 Somewhere along the line, Indiana
Jones And The Temple Of Doom became the Indiana Jones
film fans love to hate. Or at least the one the fans love
to somewhat dislike.
It’s
true, Stephen Spielberg had a lot to live up to after Raiders
Of The Lost Ark, which was pure distilled action/adventure
film perfection and iconic from the first moment it hit the
screen. As a kid, I wanted to be Indiana Jones. I
wanted to dodge the nightmares of Rube Goldberg and explore
dank caves and have totally wild chases. Indiana Jones was
so awww shucks cool, it never really occurred to me that he
was the same guy who was Han Solo in Star Wars and The
Empire Strikes Back. He was just Indiana. And man was he awesome.
So Temple came out and expectations were big.
I was, what, 10? Eleven? Screw the critics and pundits. My expectations were huge. Sure, I admit, these days I’m
among those who insist that Temple was a
misstep for the series … and I am wrong about that.
I
am wrong because my adolescent self tells me so.
Right from the opening scenes this film was on the move.
Here’s Indy, calm and cool, making a deal for some artifact.
What the artifact was didn’t really matter. He’s
surrounded by all these secondary characters we hadn’t
seen before. Who they were didn’t really matter. They
were in a stylish and clearly foreign location. Where that
location was didn’t really matter. It felt like a page
right out of a pulp comic book. (Which was, of course, the
intent.) You were dropped right in the middle of something
and expected to catch up.
 And
then BAM!, the action starts, and Indy is ducking behind giant
rolling gong things and stealing jewels and diving out windows
and escaping with a little Asian kid. (An Asian kid we’d
later love as Data in The
Goonies). In typical Indiana Jones fashion – there
had only been one film thus far, but it was so intensely perfect
that we already knew what “typical Indiana Jones fashion”
was – he seems to get away, but look out! It’s
a trap! Indy is in a mess he can’t escape from! How
will our hero escape?
Enter a rather regrettable parachute-via-life-raft escape
that even as a kid I thought was pretty stupid. Exit just
as quickly, because we kinda sorta wanna forget that bit…
And then the real adventure was on. Sure, many fans
these days are down on Temple, preferring
Nazis and John Rhys-Davies – and who doesn’t love
that stuff? – but as a kid, this was a pretty kickass
adventure set in an exotic, almost alien location. First,
giant vampire bats. And then monkey brains. And assassins.
And then the insects! I’m getting the shivers
just thinking about it. And then a really ingenious trap.
AND THEN SOME DUDE GETTING HIS HEART PULLED OUT OF HIS CHEST!!!
It was ON, brother!
 Right
here, right now, I’m rewriting history: George Lucas
was right. Stephen Spielberg was wrong. Spielberg second guesses Temple these days and says the “safe”
route of Last Crusade was better. Lucas’
original thought was that each film should feature a wildly
different and unique location with all new enemies, each feeling like part of a serial yet being totally and completely removed
from the other. And he was right. That was the way. It was
the right call. Temple was moving down the
right path, but people didn’t embrace it like they did Raiders (or so says revisionist history –
it made almost as much as Raiders), and back
to the original formula they went.
But while Last Crusade simply replaced Arks
with Grails and trucks with tanks, Temple had people cooked in lava and mine cart chases and super cool fights on rope bridges and did I mention
SOME DUDE GETTING HIS HEART PULLED OUT OF HIS CHEST!!! Indiana
Jones was all about pulp style adventure, and that’s
just what this film delivers. Temple’s
extended climax sequence, beginning with the slave rebellion,
moving towards the fight with the Token Strong Man, amping
up in intensity with the mine cart chase, and getting totally
frantic with the escape over and confrontation on the rope
bridge, is one of the great under appreciated stretches of
action/adventure goodness  you’re
liable to see this side of … well, petty much anything.
When did we decide this movie was less than cool, and why
did I take part in spreading such nonsense?
Mola Ram was totally evil as hell, a far better pulp villain
than Raiders’ Nazis. As much as I’d
love to have been on hand to strangle Kate Capshaw, let’s
recognize here, folks: Karen Allen was pretty damn annoying,
too. And the MINE CART CHASE! Not only did I think this was
about the coolest thing I had ever seen when I was a kid,
it pretty much created a brand new passion for me. Mine carts.
Mine carts = awesome. Racing around on them really, really,
really fast = awesome. Doing insane jumps that couldn’t
possibly happen in real life = awesome. So, triple awesome
here, folks. This was just an insanely, insanely cool sequence
that can still bring down the house each and every
time, pure adventure that defines everything that makes the
character and genre cool.
And we too cool for school Internet geeks have the unmitigated gall to suggest that Indiana Jones And The
Temple Of Doom is a lesser film?
We, you and I, those of us who have jumped onto the “bash Temple” bandwagon? We need to get a
life.
 Presentation
When Indiana Jones And The Temple Of Doom finally made it to DVD, it did so as part of a four-disc set of Indiana
Jones goodness, packed right alongside personal favorite Raiders
Of The Lost Arc and The Last Crusade.
With all the hype, after all the wait, were these discs going
to look anything but great? They were not. Wonderful anamorphic
widescreen, thumping 5.1 surround, and a gorgeously restored
picture made these some fantastic looking releases. The blacks,
especially those in Raiders, were very black
indeed, the picture crisp, the sound dynamic. There was, and
is, nothing not to love here.
Extras
The film discs themselves contain no
extras. None. Menus. And that’s it. Which … well,
sucks. The fourth disc of bonus material included with the
set was swell enough, but the Temple disc
as a standalone (which is what were looking at here)? Empty.
Spielberg
really, really, really, really needs to get over his aversion
to doing DVD commentaries.
The Bottom Line
Indiana Jones And The Temple
Of Doom was a big, huge, colossal smash hit. Made
for $28 million, it raked in over $330 million worldwide.
Audiences devoured it. And now, over 20 years later, we make
believe it was less than pure action adventure movie awesomeness.
What
a bunch of assholes we are.
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