So I got the Indy movies a while back, and I’ve watched Raiders and Last Crusade a couple of times. I remembed Temple of Doom wasn’t particularly good (I saw it when it was new to video, but not since then) So today I was bored and I decided to watch it.
What a pile of crap!
How the hell did they manage to get funding for a third Indiana Jones movie after making that huge pile?
Seriously… The kid sidekick, the super-annoying female interest. Effects not even near the quality of Raiders. No Nazis. Lots of kids and stupid humour. Horrible filming (like when everyone’s dropping off the bridge and they cut to the obviously-filmed-elsewhere crocodiles)
Thank Og that they did manage to get the funding and make Last Crusade, because Temple of Doom is a complete disgrace.
All I have to say is that Indy 4 better be better than that junk.
Yeah… I know it’s an old movie, but I really had to say this.
Temple of Doom happens to be my favorite out of the three. Maybe it’s cause it was the first one I ever saw as a kid. I like Short-round and I even like Willie. In fact I watched it recently and still love it.
To me it’s the one where the good guys seem to be in the most danger. Devil worshippers who rip people’s hearts out was/is scary to me. For ten years after I saw that heart ripping out scene I would always close my eyes.
The nazis always seemed cartoonish to me, and never for once did they think they were ever going to win. I mean that in a good way and don’t dislike the other movies because of it, but that temple and what went on down in those caves is very very creepy.
BTW, how is Temple not filmed well? Technically it’s excellent. Say what you want about the plot but come on, the movie looks beautiful. How in 1984 do you expect them to reallistically film crocodiles tearing someone apart. Claymation?
Bad movie. The crocodile bridge is especially craptastic in that they have this shot where they pull back from Indiana and you actually let you see the bottom of the chasm…which is a dried up boulder-strewn creek about thirty feet down. Then they go back to showing the thousand foot plunge with crocodile at the bottom.
If you watch the behind-the-scenes documentary in the IJ DVD box set, you’ll find that both Lucas and Spielberg agree that the film’s plot and tone can primarily be attributed to Lucas, who was going through a particularly ugly divorce at the time. Also, though Spielberg admits he didn’t like the occult aspects of the movie, he went through with production because of his loyalty to his best friend, and now looking back, the only genuinely positive memory of the film is that it’s where he met his future wife.
No, it was rated PG, but it and Gremlins are largely cited as the films that encouraged the MPAA to rethink its system and add a rating between PG & R.
My major gripe is the bridge canyon (I happened to be watching that part as I typed) With the crocodiles… They’re entirely not needed. It’s a thousand foot fall, if that doesn’t kill you, what are a couple crocs going to do?
The plane crash was absolutely terrible too (the external shots) They could have done those significantly better… The airplane model seemed to not be right; it flew at the wrong angle, the design seemed skewed (I can’t really say how, it just seemed to not be correct)
It does contain what is perhaps my favorite Indiana Jones moment.
When Jones is trying to get his lady friend to stick her hand in a bunch of bugs to pull a lever that will save him, he peers through this tiny hole and says:
We . . . are going . . . to die!
. . . and then makes one of the silliest faces I’ve ever seen on screen.
All I remember about the movie is that the chick never stopped screaming. Shut up already! It’s definitely on my list of movies I never have to see again.
I never understood the hate for this movie. I much prefer it to The Last Crusade. The minecart chase beats walking across an invisible bridge for excitement any day.
You also have a batshit-crazy villain. He says quite matter of factly, “The British in India will be slaughtered. Then we will overrun the Moslems. Then the Hebrew god will fall. Then the Christian god will be cast down and forgotten. Soon Kali Ma will rule the world.” Um, I don’t know about you, but that’s a dastardly plan in my opinion.
So Kate Capshaw is whiny? She’s a pampered showgirl. How are you expecting her to react to a cave full of bugs? With shits and giggles? She was a hell of a lot more interesting than bland bland bland Alison Doody in The Last Crusade.
Not that there isn’t reason to nitpick if you want to. Like, did Lao Che really need to go to those complex lengths to kill Indiana Jones? What were those pilots who bailed out over the Himalayas going to live on? Yeti meat? They could have easily shot them all when they were sleeping like logs. Then again, maybe Lao Che wanted to crash the plane deliberately and cash in on the insurance. Oh Lao Che, must you be so inscrutable?
I recall watching the “Making of…” TV special for this one (remember when they used to do those?) and they focused especially on the bridge scene, because Harrison Ford’s foot left the very tight shot while he was flailing around, so in addition to the layers of other stuff that they SFXed in (including, bizarrely, crocs in the river a thousand feet below, which no one is going to see in the 2.5 seconds the shot is on screen), they had to create an animation of the end of his leg, and layer that in as well.
Dude, go back and watch Raiders of the Lost Ark. There’s nothing original about either the story or the cinematography (and I’d argue intentionally so; Speilberg was trying to remake the B-serials of his youth) but it has some excellent camera work and framing; the truck sequence (“Truck? What truck?”) is an awesome action set piece, and was aped (whether deliberately or no) by the airport tanker scene in the recent Casino Royale.
Temple of Doom, on the other hand, has some definitely second rate camera work and indifferent editing. Last Crusade has some problems, too (particularly the zepplin and the tank driving off the mountain) but is still much of an improvement over the previous sequels. The only thing good about Temple of Doom is the opening sequence, and that was a remnant of something they just couldn’t squeeze in to Raiders.
If you think Temple of Doom was terrible, though, just wait until they release of the upcoming Indiana Jones sequel. I guarantee that it’ll be full of craptastical CGI effects a la the Star Wars prequels or Live Free Or Die Hard. The great thing about Indiana Jones is how real and world-weary he is, and how he’s almost, but not quite, always on the verge of being shot, burned, blown up, run over, thrown off a cliff, sealed in a tomb, and killed by snakes, often simultaneously. He never looks like he’s thrilled to be there, either; he just wants his artifacts, damnit.
Clearly, they had their “top men” working on Temple of Doom.
And unfortunately you have to buy it in order to get the other two, or even just Raiders. I’d rather just buy a Criterion Collection edition of Raiders by itself, even at the same price.
I really liked Temple of Doom even with years of stupid questions from all of my friends.
“Do Indians really eat live snakes?”
“What about monkeys’ brains?”
“Beetles?”
Ugh. The only thing I wish I had known back then to say to them is people with too much money will eat anything.
Other than that, I loved the movie. I loved the villain. He is indeed speaking Hindi in that movie - I once translated it all on the boards and there’s a couple of lines I love.
My favorite is when Indy is being whipped:
“Maaro maaro sewer ko, chamdi nocho peelo khoon!”
('Beat the pig, rend his flesh, drink his blood!")
Yes the girl is appallingly whiny and annoying but that’s what makes Indy wrapping his whip <snerk> around her at the end and dragging her back to him acceptable. (Tortured grammar, sorry). Indy girls were never my favorite - they’re all kind of annoying. In contract, look at some of Arnold’s girls - they fight back and don’t scream like children and often help the protagonist.
Still, there’s a lot of charm to Temple of Doom. It’s a fun movie!
Totally agree. The Last Crusade’s climax was a big disappointment to me. Raiders is far and away the best of the three, but I think Doom is much more entertaining than Crusade.
The opening sequence in the nightclub in Temple of Doom is one of the best scenes in all three films.
If it weren’t for Temple of Doom, we would never have that classic Jeff Corwin Experience scene with the rural India cart driver rolling his eyes back and letting loose a healthy, “Kali Ma ! ! !”
And come on, who watches Indy with a critical eye? It’s theater. Suspend some disbelief already–you’ll need it for the Michael Moore flicks.
I was in grade school when Temple came out, and all the kids were totally into it. I guess the burgeoning controversy over the violence was already brewing, because my friend’s parents wouldn’t let him watch it. He didn’t want to be left out, though, so he pretended that he had seen it. Being young boys, a favorite topic of conversation was, “What was the grossest part?” Relying on something he’d misheard another kid say, he replied, “The part with the suit made out of eyeballs.”
The rest of the year, he was “eyeball suit” at school. Which, looking back on it, must have confused the hell out of the teachers.
I gotta agree, it’s a horrible movie, not only the worst of the three and a huge letdown, but just a bad movie all in and of itself. To this day, I have not watched it again, after seeing it twice in the theater. I’ve watched Raiders dozens of times and Last Crusade nearly as many, and could still sit down and watch them from any point if they happen to be on TV, but I wouldn’t watch Temple of Doom if the only other program on the tube were mixed doubles badmitten.