I was too young to have seen Raiders of the Lost Ark in theaters when it came out in 1980, but I must have watched it a million times on television soon after.  I did see Temple of Doom in the theater. Probably three or four times. I would have been about 11 years old.  I loved it.

As a kid I especially loved all the stuff that made the moral majority people clutch their pearls which eventually led to the making of the PG-13 rating. My friends and I would constantly ask each other which thing we’d rather eat – snakes, bugs, or monkey brains. We would pretend to reach into each other’s chests and pull our hearts out. We dreamed of being on that awesome mine roller coaster.  

As an adult, I recognize the film’s many flaws. The least of which is not its cultural insensitivity, if not downright racism. Short Round is nothing but a Chinese stereotype, and there is a lot of stuff going on with the Indian characters and the “weird” stuff they eat. You could also certainly complain about the one female character and how she is nothing more than a “damsel in distress.” 

I do not think any of this was intentional by the filmmakers in the sense that they were not trying to be racist or sexist. I think a lot of that comes from how the Indiana Jones films are Spielberg and Lucas riffing on the old serial films they used to watch as kids. Old adventure films were rife with racist tropes and inherent sexism.

But I’m also going to table that discussion. I’ll let the experts dig into that stuff. I feel like when talking about this film, you need to mention those concerns and recognize their validity, but at the same time I don’t want to get bogged down in them.

Also this film rips.

It is generally considered the worst of the original trilogy. Spielberg has distanced himself, claiming it was made during a difficult time in his life (he was getting divorced) and it is too dark. I’ll stand by the opinion that it isn’t as good as Raiders of the Lost Ark or The Last Crusade, but those are pretty high watermarks. There is still a ton of stuff to love in this film.

The opening scene in Shanghai, for starters. It begins with Willie Scott (Kate Capshaw, who later married Spielberg) singing “Anything Goes.” Spielberg shoots it like a classic musical. When the song ends, Indiana Jones (Harrison Ford) enters. He’s made a deal with a Chinese gangster, trading the remains of some ancient emperor for a precious diamond.

Set in 1935, one year before the events of Raiders of the Lost Ark, making this film technically a prequel. They say Lucas and Spielberg didn’t want Indiana fighting Nazis again, so they set it a little earlier than the first film and moved the locations to Asia. It is interesting that in this film Indiana Jones is all about fortune and glory, and makes no mention of anything belonging in a museum.

With the help of Short Round (Ke Huy Quan), Indiana’s young sidekick, the three of them escape Shanghai but find themselves on a plane owned by the bad guy. The pilots dump the fuel and jump out of the plane, leaving it to crash into the Himalayas. Our heroes jump out of the plane using an inflatable raft as a sort of parachute and then sled that zooms down the snow covered mountain and over an impossibly high cliff and into some major rapids.

This scene is cartoonish in its impossibility. Most of the film will continue in this pattern. Raiders wasn’t exactly grounded in realism, but Temple of Doom pushes the bounds of possibility to an absurd degree. Not that it matters. It is still extraordinarily enjoyable.

They’ll be picked up by some villagers who explain that some thieves stole their sacred rock and their children, and ever since, everything has gone bad. Our heroes head to a palace where they are treated with kindness (and those crazy food choices.) There they will find a hidden passage that takes them to an underground temple and a group of cultists who practice child slavery and human sacrificing. 

It all culminates in a wild chase scene with our heroes riding a mine cart like a roller coaster through an impossibly long shaft and then battling it out on a ridiculously high rope bridge. 

I don’t know why I’m describing the plot; you’ve probably seen this film. It is crammed full with wonderfully crafted action sequences. Even when it slows down, it’s still entertaining. 

You do have to table some of that insensitive stuff, and I completely understand those who can’t do that, but if you can this is a heck of a ride.