Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984)

Rewatched 12/30/24 (Prime Video)

This is it. This is the best directorial work ever turned in for an action comedy. From screwball antics to multi-level montage brawls to the gadgets and gags that make both aspects tick, Spielberg nor any other director has ever topped this. Raiders and Last Crusade are the closest runners up, and there’s even a case to be made for the likes of a Minority Report or a Jurassic Park. But I would argue that none of those top the sheer inventiveness and relentlessness at play in Temple of Doom.

It’s my favorite opening scene ever to grace the silver screen. A ‘50s-colored musical opening credits featuring the most satisfying burn-in text of all time as it drapes over an electrically-costumed Cate Capshaw. It’s such an exciting departure from everything Raiders showed us of our favorite American action hero. What a way to open! Followed by the great lazy suzan dinner table centerpiece, literally spinning Indiana’s fate in circles, unsure where it will land, with John Williams’ eerie string music setting the tension for a quickly-escalating confrontation between Jones and his gangster adversaries. This bleeds into bite-your-nails rapid-fire: mistaken identity crisis of diamonds & ice cubes, a clutter of poisons and antidotes, fake waiters, champagne bottle gunshots, a shish-kabob spear kill(!!! The BEST!!!), cigarette girl punches, the founding of the sport of gong running/machine gun avoidance, the Club Obi-Wan reveal, and the descent into a car chase replete with a kid driver, an oblivious rickshaw driver, a 1930s Shanghai streets shootout, burnt-nail gun-dropping, etc. Despite the opening song and dance, diamonds are very much NOT a girl’s best friend here—and that’s just one of a myriad of this one’s best in-jokes for movie lovers.

Quickly we’re catapulted into Dan Aykroyd’s plane, which is revealed to be Lau Che’s in an a hilarious moment of irony for the clueless Dr. Jones. The frequent mix of badassery and American idiocy/overconfidence is a large part of what makes this Ford character the best in movie history. There are annoying animals in the plane, psycho pilots who empty the fuel reserves over India and jump ship, and that launches Indy and gang into the ludicrous, thrilling life raft parachute maneuver, down into the snowy mountains and subsequent river rapids. Willie the dancer won’t shut up, everyone’s getting a facefull of water, and Indy declares what country they’re in by simply seeing one dude he automatically deems Indian (unintentional, probably cancellable comedy).

Then the exposition on the stones. But even that scene features some Willie comedy in the first of her many bouts with foreign foods; some living, some dead. The tone is all over the place but it works because Spielberg hits the comedy and setpieces so damn hard. It’s a miracle that he’s able to pull it off even in the most serious of circumstances (literally this village’s children, livestock, and crops have all disappeared and we’re still cracking audience comedy for some reason). The ensuing journey to a more established civilization with the mission being to recover some stones enjoys the company of asshole elephants, “giant vampire bats!”, and a variety of other scream-inducing exotic animals, paired nicely with a poker game full of cheaters and a lot of yelling in both English and Mandarin, I believe.

Into the titular Temple of Doom next. Jones gets himself into trouble arguing with their hosts at the palace, while Short Round is chased by dancers, Willie almost tries to seduce a 12-year-old, and the gang faces everything from snake surprise (oddly enough, Indy doesn’t comment on this dish—one of the only missed opportunities in this movie) to chilled monkey brains to eyeball soup.

After dinner and desert, the digestif comes in the form of a screwball comedy seduction scene—a more aggressive redux of such ‘40s movie scenes from It Happened One Night or His Girl Friday, to name a few of its inspirations. The whole film channels this energy between Ford and Capshaw, but never as successfully as here. As Capshaw’s character quickly jumps the gun asking a fruit-serving Ford his opinion on being her palace slave, he quickly retorts with hilariously stupid flirts regarding his duty as a doctor, nocturnal studies, etc. It of course devolves into a fight within minutes, and sexual repression turns into O2 repression as Indiana is choked out by an assassin hiding in the wallpaper of his room. Not only does Spielberg build up the will-they-won’t-they here with expert panache and humor, but the irony of Willie telling a choking jones he slipped right through her fingers while he reaches for the door with outstretched digits of his own is peak Spielberg understanding the assignment in recreating the strengths of his Golden Age heroes like Hawks or Capra. The fight itself is the ultimate nail-biter in the moment, too, that is until later when the ante is upped again and again. Indiana using the whip in perhaps the grimmest fashion of the series shows up here, as well, as he hangs his would-be killer by the neck from a ceiling fan. Gnarly!—and understanding of the power of environmental action improvisation. Capped off by a phenomenal come-down misunderstanding of Willie trying to get laid while Ford finds the busty secret entrance to the thuggee cult’s underlair, this 10-minute stretch just rocks in so many ways.

But don’t get excited because you haven’t seen shit yet. Next comes the definitive booby trap—preluded by a floor full of giant bugs and closets full of jumping corpses. A really stellar haunted house jaunt eclipsed only by its finale: the spike room. Jones and Short Round find themselves inspecting clues in a circular room when the younger of the two accidentally sets off the trap. This is the all-time apex of Ford yelling in a movie (yes, more than “Get off my plane!”) as spikes emerge from the ground and descending ceiling, threatening to squash and impale the adventuring duo. Willie is the only hope. So Ford all but threatens her into coming down to rescue them. Capshaw’s character immediately gets more than she bargained for as the insect horde is revealed to her and crawls absolutely everywhere on her pajama-clad body. It would be hard to watch if not for the fun that ensues as Ford’s panicked face and hands do their best physical comedy to motivate Willie into springing them from certain death. A nasty pressure release chamber and excellent John Williams buildup music highlight this absolute potboiler of a sequence as Willie finally saves her fellow travelers by the skin of her teeth. Not to be one-upped, the trap gets a shot at redemption through one last effort to crush them as Willie accidentally triggers it again, and Indy does his signature hat grab through the doorway, almost losing his hand as we almost lose our breath. Check your heart rate here, folks.

It is now time for the heart-rip set piece, which may be the definitive image I see, for better and worse, when I think Indiana Jones. I remember watching Temple of Doom as a kid before seeing the other movies, and boy did my parents try their best to avoid me seeing this scene. We had rented it on video from the library, and they totally Houdini-d me by fast-forwarding when I wasn’t looking. I went back the next day and rewound, watched it again, and this time, what to my horror should appear, but Mola Ram ripping the heart out of a kid, setting it on fire, and laughing like something out of your worst nightmare. The Temple set is a beautiful hellscape, something that was perfectly conceived for action figures and a kid’s imagination. The staging and pacing of the ritual is patient to the point of pain, allowing you to fully invest in the occult excavation of our most vital organ as humans. The kid getting his life yanked out of his chest is spot-on with the fear factor, the fiery pit he is lowered into features an awesome lightsaber-noise-initiated easter egg our heroes’ flamboyant reactions are captured with precision by DP Douglas Slocombe, a Spielberg mainstay, of course. The pans around to the chanting cult members hits hard, making you feel as if you too are witnessing this event firsthand, no matter how much you wish you weren’t. It’s electric.

Jones whips himself down to the scene of the crime post-ceremony, and gets his hands on the stones in one of the key images of the franchise. A malevolent grin washes over his face as he examines the artifacts he has been sent to retrieve, that morally-bankrupt fortune and glory mantra swimming backstrokes through his tiny brain as he moves to grab the loot. The way Spielberg refuses to shy away from the darker characterization of Jones in this movie is part of the reason it hits so hard for me. Of course the American cowboy isn’t a good guy. He’s out to fulfill his wildest fantasies no matter the cost at this point. Yes, he later comes to his senses and focuses on saving his friends, but the push-and-pull between those two ideologies and his complete disregard for the larger ramifications of his actions are what make Temple of Doom Indy the most compelling.

Ford, Capshaw, Quan’s characters are captured, of course, and subsequently filled in on the true mission of the Thuggee cult. They wish to discover all five stones through a mining operation involving stolen children from the surrounding village from whence our heroes came, and they will do whatever it takes to get these power sources. They wish to rule the world after re-emerging all-powerful. Jones of course believes this to be mumbo-jumbo, ravings from a foreign lunatic in Mola Ram, and tells his captor just as much. “What a vivid imagination” is delivered with signature Ford charm in the face if death here, certainly one of those moments where you just say to yourself, “Holy shit Indiana Jones is the coolest motherfucker alive. The balls on this guy!”

Anyways, Mola Ram feeds Jones the blood of Kali, out of a hideous zombified skull, and Jones only drinks it when the Thuggee pull out the final gadget at their disposal, and potentially the final nail in Jones’ coffin: a voodoo doll. Long have I sung the praises of injecting a movie with voodoo shit—it’s never not fun! And here there is no exception. Indy breaks bad for real, becoming a member of the Thuggee through mind control. It gets really bleak. Short Round is remanded to digging with the other slave children and Willie is set up in ceremonial garbs to be sacrificed after we’re presented with the haunting image of Harrison Ford, post-blood of Kali, smiling the same sick, twisted smile that Mola Ram employs.

While Ke-Huay Quan slowly but surely works on an escape strategy through pickaxe-ing his handcuffs and leg braces, Indiana oversees the near-deliverance of Willie to Hell. She’s put in the Temple’s sacrificial cage and begins to be lowered into the fire pit after spitting on Indy to try and get him to snap out of it. Her acting here, though you may call it intense, is exactly what anyone would do in this situation, and the reprieve of the ritualistic hottest show on earth in this fiery, doom-laden underground is mightily effective in putting your butt on the edge of its seat, if you care anything for cinematic action. It’s only when Short Round finally escapes, through an epic ladder-ride rope-catch maneuever followed by fist-pumping cheers by his audience, that we’re allowed to raise our eyebrows and breathe again, only to hold it right back inside as the sidekick faces overwhelming odds in waking Indy from his cruel slumber and saving the day.

Short Round gets to the ceremony and fights off attackers, putting the team on his back through skilled martial arts moves, until he tries to appeal to Jones’ inner-feelings, hidden beneath the black sleep. Jones slaps his friend in one of the more disturbing, heartbreaking moments of the film. Short Round is forced through loving tears to burn Jones with a torch, finally waking him up. And this is when the movie kicks into its final gear and we’re finally allowed to jump out of our seats as if watching a College Football overtime. Just as Jones goes to throw his friend into the fiery pit along with Willie, he lets him know, “I’m okay, kid.” Cue John Williams’ music and the cream of the crop of “Let’s fucking go” moments as the pair kick cultist butt. Despite overwhelming guards and a nail-biting back-and-forth with the wheel lowering and raising Willie into the pit, they manage to save their third amigo and keep the dream team from becoming just a dynamic duo. Indy battles foes with a giant stick, almost getting Mola Ram who escapes with all of the pulp trap-door-isms of the best adventure-serial influences, and Short Round does some of the best punches and roundhouse kicks of the series as they win the battle if not the war.

Cut into Jones and co. freeing the child slaves in triumphant badassery, going right into the pre-final boss showdown with the big Thuggee henchman, played by the same bloke from the airplane propeller in Raiders, this time sporting some unfortunate bronzer. Rocks, the whip, pickaxes, a rock-crushing spinning cylinder, and more voodoo dolls. Jones and the large Thuggee do battle as maximum palpability is ratcheted up with the Maharajah stabbing his doll over and over again. When Short Round catches on, we get the ultimate Spielberg shot of the kid and his hero uniting in a whip-pan slugfest of epic proportions amplified of course by Williams’ ear-ringing string music. Building and building until Jones dispatches of this actor again via a similarly gruesome shredding.

Time for mine carts. The ultimate Disney ride that never was. Of course Jones thinks he knows where to go, the dramatic irony swelling with every mistake their mine cart makes. Never has adrenaline fueled a mine cart like this, stretching Short Round across lava, dodging gunshots, throwing obstacles on the track. It’s another marvelous feat of go-for-broke creative mania. What the hell would you do in a mine cart chase? Anything to save your life. The imagination on screen realizes that and then some. We even get the hot-foot improvised braking system with the ironic water reveal. And then through the flood our characters make their way outside, scaling the side of a mountain and making their way to the bridge, which is maybe the best thing to ever happen in any movie ever.

Short Round and Willie descend onto the bridge, a rickety, rotted piece of junk destined to break with ease. And Short Round quickly proves that point by messing around, almost jumping himself to his death through a suspect board. The stakes are set as they’re shortly thereafter captured by the villains. Then Jones descends onto this bridge, we get the full view again of this beautiful skywalk pinned between two beautiful Indian cliffsides, angry alligators down below, ready to eat. The stakes have never been higher (up in the air), literally. As Jones and his sword weigh options against Thuggee bad guys coming in from both sides, Mola Ram, Willie, and Short Round also come out on the bridge. And Jones makes the most insane decision in any of these movies. “Mola Ram, prepare to meet Kali, in Hell” is delivered by Ford who is truly just one of the best swearing actors that has ever graced the screen. It’s the climax of all climaxes as Indy warns Short Round and Willie in Chinese of his plan before winding his legs into the ropes of the bridge. Willie and Short Round do the same with all of the nervous insanity of the situation being laid on extra thick. Cate Capshaw delivers an incredibly accurate, “Oh My God!” As Indy cuts the bridge and it snaps in half. For everyone who rags on the Willie character, please see Cate Capshaw’s incredible, hilarious delivery of “Oh my God” when she realizes that Indy is going to cut the bridge. Pitch-perfect. She understood the assignment in this movie, and the other characters all understand like we do that she is annoying. It’s like C-3PO. Since the movie also recognizes these characters as annoying, they work!

While many Thuggees fall to their death, a few remain and Indy battles them out along with Mola Ram, as Capshaw and Quan’s characters make their way up to safety on the cliffside. Indy contends with more attempts at heart surgery, various arrows flying at him from the other cliff, and a brutally-filmed focus on the difficulty which comes with climbing a thousand-year-old breaking bridge vertically. He defeats Mola Ram by using his precious stones against him and Spielberg shoots Jones’ triumphant return topside through the eyes of his companions as the British arrive to save their skins. This is bar none the most exciting, vomit-inducing 15 minutes of movie you can possibly put on your screen. It rules and Spielberg understands every beat so perfectly.

The final magic trick that Steven pulls off, with a ton of help from John Williams, is the roll into end credits, as Jones and company bring back the former child slaves to their parents in the village from whence they came. Williams is going absolutely nuts on the music as Spielberg’s camera tracks right along both sides until loving embrace between parents and children is finally captured with a justifiably ecstatic celebration following. Kids being raised on shoulders has never been so exciting. The hero kisses the girl, they get sprayed by an annoying elephant’s trunk, the end. This movie has it all.

11/10