Forty years ago today, the PREQUEL to "Raiders of the Lost Ark", perhaps the most revered film of the early 1980s, was released to a rapturous public on Memorial Day weekend. The box office total for this second Indy outing was predictably huge- $179 million in the U.S., coming in third for the year behind "Beverly Hills Cop" and Ghostbusters". It's safe to say that crowd-pleasing fun was being perfected at this time. But with the exception of a giddy Roger Ebert(four stars), the same level of critical respect has eluded "Doom". Leonard Maltin and People magazine were downright hostile. A summer backlash over the film's darkness and violence(and the equally anarchic "Gremlins") led to the creation of the PG-13 rating for the heart-ripping, child-enslaver Mola Ram. Director Steven Spielberg, the industry's most powerful figure, supported the move and appeared remorseful during publicity for 1989's "Last Crusade". A recent rewatch for this article revealed than an apology was never necessary. Join me as I explain in great detail why every childhood should include in trip to India in 1935.
It's anything goes in a Shanghai nightclub. I like Dr. Jones in a white tux, a clever nod to James Bond and a neat contrast to the famous "Raiders" opening and all the dirtiness to come. Producer George Lucas hired the husband-and-wife writing team of William Huyck and Gloria Katz("American Graffiti") in 1982 to craft a "Gunga Din"-style adventure complete with black magic and human sacrifice(original writer Lawrence Kasdan was uninterested in those ideas). The "Star Wars" creator was adament that Nazis and Marion Ravenwood not be included, allowing Kate Capshaw to sing in Mandarin for Chinese crime boss Lao Che(Roy Chiao). Indiana ends up with two unlikely sidekicks while concluding some perilous business in the Far East.
Ke Huy Quan is indeed very funny as Short Round, an energetic 12 year old orphan that presumably became Indy's guide in Shanghai. The character was an instant fan favorite and the perfect counterpoint to the impending gloom and doom, and Quan soon found himself cast in Richard Donner's "The Goonies", another Spielberg adjacent project. The endearing actor became an Oscar winner for 2022's "Everything Everywhere All At Once", after a long absence from the screen. "The Dial of Destiny", the fifth film in the franchise, missed out on a crowd-pleasing opportunity.
Yes, that's Dan Aykroyd, SNL original and ghostbuster, leading Indy, Willie Scott, and Short-Round to a getaway plane(or is it?).
We're only 15 minutes in, and we have another breathless escape as Willie informs Indy that Lao Che's parachuting pilot has bailed on the trio. An inflatable raft that slides down the Himalayas into a river is the reason I never really joined the "nuked the fridge" chorus in 2008. Spielberg and Lucas always knew they were making a total escapist fantasy.
You ever notice how extras and bit players in old movies are always a million times more convincing than the clean cardboard cut-outs that populate films today? Indian shaman D.R. Nanayakkara didn't speak a word of English, and had to be slowly fed all his lines offscreen by Spielberg. His village's impoverished children are disappearing, along with three sacred stones passed down from the Hindu gods. A Thuggee cult that haunts the region are the obvious culprits. I was well into adulthood before I realized that Indy transitions from treasure hunter motivated by "fortune and glory" to a noble figure that can't let such evil persist over the next ninety minutes.
Wilhelmina Scott isn't good at roughing it, even after trading her tight beaded dress for Indy's shirt and pants. I was also well into adulthood before I appreciated Kate Capshaw's performance. The then-29 year old actress was always smarter than the "screaming damsel in distress" that made her famous, and she played the part exactly as she was told- as an homage to the screwball era where men and women constantly bickered before falling in love. She's a brave trooper throughout, and speaking of love, was richly rewarded in the end. Kate married Spielberg in 1991.
"Don't come up here!" I love that. Harrison Ford hurt his back on those elephants and was sidelined for a month. With a Jake Steinfeld workout regime in preparation for his "Raiders" reprisal, Ford looks even more godly than he did the first time around. With all due respect to Sylvester Stallone and Tom Cruise and Eddie Murphy, he's the biggest movie star of the 1980s.
We've arrived in Pankot Palace for my least favorite scene in the original three. I'm not going to talk about cultural insensitivities or a white savior narrative, like some revisionist writers. Nobody cared about that before 2014. This movie is a live-action cartoon. I simply never found the gross-out gags at the dinner-table funny. It took me a long time to realize that Philip Stone was in "The Shining" and Roshan Seth was in "Ghandi".
Indy thinks he might score with Willie(again, the '80s were better), and ends up fighting a Thuggee creep instead. Which, of course, leads to a trap door. Is the capital building of Pankot, India really a front for sinister forces?
In "Raiders", it was snakes. "Last Crusade" would bring rats. Here we have BUGS, in a booby-trapped, skull-crushing room. The team gathered 30,000 beetles and 50,000 cockroaches. God-damn, Spielberg! That's a real stick-bug on the hand of a sedated Kate Capshaw in her silk pajamas. Buckets of bugs has to be the most unique foreplay of all time. "Doom" is universally considered the third best '80s Indy movie, but this moment is AWESOME. Pure cinema, and there's more to come.
The trio enter the temple of death- an early Lucas title suggestion. Nobody's seen anything like this in years. Shout out to cinematographer Douglas Slocombe and production designer Elliot Scott for their "horrific, subterranean" work(Spielberg's words). It's been pointed out by the superduo themselves that they were going through break-ups in 1983- George split from wife Marcia Lucas and Steven was on-and-off with Amy Irving. I don't know why they insist on explaining and apologizing for "the all darkness". Every kid in America was elated.
Is Mola Ram(Amrish Puri) the best Indy villain? Belloq doesn't rip anybody's heart out and I'll bet you can't name any of the Nazis. Indy is sickened by this ghoulishness and gets himself captured when he makes an unsuccessful play for the Sankara Stones.
The 1980s started with Han Solo frozen in carbonite and ended with Biff Tannen becoming Donald Trump. Sequels have to go darker. You've already got the people, so take them for a ride. The Blood of the Kali Ma, a mystical mind-control potion, puts Jones in a cursed trance. This Black Sleep is very bad for Willie and Short Round, who become Thuggee prisoners. This isn't at all what "E.T." fans were expecting. I understand Spielberg feeling like perhaps he betrayed his audience with this PG-13 hellscape that's as scary as "Poltergeist". But that only makes the last 30 minutes even sweeter.
"I'm alright, kid". Is there a more rousing moment in '84? Maybe the Crane kick, maybe the Ghostbusters "Savin' the Day". Maybe Axl Foley and Patti LaBelle arriving in Beverly Hills. What a year. Shorty breaks the spell with a friendly flame in just enough time to rescue Willie. Think about how radically different movies became when Spielberg and Lucas took power. Ten years earlier, it was quiet classics like "Chinatown" and "The Conversation"(also featuring Ford), and "The Godfather Part II". It's like night and day.
No disrespect to early 21st Century heroes like Jason Bourne, Ethan Hunt, John Wick, and the Avengers. But I'm glad I grew up watching Ford fight back pain and a bearded Thuggee enforcer(Pat Roach) with a soaring John Williams score in the background. The young maharaja has a voodoo doll of Indy that almost puts Jones through a rock-crushing conveyor belt, until a torch-wielding Shorty frees him from the trance.
Some say that Spielberg and Lucas turned movie theaters into amusement parks. I fail to see the problem, Pauline Kael. With "Return of the Jedi" ruling the '83 summer box office, a similarly-showstopping finale would be required one year later. The minecart chase was originally conceived for "Raiders", but the dynamic duo revisited the idea when they hired Huyck and Katz to script "Temple". The result is an astonishing six-minute sequence even by today's standards. Miniatures and stop-motion photography were seamlessly combined with the rollercoaster footage by Dennis Muren's ILM team, and they were rightly rewarded with the Best Visual Effects Oscar.
So, what is cinema, exactly? It's the Titanic sinking, it's the T-Rex, it's the T-1000, it's "2001: A Space Odyssey". It's Dr. Jones cutting a rope bridge to send Thuggee cultists crashing into alligator-infested waters. It's about the most fun that can be had with clothes on. We used to build shit in movies, and this bridge was constructed in Sri Lanka and was as dangerous as it looked. The cutting/plummeting scene could only be done once, and the hanging and close-ups were captured at England's Elstree Studios. Mola Ram betrayed Shiva and gets his head bashed on the rocks below, while the British Indian Army blasts his remaining crew. Indy gets what he was after for the only time in the series.
Remember when the hero got the girl?
I think I went through a pretentious period in my late teens/early twenties where I didn't think this was a great movie. Fuck that. Never again. The proof is preserved forever on Disney+ and all the DVDs and Blu-rays still floating around(go get one). Spielberg's next two efforts were "The Color Purple" and "Empire of the Sun"- good movies that haven't been talked about nearly as much as "Temple of Doom". It's an hour an 58 minutes of twisted bliss. How many Marvel movies will still be around in forty years? Indy II is top-tier entertainment from the greatest purveyors of it. "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom" is one of the world's greatest films.
