Why Indiana Jones & the Temple of Doom Makes Me Crazy

November 22, 2010 Pamela Movies, Reviews 14

I love the Indiana Jones movies, for the most part. I can even work up a decent defense of Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, even though I don’t think it was very good as an Indy movie.

But Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom makes my ass twitch.

It bugs the crap out of me, and there are three major reasons for this. I’ll go through them in bullet points.

Willie Scott is one of the most irritating characters ever created.
She serves no purpose. She screams; she preens; she gets into ridiculous trouble; she can’t possibly get herself out of the aforementioned trouble without being rescued by the big, tough man; she screams some more; and she screams. She’s an annoying, gold-digging idiot, and she adds nothing to the movie. At all. Indiana Jones is an asshole to her, but honestly, I can’t blame him. She’s a worthless character.
The film suffers from serious colonialist/orientalist/racist problems.
Instead of, you know, portraying Indian culture accurately, it’s exoticized and demonized. They fall back on the racist binary of having the brown people as either evil/greedy or ignorant/in need of rescuing by the good, white man. Kali is not an evil goddess. All that stuff with the food? That’s not Indian. It’s just meant to gross us out and make us think, “Ew, what a weird, foreign place!” It’s lazy storytelling.
The style is uneven.
Temple of Doom incorporates a pretty odd mixture of very dark themes/violence and slapstick comedy. It is pretty funny at times, but unfortunately, I don’t think that the blending worked out the way Spielberg might have wanted. It comes off as uneven and weird.

I’ve watched Raiders of the Lost Ark and The Last Crusade dozens of times, but I’ve only recently started watching Temple of Doom all the way through. Part of it is a need to be complete; I’ll usually watch the series over the course of a few nights (on a side note, I often forget about Kingdom of the Crystal Skull when talking about the series), and it makes sense to watch all three of the older movies together.

Also, like I mentioned above, it is pretty funny. Short Round can be irritating, but he has some hilarious lines, and one of my favorite movie moments EVER is the scene where Indy’s trying to get Willie to pull the damn latch:

But overall? Meh. Temple of Doom is tied at the bottom of my list of Indy movies. What about you? Do you like it, or does it make you crazy, too?

http://www.nerdlunch.net CT (from Nerd Lunch)

Well said. Temple of Doom seems to get a pass from a lot of my friends and it must be for pure nostalgia reasons. For me, the movie ends once they leave Club Obi Wan. But everything you say sums up my feelings. The slapstick/dark incongruities are a bit problem for me, but as we discussed on Twitter, Willie Scott is the worst.

Raiders is by far the best. Last Crusade plays up the jokes and slapstick more than I’d like, but doesn’t it mix it with as much of the dark stuff. And it gets back to the roots of Indy.

Crystal Skull…well, I just ignore that.
- / TDF Pamela
  
  Thanks. :) I don’t really have great, nostalgic feelings for Temple like I do Raiders and Crusade. When I was a kid, I was completely freaked out by the bugs and the dinner scene, and I didn’t like watching the movie at all, which is understandable, since I was five when it came out and probably saw it for the first time when I was six or so.
  
  As an adult, I can appreciate the humor a bit more, but I just don’t think it meshes with the dark story. :\
http://angiebatgirl.wordpress.com AngieBatgirl

I actually went to see this at my local theater last Friday. The theater does a retro night every month.
I agree with the first bullet point, for sure. I hate Willie. She is completely useless. I always imagine that she got eaten by a snake or something right after the movie ends.
Is it my fave Indiana Jones? No, that would be The Last Crusade. Is the the worst? Hell no. That would be The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. I absolutely hated it. I do like Temple of Doom and I would love it, if Willie wasn’t in it.
- / TDF Pamela
  
  Ooh, I wish I could see Raiders and Crusade in the theatre! I remember seeing Crusade when it came out, and it was freaking AWESOME.
  
  This time while watching Temple, I keep thinking of all the times Willie could have died or at least gone away, and how much more enjoyable the movie would have been without her.
  
  Sigh.
Weregeek

I have to admit, it’s been *ages* since I’ve seen Temple of Doom, but I always thought Willie was sort of a send up of the damsel in distress, exaggerated for extra effect. Much like how the whole series is sort of a pastiche of old timey serials. That said, I think they got the pastiche wrong with ToD. It’s very much a movie of the 80s where the others are a little more timeless (not timeless, just less a product of their era than ToD). Her hair and her attitude are perfect examples. And, much as I love Short Round, the cute Asian kid sidekick (especially using Ke Huy Quan, the quintessential cute Asian kid sidekick) was so very 80s. Temple of Doom just doesn’t hold up like the others do.
- / TDF Pamela
  
  You know, I think she was intended to be a parody of the typical damsel in distress, but she just wasn’t funny.
  
  And yes, you’re exactly right about how ToD is very much stuck in the era in which it was made. When I watch Raiders, for example, the only thing that really dates it for me is the visual effects. Crusade was remarkably well made for an 80s movie. Temple… meh. Willie’s styling is 80s bad, and you know, I never thought about the Asian kid sidekick being such a cliché of the decade.
  
  Huh.
Strangeness Abounds

I’ve also heard the argument that Willie was supposed to have been a satirical take on the 30′s, 40′s 50′s damsels in distress. But if you listen to Kate Capshaw talk about Willie, not even Ms. Capshaw cared for Willie that much. XP

As far as the darkness and the slapstick comedy, I suspect that the movie would have been far more tense without the slapstick comedy. I mean, it certainly wasn’t for kids (I don’t think it was, anyway), but the relief needed to come from somewhere. Slapstick may have not been the best outlet for that relief, of course.
- / TDF Pamela
  
  It definitely would have been more tense, but I think you’re right. The slapstick stuff was out of place within the context of the rest of the film, and they should have found a better way to defuse the tension.
  
  Interestingly, I read last night that even Spielberg didn’t like Temple too much. He says it’s his least favorite of the films and that it was *too* dark.
http://littleredreviewer.wordpress.com/ redhead

“Willie Scott is one of the most irritating characters ever created. ”

ain’t that the truth!!! it’s like the producers told each member of a team of writers to write something completely different. one person was told to write a comedy, one person was told to write a gross-out horror flick with a cult, another person was told to write an action flick, another was told to write a kid-friendly action flick, and the last one was told to write a romance.

and then they just mushed everything together, thinking the would get the best of everything.

Since Raiders of the Lost Arc is one of the best movies every made, Temple of Doom gets a pass by default.
- / TDF Pamela
  
  That’s a very apt way of looking at the movie, haha. It does feel like a mishmash of random styles.
http://cmock127.blogspot.com Mock!

I saw “Temple” in the theater when it first came out. At the time, it seemed too dark for my young mind to handle (doubly so, since the theater had RATS that ran passed our feet TWICE!)….plus there was a cool arcade game at the time, so the movie “grew” in my memory as something awesome and terrifying. When I got older and watched the film again, I sooo did not care for it. Yes, it does have moments, but they are far and few between. My “collector” mentality made me purchase it, first on VHS and later on DVD, but neither copy has been viewed in a long time…
- / TDF Pamela
  
  I don’t think I saw Temple in the theatre, or at least I don’t remember it if I did. I do remember being completely terrified by Mola Ram and grossed out by the bugs and the banquet, but for some reason, this one just didn’t stick in my imagination the way the other two old movies did.
  
  Though I confess, I do remember pretending to be Willie Scott for a while. Then I got bored with her and went back to pretending I was Marion. ;D
http://www.candlemarkandgleam.com Kate

I refuse to even acknowledge this as an Indiana Jones movie. To me, there are two Indy movies, and two movies that star Harrison Ford as a treasure-hunter running around and having silly shenanigans. Those two may be fun in their own right, sort of, if you’re drunk enough, but they are NOT Indiana Jones movies. Nope.

(Crystal Skull is a fairly good movie version of Erik von Daniken’s Chariots of the Gods. That’s about all I can say without descending into a frothing rage. This is what happens when you let an Aztec ethnoarchaeologist go to the movies)