck to see Indy in action again.
This time around, the story takes place in 1935, a year before the events of “Raiders,” and finds Indy, his young Chinese sidekick Short Round (Jonathan Luke Ke Huy Quan), and a nightclub singer named Willie Scott (Kate Capshaw) escape from the aforementioned Club Obi-Wan, owned by Lao Che (Roy Chiao), a ruthless crime boss from Shanghai who double-crosses Indy after he does a job for him. The trio manages to escape on a cargo aircraft that just happens to be owned by Lao Che, and once air-bound, our three protagonists are sleeping, believing to be on their way to Delhi, when the two pilots dump the plane’s fuel and escape via parachute. After utilizing an inflatable raft to jump out of the plane before it crashes, it lands on the Himalayan mountains below, only for them to end up in a raging river, ultimately arriving at the village of Mayapore in northern India.
Once there, they are told by the village elders that Shivalinga, a sacred stone that sits on a shrine that protects the village, was taken by evil Thugees from the nearby Pankot Palace, along with all of the village children. They also claim that the Thugees worship Kali, the Hindu goddess of death, by offering human sacrifices. The village elders ask Indy to travel to Pankot Palace to recover their children, and Shivalinga and Indy obliges, who is secretly more interested in retrieving the stone as he believes it to be one of the five Sankara stones given by the gods to help humanity fight evil, and which could make him very wealthy.
Once at Pankot, they are welcomed by Chattar Lal (Roshan Seth), the Prime Minister of the Maharaja of Pankot, and invited to dinner that evening, where they are given the opportunity to meet the palace’s young Maharaja (Raj Singh). When Indy presses Chattar Lal about the Thugee cult, stating that they came from a small village that claimed their children were stolen, along with their sacred stone, Lal laughs at them, claiming that the Thugee cult died out many years ago and is no longer in existence. When they retire to their room for the evening, Indy is attacked by a Thugee guard but gets the upper hand and kills him first. Indy and Short Round then discover a series of tunnels that takes the trio to a large underground temple where they witness the Thugees sacrificing a man to a large statue of Kali, led by the sadistic high priest, Mola Ram (Amrish Puri). Indy quickly realizes that the sacred stone taken from the village was indeed one of the five Sankara stones and that the children were kidnapped so they could help Mola Ram search for the remaining stones. Now Indy must make a decision: save the children and return them and the stone to the village, or seek out fortune and glory by stealing the stone and keeping it for himself.
Upon its initial release, “Temple of Doom” was welcomed by the fans but panned by critics as being too dark and violent. As a result, “Temple of Doom” and “Gremlins,” which were produced by Spielberg, were the deciding factors in the creation of a new rating, one that fell between PG and R-rated films. The new rating, PG-13, was established with the advisory, “Parents Strongly Cautioned – Some Material May Be Inappropriate for Children Under 13.” In 1985, John Milius’ “Red Dawn” was the first film to receive the rating.
“Temple of Doom” wasn’t as popular, at the time, as “Raiders” because of the dark overtones, human sacrifice, and child slavery but over the years, many of the fans who were initially not as fond of the movie, now appreciate it more for the fact that it wasn’t simply a rehash of “Raiders” but a completely new story with Indy being the only recurring character from the first film. Yes, it was dark, yes, it was scary, but it dared to be as far removed from its predecessor as it possibly could, and props have to go to Spielberg and Lucas for doing so. In fact, years later, both Spielberg and Lucas claimed that “Temple of Doom” was dark because both men were going through divorces in their personal lives. Spielberg would go on to say that “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade” was his apology to the world for “Temple of Doom” and said that it was his least favorite of the trilogy, stating that the greatest thing that he got out of making the movie was that he met Kate Capshaw and that they married years later.
I think Spielberg’s apology remark for “Temple of Doom” was off-target because while he may not remember it fondly, millions of fans do, and with each passing year, “Temple of Doom” gathers more and more supporters who realize that it is, in fact, a worthy follow-up (technically a prequel) to “Raiders.” The last half of the movie, including the mine car chase and the fight on the rope bridge, have to be some of the most exciting images ever put on film, and not many people know that the mine car sequence was taken from the original script for “Raiders.” After Belloq, Toht, and Dietrich have met their demise after opening the Ark, Indy and Marion then have to escape the island from the remaining Nazis, and they put the Ark in a mine car, and the soldiers give chase. It’s a good thing they deleted that scene from “Raiders,” as it wouldn’t have fit with the overall tone of that movie. “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom” is a fast-paced, relentless, non-stop action-adventure, and Harrison Ford is in perfect form as the titular hero. It would be five years before the world would receive another Indy adventure, but it was definitely worth the wait.
Available on 4K Ultra HD™ June 6th
