Our ongoing series looking at movies that took the blockbuster genre to the extreme and perhaps to excess. Note that these reviews may contain spoilers.
What Is It?
This globe-trotting adventure finds archaeologist Indiana Jones traveling to India, where he becomes entangled in a dangerous quest involving a remote village and a mysterious cult. Joined by nightclub singer Willie Scott and his young companion Short Round, Indy faces deadly traps, ancient rituals, and escalating peril deep within a forbidding palace.
Cast: Harrison Ford, Kate Capshaw, Ke Huy Quan, Amrish Puri, Roshan Seth, Philip Stone
Crew: Steven Spielberg (Director), Willard Huyck (Screenplay), Gloria Katz (Screenplay), George Lucas (Story), John Williams (Music)
Original Release: May 23, 1984
What Were Its Excesses?
Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom delivered top-notch production values and nonstop action, very much like the first film in the franchise. But it took things to the point of relentlessness and had neither a good story nor well-developed characters to carry it beyond its action scenes.
A Closer Look:
As the 1980s began, George Lucas and Steven Spielberg had achieved messianic status among Science Fiction and Fantasy fans for their big-screen accomplishments, which had completely changed the direction of filmmaking and made genre movies a hot property at the Box Office. Lucas had delivered the first two Star Wars movies by this time, as well as his early dystopic film THX 1138. Spielberg had given us Jaws and Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Then in 1981, these two genre deities teamed up and struck gold once again with Raiders of the Lost Ark.
That film, which introduced the world to the intrepid archaeologist Indiana Jones, followed a similar path to Star Wars as it drew heavily on the early movie serials for its inspiration but injected big-budget flair to create onscreen magic that audiences could only dream about prior to the beginning of the Blockbuster Era. It seemed by this point that Lucas and Spielberg could do no wrong and that anything they touched turned to gold, but their movie magic would start to fade as the decade progressed. Both still enjoyed Box Office success, but diminishing returns started to set in creatively with the overly smarmy E.T. in 1982 for Spielberg and the misstep of Return of the Jedi for Lucas in 1983 (you can read more about that one at this link).
Then with 1984’s Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, the superstar team-up hit its first major pothole. If you doubt the creative misstep of this film, then let me indulge you for just a bit. If you have seen the first two Indiana Jones films, then think back to both Raiders of the Lost Ark and Temple of Doom and summarize the plot of each in your head. I’m guessing you can pretty quickly dash off a description of Raiders as involving Indiana Jones’ attempt to recover the Ark of the Covenant—which holds the remains of the Ten Commandments—to keep it from the hands of the Nazis who want to tap into its supernatural powers. I’m also guessing that you can elaborate much further on that movie, including Jones’ reunion with former lover Marion (played with spunk by Karen Allen) and his partnership with Sallah (a career performance from John Rhys-Davies), up to the final scene where (Spoiler Alert?) the Ark gets locked away in a secret government warehouse.
Now, tell me a little bit about Temple of Doom: it had Indiana Jones, and some blond girl, and some annoying Chinese kid, and someone got their heart ripped out in this ancient temple, and some other stuff happened. Am I about right here?
Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom gives us a prequel to Raiders of the Lost Ark, but it delivered very little of the inspiration or verve of the film it followed. It serves up a convoluted story that finds Jones, along with his child sidekick Short Round (Ke Huy Quan) and unwitting tagalong Willie Scott (Kate Capshaw), deposited in the Himalayas, where they become involved in helping the oppressed people of a small village escape from the yoke of the evil people living in a nearby palace. The story, cobbled together by George Lucas, is completely of secondary concern, though, as director Spielberg focuses primarily on putting our heroes into endless perilous situations in a relentlessly paced movie that hopes to assault your senses to the point that you ignore the lack of story or character development.
Whereas Raiders gave us at least a threadbare—though definitely unique and interesting—plot to string together its action sequences, Temple cares little about originality or the story structure holding the film together. And while the first film lived and died by the performance of Harrison Ford as Indiana Jones, it also populated the cast with characters and actors who held their own next to his star power. Karen Allen provided a strong female lead that complemented the film’s hero, whereas Kate Capshaw (who had much better days ahead of her) gave us little more than a blond bimbo and some eye candy. And where John Rhys-Davies nearly stole some scenes away from Ford, the young Ke Huy Quan gave us little more than the grating child sidekick stereotype.
But ultimately what sunk this film was the sequel curse that would become quite prominent during the Blockbuster Era. This has has found follow-up movies focusing on the spectacle aspects of their predecessors and then amping that up to the nth degree. Ignoring the story elements and/or characterization that helped the original movie succeed, these sequels give us a nonstop visual assault, hoping to hide the vapidity of the production behind the flash of its spectacle. Temple of Doom was not the first sequel to go that route during the Blockbuster Era (I would say that Jaws 2 holds that honor), but it did manage to derail a very promising film franchise that would never fully recover. The third movie, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, was a little better but still fell well short of the original. And the less said about the fourth film, the better, though the most recent entry was at least watchable.
Temple of Doom is not a complete disaster, and it also did not represent the same cynical, market-driven turn that we saw with Return of the Jedi. But it is definitely highly representative of the type of film we would see all too often in the Blockbuster Era that would wow you as you watched it on the big screen to the point of numbing your senses, but would have faded from your memory by the time you got home from the theater.
The Story Continues:
Despite turning out a disappointing sequel/prequel creatively, Temple of Doom still did well enough in theaters to justify a third film in the franchise. That came in 1989 with Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, teaming Harrison Ford with screen legend Sean Connery. That one was certainly better than the second film, but still not quite a return to the inspiration of Raiders of the Lost Ark, and the franchise stalled at that point even though Last Crusade did quite well at the Box Office.
In 2008, Indiana Jones returned to the big screen with The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, and that seemed like an attempt to revive the franchise and pass it along to a younger generation, with Shia LaBeouf onboard as Jones’ son. But while the film did well in theaters, creatively it did not satisfy, exemplifying some of the same excesses as the second film, and people did not seem to accept LaBeouf as the next Indiana Jones.
The franchise went on pause again, though it returned in 2023 with Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny. Neither Steven Spielberg nor George Lucas were involved at that point, as the franchise had passed over to the control of Disney. And Shia LaBeouf was only seen in a brief cameo appearance. This film was better received than The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, but it was very expensive to produce at a budget of over $350 million, and it proved a Box Office disappointment, putting into question any further entries in the franchise (especially considering Harrison Ford’s age).
From 1992 to 1995, ABC aired two seasons plus four films of The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles, which was well-received and earned several Emmy Awards. But it was short-lived—in part due to high production costs—and it mostly focused on the historical characters that Indiana Jones encountered, with very little of the sci fi and fantasy elements as part of the stories.
Starting in 1983, Marvel put out an ongoing comic book series with the further adventures of Indiana Jones, and that ran for 34 issues. Dark Horse later acquired the rights and would put out several Indiana Jones books over the years. The character would also live on in novels, particularly the Young Indiana Jones books, which carried on from the TV series.
Interesting Facts:
Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom helped to create the PG-13 rating. The intense scenes—particularly the infamous heart-ripping ritual—sparked controversy among parents because they pushed the boundaries of a PG film. Along with Gremlins (released the same year)—and, to an extent, 1979’s rather dark The Black Hole—the backlash led to the creation of the PG-13 rating later in 1984.
This film was a prequel instead of a sequel because George Lucas didn’t want the second film to feel like a continuation or rehash of Raiders of the Lost Ark, or as though he were trying to top the first film in the series. Also, they did not have to explain why Marion Ravenwood was not around since Karen Allen did not return to the franchise at that point.
George Lucas had asked Lawrence Kasdan–who had penned the script to Raiders of the Lost Ark–to also write Temple of Doom, but Kasdan turned it down feeling it was too dark: “I just thought it was horrible. It’s so mean. There’s nothing pleasant about it… the movie is very ugly and mean-spirited.”
Where Can You Watch It?
The film is widely available on DVD, Blu-ray, and 4K UHD, and you can purchase it VOD. It is currently avaialble to stream on Disney+ and Paramount+.
