THE TEMPLE OF DOOM:
Most people hate it. I sort of love it. In fact, if I feel like spinning an Indy
movie in the background in the years to come, I can pretty much guarantee that it
will be the last 40 minutes of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.

Mind you, I'll be the first to admit that Temple of Doom has deeply embedded
problems, and that there are popular reasons for disliking it — even hating it.
The dialogue is ham-fisted. (I invariably cringe during the "What are you —
a lion tamer?"/"I'm allowing you to tag along" exchange. "A
lion." "Allowing." A homophone! I get it!) It's surprisingly
brutal in the middle. In women's-lib terms, Kate Capshaw's scream-queen
Willie Scott is such a step backward from Marion Ravenwood that I'm mildly surprised
NOW didn't picket the screenings. (The future Mrs. Spielberg, God bless her,
got handed a terribly written role — Willie's the shrieking Jar-Jar of the Indiana
Jones series.) And let's not even get into the film's retro-colonialist
overtones (which I find sort of perversely funny, but still). And the film is so
different from its predecessor — confined largely to one locale, not as sophisticated
or quest-driven, and very nearly Satanic in its depictions of evil — that it really
couldn't help but let viewers down. And the bad blood persists to this day,
people still slam "the second one."

Still, despite all that, I managed to arrive at the following list of reasons to
love the flick:

1. That unimpeachably awesome opening fight over the diamond and antidote, which
contains tributes to classic musicals and Hitchcock and just absolutely rocks the
house;

2. Ke Huy Kwan as Short Round, who — despite being handed cute-kid dialogue that
includes the lines "Hold onto your potatoes!" and "You call him Doctah
Jones, DOLL!" — is quite possibly the most likeable and least obtrusive child
sidekick in movie history. Check out the wonderful, genuinely warm give-and-take
between Kwan and Ford as they play poker or exchange hats;

3. That "Nice try, Lao Che!" visual gag;

4. Harrison Ford's terrific performance — arguably his best as Jones. I love
how Indy stars out as a total greedy asshole, with strong shades of Bogart in Treasure
of Sierra Madre, and how there's a distinct character arc as he evolves into
a Pied-Piper/holy avenger;

5. The movie's look — again, the best in the series — with its striking wide-angle
close ups of Indy's face and strong use of reds and shadows. Temple of Doom
is a manual on how to use color in film, no joke. This movie contains Spielberg's
busiest frames, and it's all beautiful. It's a pornography of cinematography;

6. John Williams' score, which is among his very best — expanding richly
on the original and adding wonderful themes for Short Round and the slave children;

7. Vampire bats! Severed thumbs!

8. The matte paintings of Pankot Palace, which are among the best matte paintings
ever;

9. The sexy, playful, totally '80s, beautifully edited cat-and-mouse sequence
where way-horny Indy and Willie are trying to out-wait each other, only to have
the flirtation interrupted by a Thuggee assassin. (How can you not love the way
that thug steps out of that wall mural?);

10. The super-icky, super-taut bug-tunnel and death-trap set piece, which is a
perfect transition between the palace and the Temple of Doom and which very nearly
kicks the ass of the Well of Souls sequence (it certainly makes your skin crawl
more) and features that great closing gag where Indy grabs his hat as the door's
closing;

11. The way the movie shifts so abruptly into scenes of human sacrifice and child
cruelty. I'm sorry, I just love what a cinema bomb Spielberg and Lucas drop
here: Yes, the horror's laid on a bit thick, but come on — how totally cathartic
are those last 40 minutes as a result, when Indy snaps out of the Black Sleep of
Kali and dishes out the hurt to faceless Thuggee goons?

12. That little 1940s tip of the hat Indy gives to that cobra statue as he's
stealing the stones — a perfect Bogart moment;

13. Amrish Puri as Mola Ram — by far the scariest and most depraved villain in
the series. He's mindlessly scary like Orcs are scary, you know? He looks like
what Abe Vigoda would look like if he were a sadistic Indian child molester;

14. The way Indiana Jones doesn't just look drugged when he's in the Black
Sleep of Kali, but instead looks like he's really into all the sadism and blood,
like he's actually tapped into some dark part of his personality that was there
all along;

15. And, best of all, the movie's final 40 minutes, which are inventive and
cathartic and full of righteous fury and pain and thrilling action — it's Lucas
and Spielberg working out all their action-geek demons without apology, and God
bless 'em for it. I mean, has any movie ever piled one action sequence on top
of the next so successfully? That voodoo conveyor-belt fight followed by the mine-car
chase followed by the water tunnel followed by the dual-swordsman tango followed
by the rope-bridge blowout? With all kinds of semi-perverse shots like the one where
both Indy and Short Round are beating the crap out of age-appropriate foes?


Really. The movie's aged well. Better than you might think. Give it a second
chance. It's total geek crack.


"Uh-huh. And now I suppose you're going to say the third film "sucks,"
right?"

Now, now. I wouldn't dare to blanket-slag Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade;
in fact, I actually softened on it quite a bit over the years, which I'm sure
should disturb me but doesn't.

Certainly, there's some wonderful chemistry between Ford and Sean Connery, who
plays dotty, arrogant Dr. Jones paterfamilias (a casting coup, that). And River
Phoenix does an uncanny and quite funny Harrison Ford impression, glaring and smirking
as young Indiana Jones (who, apparently, acquired his whip, hat, fear of snakes
and chin scar in a single afternoon in 1912). And kudos to the late Jeffrey Boam
for writing some lively, character-driven, funny dialogue; it comes as a relief
after the spoken-word atrocities wrought by Katz and Huyck. And that largely improvised
action sequence with the WWI tank? Delicious. (Well, mostly delicious; see below.)

But, all that said: Despite its clearly being Spielberg's favorite and most
personal film in the series — unresolved Daddy issues and all — Last Crusade commits
two filmic sins I won't readily forgive:

1. It resorts to mockery. It's one thing when a sequel tweaks its characters
a little — but Last Crusade revels in making fools of its protagonists, to the degree
that it takes me out of the movie and undermines any sense of danger the film may
hold. While I generally enjoy the Oedipal dynamic between Papa and Junior Jones,
there's just one too many moments for my taste where Henry makes Indiana look
like a total jackass. And don't even get me started about what they did to Marcus
Brody: In Raiders, Brody is an obvious mentor to Indy and no minor badass himself;
as he says, he's only five years too old to have undertaken the quest for the
Ark himself. But in Last Crusade, Brody's a doddering buffoon, a drunk with
Alzheimer's, a man who gets lost in his own museum. Watch how his comedy "bits"
with Sean Connery almost derail any tension to be had in the desert battle with
the tank. It's almost unforgivable. And Sallah, so resourceful and charming
and filled with music in the first film, is kind of a doofus here, stealing camels
for his relatives and otherwise serving as wacky-Arab comic relief.

2. The movie contains very few actual thrills. In Raiders, Indiana Jones took
on sadists, Nazis and a fierce competitor (not to mention a pissed-off ex-girlfriend).
In Temple of Doom, he fell into a subterranean hell and took on the very minions
of Kali. In Last Crusade, he takes on a bumbling group of idiots — and, as a result,
very little of the film's action leads me to believe that Indiana Jones is in
any real danger. Seriously. Who are our bad guys here? Guys in fezzes? A Nazi commander
out of a Mel Brooks movie? And, dear Lord, I very nearly forget that Julian Glover
is even in the damned thing, and he plays the bad guy who gets the supernatural-disintegration
treatment! And Glover was my old flame's acting teacher! Am I really supposed
to consider this British-channeling-American slice of Wonder Bread a threat? Get
back in your AT-AT, General Veers!

- which is a homage to the serials of the 30s, 40's and 50's of which Gunga Din and the idea of the evil Nazi German was pervasive.

If you want to say those movies should never be referred to again because they are pervasively racist, thats fine

but its still bullshit and I would like to see you condemn every other Indiana Jones movie for perpetuating stereotypes of (1) Germans as all Nazis

(2) all French as sniveling douchebags (3) all Chinese as no good double dealing con artists.

An homage doesn't have to be uncritical of its inspiration. Galaxy Quest was an homage to Star Trek, but it pointed out the sillier aspects of the series as well. L.A. Confidential is an homage to film noir, but it portrayed the corruption and racism of the police force, which no film of the '40s and '50s could get away with. But the Indy films are just straight, unquestioning paeans to the mindset of the films its ripping off.

No, Gunga Din and such like should be watched and understood in light of the time they were made. But the Indy films weren't made in the '30s.

The film depicted the German military as all Nazis, which is historically accurate. But in 1935 there were no Thugs in India -- and even if there were, they weren't Hindu religious fanatics as the film suggests -- and the Indians weren't a bunch of peaceful peasants incapable of defending themselves.