After the surprise success of the first Indiana Jones movie, George Lucas wished to turn the titular character’s adventures into a trilogy as he had found pretty big success with that format for Star Wars. The problem was that Indiana Jones wasn’t planned to have sequels, so thoughts were thrown in and out about what the movie should be focused on (which could still result in a success as Star Wars always wasn’t entirely planned out as a trilogy). After ideas were scrapped and after a pretty painful development involving accidents, cultural interference from India, and even both George Lucas and Steven Spielberg suffering through a divorce at the time, the end results were still able to get out within budget and within the time frame, but Temple of Doom wasn’t the follow up that many people were expecting and were properly surprised by the kind of film they walked into. Being a prequel set during the mid-1930s, Indiana Jones (played again by Harrison Ford) is thrown into a situation with his child assistant, Short Round (played by Ke Huy Quan) and a tag-along lounge singer named Willie (played by Kate Capshaw) after they are chased out of China on another mission and find themselves in a struggling Indian village where a crazed cult has stolen all the children to mine for a sacred magical jewel. Once the trio arrive at the titular Temple of Doom, they discover the cult along with the leader, Mola Ram (played by Amrish Puri) wishes to use the stones for evil purposes and it’s up to Indiana Jones to stop him, which turns out to be pretty difficult once he is captured and becomes possessed by an evil force. Needing the help of his tag along in order to survive this hellish experience, the whip-cracking figure will show how he became a little more caring of those around him in this introductory mission. As a follow-up to Raiders, this movie has a lot of things that don’t really work as a sequel movie and as a stand-alone movie, producing something at best crazy and unfocused, and at worst, borderline infuriating and stupid. It does feature some pretty unforgettable and iconic moments, but that’s also matched with incredibly annoying elements that people wish they could forget about, creating a pretty noticeable see-saw of quality.

Wanting to change a lot about the formula for the sequel to Raiders is both admirable and risky at the same time. It’s a good thing because that’s what sequels should want to do; not getting comfortable with doing the same thing and actually trying to be different, but to immediately change the tone and atmosphere after only one outing is going to be a bit disorienting when it’s this drastically different, which is further perpetrated with how miserable this movie actually is. The movie’s tone is largely just unpleasant and mean-spirited and therefore, not fun to sit through. While the first half feels mostly like Raiders (with a strangely goofier edge that borders on slapstick comedy), the second half is just relentlessly harsh and dark, and since the story doesn’t really offer up any other good meaningful nuggets of storytelling or writing to balance it out, it doesn’t feel warranted (Spielberg can be intense with his films, but they aren’t usually this depressing). The story itself written again by George Lucas is pretty flat and not that engaging, especially for a prequel movie as it doesn’t seem to highlight any change or development for the lead character (something that should be prevalent in a movie about his past). It feels very face-value only in nature; where the mission is the only thing really driving the narrative and everything else just had to fall together in order to make it work, which is kind of how Indiana Jones worked in the last film, but the characters, comedy, and spirit of adventure where better handled by comparison so it evened it out. Therefore, the first half feels pretty disjointed and seems filled with random moments that serve very little purpose, and the second half is nothing but this uncomfortable situation which doesn’t have much depth to it outside of this simplistic premise. The whole movie kind of feels shallow in its storytelling, with the new screenwriters for this film, William Huyck and Gloria Katz, not doing much to make any of this film meaningful or earned in its harshness. While Raiders was charmingly aware of its corny elements and made its simplistic story work, this movie feels like its fighting against it all the time by making every light-hearted moment either stupid or painful, and all the darker moments are met with no real sense of release or balance. It does go off-the-walls dark and crazy in certain moments which at least gives this movie a distinct identity and a darker factor that could be admirable if handled better, but it needed some touch-ups to keep it from being so jarring.

Probably one of the defining elements for why this movie’s tone is so jarring to get used to is the handling of the characters. While the first movie also had pretty blanket simplistic characters, they were portrayed correctly and were given that passionate charm that made them likeable enough to ignore the more tropey elements about them, whereas in this movie, it’s far easier to spot and also not helped out by most of them either being one-note stereotypes (made even worse because its set in India) or just flat out insufferable. Indiana Jones feels like a cut-out of himself; spouting dialogue that would be comfortable on a preschool cartoon character and having a lesson so obvious and so unearned that it feels like nothing changed about him from beginning to end. Harrison Ford is still great in the role, but it really feels like there was no point making this a prequel. While he is misused, he’s nowhere as painful as the other characters. The movie is filled with nothing but tropes; the male action stereotype goes with his female stereotype and his Chinese stereotype to rescue the Indian stereotypes from the tribal stereotypes. People have called this movie racist on many levels, but it seems to balance out its share in insulting different cultures as everybody is treated like a joke. The villain is pretty forgettable with a bland plan despite Amrish Puri looking like he’s having fun. Willie and Short Round are one of the major criticisms for the movie from pretty much everybody, and its painfully obvious to see why as they are incredibly annoying. While Short Round’s typical ‘’Chinese stereotype’’ dialogue and his constantly shouting voice is pretty ear-grating, he at least does do things in the movie and actively helps out throughout, plus Ke Huy Quan had proven in past projects that he could act, so you can see some quality acting underneath this tropey performance somewhere. Willie on the other hand is a useless as a plank of wood and as annoying as a shrieking cat. Kate Capshaw sounds like a nice person in real life, but she is unbearable in this movie and easily the worst person Indy has ever been paired with, romantically or even platonically. The character is useless and does nothing but hinder the plot and scream at the top of her lungs, her lines and stupid and not the least bit funny, and its honestly hard to fathom what her purpose was in this film outside of just scream nonsense, spout stupid jokes and act as a damsel to save in the end of the film, what a complete joke of a role.

This movie is still an Indiana Jones movie so there’s going to be some aesthetically pleasant stuff that still works and thankfully, there is quite a few things in that regard that even hold up to this day. The sets and overall production design for the film by Elliot Scott is still impressive, and even though most of it isn’t actually set in India due to complications, the places they go to are still really nice and do at least capture a sense of the culture that’s enjoyable to watch. The movie’s grittier unpleasant nature does come through in a positive way through its usage of this closed-in dusty cave environment, which helps intensify the darker element but also shows how non-epic the movie is in a positive way; like how it isn’t trying to be a grand tale but rather a quiet confronting one, and that is a nice change of pace. While some of the effects have dated quite a bit and they don’t look especially impressive, for the time they were seen as ground-breaking so they can get a pass. Most of the action in the movie is pretty decently done even if the tone can sometimes conflict with it. A lot of the choreography on them is pretty decent and some of the ideas are pretty inventive (especially the mine chart chase and cutting the wooden bridge), but sometimes the overly ‘’screwball comedy’’ element can make it feel a little too over-the-top in moments where it can feel a little pandering. It’s strange how the movie is both too intense and dark while also being too goofy and childish at the same time; it makes sense to have levity in a movie like this, but this portrayal isn’t the effective way to do it, it just makes the tones clash even worse.

As a follow-up to Raiders and as the first sequel to Indiana Jones, this movie is not the perfect second. It changes too much to the point where the good-will of the first is lost and it also doesn’t even back these new elements with anything interesting or clever but rather old-fashioned humor, a predictable and shallow storyline, and obnoxious characters. Overall, the movie could normally be a mixed bag in how it handles itself, but the good and bad elements of the movie are so clashing with each other, that it’s incredibly hard to pin down how to feel about it. The bad stuff is so annoying and so painful to get through, but the good stuff is incredibly enjoyable, new, exciting, feels like something that would work in Indiana Jones and is totally worth sitting through. It’s a specific taste and it may work for some, but the cons are too heavy to ignore. It gets some points for doing what the Mortal Kombat movie couldn’t (actually ripping a heart out), but otherwise, this is an adventure better left undiscovered.

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