Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984) review

To this day, I cannot quite put together the criticisms laid to this film. Surely, it isn’t the best Indiana Jones film but it comes so mighty close. One of the best aspects of the film for me, is what is considered the biggest issue of the film which would be the drastic change in tone from a rather light hearted film with dark moments to an extremely dark film, containing light enough moments.

Indiana Jones, following an escape from Lao Che, finds himself crash landing a plane nearby an Indian village. Here, he is told that the children have all but being taken from them to work at Pankot Palace, where evil has once more being brewing. During the kidnapping of all the children, it is said that a sacred stone called the Shankara was taken from their village. Indiana vows to return the Sankara stone back to the village as well as all of their children as he ventures with his young friend, Short Round and the irritating singer, Willie.

Whenever people refer to Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, they always list the complaints about the film which truly sickens me. It’s excessive dark content and the irritating Willie. I personally loved both. Willie is most definitely an irritating character and about as irritating as one could get but thankfully, Speilberg and Lucas were well aware of this before hand and as a result, to add some great comedic moments have her character constantly punished. As for the dark content, I can only praise Lucas and Speilberg from taking a completely different view for this film and their bravery to make a prequel to a beloved film be one with a completely different tone. Even with the incredibly dark content, this is most definitely still an Indiana Jones film. It has the same wit, same humour and the brilliant stunt work and action sequences that make this a very, very worthy prequel to the great, Raiders of the Lost Ark. In terms of action, Temple of Doom surpasses Raiders of the Lost Ark however, in terms of the plot and characters, Raiders is clearly superior.

John Williams created a truly memorable musical score with Raiders of the Lost Ark. His iconic soundtrack featured the fantastic score following Marion Ravenwood’s death, which was a very powerful piece of music. In Temple of Doom, he creates an even more powerful and epic musical score featuring the March of the Slave children. This score is such a brilliant piece of work by the legend John Williams, that I happen to prefer it over the score in Raiders.

The underground tunnel chase and the sequence on the bridge is the greatest climax put onto an Indiana Jones film and is one of the most memorable in my opinion. It features brilliant comedy, very gritty and dark stunt work and some incredible action sequences which are just a delight on screen. The parody of the swordsman in Raiders of the Lost Ark works perfectly as one of the film’s finest comedic moments. 

Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom is the most controversial of the franchise but is better than the original in some ways. Even if the film isn’t overall, nearly as perfect as Raiders of the Lost Ark, it is nevertheless a brilliant piece of entertainment and one of master director, Steven Speilberg’s finest films. 

Grade- 10/10