If you're like me, you've always wondered why Raiders of the Lost Ark takes place in 1936, while Temple of Doom takes place in 1935. Well, while watching ROTLA (again) the other night, it finally occurred to me why TOD absolutely, positively HAS to take place before ROTLA.

In Raiders, when Indy sneaks onto the Nazi u-boat transporting the ark, you will notice he no longer has his hat. It certainly seems like he lost it at that point. It was probably for the best, since he later disguises himself and would have had a hard time blending in with the Nazis marching to the ark-opening ceremony if he was wearing his famous fedora.

Later he is in Washington D.C. - and it looks like he was reluctantly forced to buy a new hat. He can be seen with Marion, noticeably irritated while sporting a new gray model that doesn't look right on him. In one close-up, he even looks a little sad, almost as if he lost something really precious. Let's face it, that new hat just isn't working for him.

So, Lucas and Speilberg, realizing the gray hat simply would not work in a sequel, wrote themselves out of a corner by concocting the whole "prequel" concept.

Unfortunately, they later pretended the gray hat never existed, destroying all sense of continuity when The Last Crusade picked up the story two years after Raiders. A scene transition from when he is a kid to when he is an adult even suggests it's the SAME hat! So the question now isn't "Why was Temple of Doom a prequel?", but rather, "How can The Last Crusade be a sequel?"

ummm yeah

I want my minute back please.

The reason is that they wanted to give him a new leading lady without unnecessary exposition regarding what happened to Marion.

I agree to an extent. But I mean it's not like the exposition is necessary. I mean we never get any for what happened to Bonds chick(s) from one movie to the next.

How hard would it be to find another brown hat?

That was always my guess until Last Crusade. Marion's missing and no mention is made of her (though the Ark is referenced) or a even the slightest attempt to excuse her absence.

No, I think it was made a prequel to explain why the Nazi's are no shows in the Temple of Doom when they were so prominent in Raiders. Then again, it would still leave the question as to why that Chinese mobster is no longer chasing after Dr. Jones in by the time of Raiders or at least Last Crusade. I'm sure word of Jones' survival would have reached him eventually.

I think by then they realized that most people don't really care. As Josh says, all the Bond chicks just magically disappear between films (Tracy excepted). Why not with Jones?

I think we're all putting too much thought in to movies that are meant to be nothing more than fairly mindless entertainment.

Wasn't it a prequel so they could make Indy more of a grave-robbing, treasure-seeking type of archeologist instead of the "it belongs in a museum" guy of Raiders and Last Crusade? If you notice, at the beginning of Temple of Doom his mantra is "fortune and glory", but by the end he willingly gives up the stone to the villagers and rescues all their kids.

Of course, making TOD a prequel did create one major problem for me in Raiders. Why does Indy tell Marcus early in the film that he doesn't believe in "magic or hocus pocus" after his experiences with the Thuggee cult a year earlier?

Doughboy,

Maybe he forgot about themmuch the same way as he forgot where he left Short Round.

Doughboy - I've thought about this explanation before. To me it would have been so much better if this is what led Indy to become a professor of archaeology. Yet, in TOD he mentions how he needs to get back to his university, so it seems he already has an appreciation for the historical value of relics. I just don't understand why the prequel concept was so "wasted" when it could've been a much more interesting origin story.

Short Round changed his name to "Data" and retired to Astoria, Oregon.

Although he doesn't mention it in the new documentary, I specifically remember Spielberg saying that the reason Temple is a prequel is because everyone felt that the end of Raiders implied that Marion and Indy were going to be a permanent couple. I guess by the time Crusade rolled around, they didn't worry about that anymore.

As for the missing hat, it was definitely abandoned in Indy's room on Captain Katanga's ship...we can only assume that at some point the hat was returned to Indy, since the hat in Crusade is the same hat he gets in 1912. I mean, SOMEONE had to come and pick up Indy and Marion on that island at the end of Raiders...Katanga's ship may have been the closest boat in the area.

Or, after losing his hat on Katanga's ship, perhaps it took a couple of years to magically float back to him (like it did in Last Crusade after he nearly rode off the cliff on that tank).

Kaffe_02 - that would never work. It wouldn't be THE hat. If all Indy wants is any old brown hat, he wouldn't have reached back into that traproom and risked losing an arm while escaping with Willie and Short Round.

The hat did have importance (since it was given to him by that other dude in Last Crusade), but I doubt that it was the reason for making TOD a prequel. And, I am sure that he was sad at the end of ROTLA due to losing the ark, not his hat!

Besides, I thought Lucas had many stories already written before TOD. I may be wrong.

The Grey Hat is Indy's "Man About Town" hat. The Brown Hat is reserved for "Adventuring." And the Glasses are only for "Teaching."

Kmac - Lucas sold the series to Speilberg, under the "I have three stories wrote" premise, but if you watch the fourth disc, documentry on 'Temple of Doom', Speilberg says that in reality, Lucas did not have the sequels wrote or even planned out, beyond the basic premise (i.e, the first one is light, second the darkest and third is the big finale). So, it seems as though Lucas just wanted to make another trilogy, but in reality didn't have any stories wrote out.

When I was a kid, my father told me the reason they made ToD a prequel was that making it a sequel would bring it closer to WWII and they didn't want to get bogged down with more Nazis and Japanese military stuff. Of course, by the time of Last Crusade, they didn't seem to care about the Nazi angle.

I saw that and imediately thought of the Star Wars OT.

As did I. I think it is extremely obvious that Star Wars and the Indiana Jone's trilogy was not wrote out before hand, like Lucas like's to say.

Speaking of Indiana Jones Trilogy, does anyone know what the 4th Indy movie is going to be about? I've heard that both Marion and Willie will be in the movie.

Though I'm sure Lucas had the general idea in his head (he knew where he wanted to go with the story),itis quite obvious that the details that lead from point A to point B of the OT where made up on the fly by Lucas. Sadly, the negatives of this approach become more obvious as the new trilogy unfolds. That's not to say there's nothing good about them but that they now have a lot of loose ends for just one remaining film to resolve. Though the Ep. III rumours seem to indicate that Lucasmanaged to get himself out of a self made corner with style to spare but it's a nuisance he could have avoided had he truly plotted all these films out prior to filmiing the Star Wars saga.

I think Temple of Doom is a prequel because what greater find is there than the covenant of the ark? The Holy Grail of course. Before Indy leaves on his mission for the Ark Brody says "

Well, I mean that for nearly three thousand years man has been searching for the lost ark. It's not something to be taken lightly. No one knows its secrets. It's like nothing you've ever gone after before."

The next quest would have to be one that could never be topped but it had to be saved for last, so naturally they stepped back a chapter in which Indy merely has to find a stone and save a village. I think this gave the trilogy an even balance.