A Look Back: Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom

Posted by Kevin Carr (kevin@filmschoolrejects.com) on May 18, 2008

How This Movie Was Different

This was the first sequel, but Spielberg and Lucas decided to make it a prequel (sound familiar?). They stepped up the adventure on this one, with more action and a different location. The Nazis were traded for the evil Thuggee cult, and the ark was switched for the legendary Shankara Stones. Although it was arguably more violent than the previous film, with the addition of Ke Huy Quan as Short Round to the cast, it was aimed at the family market.

The Story

After narrowly escaping an assassination attempt in Shanghai, Indiana Jones hops a plane with nightclub singer Willie Scott and his assistant Short Round. The plane crashes in India where our heroes must help a suffering village by finding their sacred stone. Indy and gang head to Pankot Palace where they discover an underground temple in which the evil Thuggee cult practices human sacrifice, child slavery and all sorts of nasty shenanigans. Indy is determined to not just find the sacred stones but to free the children from the mines.

The Characters

Indiana Jones (Harrison Ford), archeologist extreme and scoundrel hero.

Willie Scott (Kate Capshaw), gold-digging and fussy nightclub singer along for the ride.

Short Round (Ke Huy Quan), orphaned child with a smart mouth but a lot of heart.

The Bad Guys

Mola Ram (Amrish Puri), evil leader of the Thuggee cult whose hobbies include painting his head red, tearing people’s hearts out and tennis.

Chattar Lal (Roshan Seth), political cover for the Thuggee cult and all-around douchebag who provides spin to the public and assistance in the Temple of Doom.

Lao Che (Roy Chiao), the evil Chinese gangster whose double-cross with Indiana Jones causes him to crash in the jungle of India.

What This Movie Meant to the Fans

Released the year after the last of the Star Wars movies of the 80s, Temple of Jones showed that Hollywood (along with Lucas and Spielberg) was ready to keep another franchise going. While it is often maligned as the worst of the three films, Temple of Doom was a box office hit that paved the way for The Last Crusade and solidified Harrison Ford as an action star. This was also one of the last films that retained relatively high quality from Steven Spieldberg, who shortly after 1984 put his name on dozens of films from The Goonies to *batteries not included.

How This Movie Impacted American Cinema

Along with Gremlins, which was also released in the summer of 1984 (and produced by Spielberg), Temple of Doom was violent enough that parents and watchdog groups called for a rating harsher than just PG. Shortly afterwards, the MPAA came out with a PG-13 rating which has become the most coveted rating by the studios in movie history.

Additionally, Temple of Doom won an Oscar for special effects and received a nomination for Best Score by John Williams. The then-large $28 million budget returned a worldwide gross of $333 million gross.

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