Was Temple of doom anyone elses favorite indy movie?

"Temple" is my favorite too, but "Raiders" is a close second. I view them as pretty much equal. "Kingdom" and "Last Crusade" are after by a fair margin, and I go up and down on either of them-- "Kingdom" has maybe the best opening 30 minutes of any Indy movie, and "Last Crusade" the best ending.

 

I think we all have to agree that the whole Indy Trilogy is the perfect adventure experience. It featuring humor, romance, great performances, fabulous action scenes and the most watchable hero in movie history. What more can you ask for? This is Lucas and Spielberg at their finest.

 

Hasn't been a trilogy for five years.

 

I know that it hasn't been a trilogy for five years. I was just referring to the first three films (Raiders, Temple of Doom, The Last Crusade). "Kingdom of the Crystal Skull" is terrible in my opinion.

 

So long as we're all being honest here.

 

You really can't separate KotCS from the other films in the series; they exist as a united whole. Using the phrase 'Indiana Jones Trilogy' is no longer viable because it refers to something that no longer exists.

 

I guess you are right. It's like separating the PT from the OT. And that is absolutely wrong. Thanks for pointing out my mistake.

 

If KotCS gets sequels, there'd be room for distinguishing monikers just as there is with the SW Saga, but we're not there yet and may never get there.

 

As much as I like them all, I'd say for me it's:
1. Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
2. Raiders of the Lost Ark
3. The Last Crusade
4. Temple of Doom

 

I struggled through it once, I can't imagine everyday for a year.....wait it wasn't the 80s cartoon one was it

 

Not my favourite, but still a brilliant under-rated entry. It actually held most of the iconic moments often lampooned and referenced for Indy, like the big bold opening titles on screen with that style of writing, the minecart chase and the rope-bridge battle.

It's darker, but great fun at the same time.

 

Raiders is the best one by far imo.

 

I have the same. I actually thought Temple was a letdown compared to Raiders and Crusade, not up to that level; Crystal wasn't even in the ballpark. Raiders was just a huge gas of fun in the theatres as a kid, loved it to no end.

 

"TEMPLE OF DOOM" is my favorite Indy film. I like them in this order:

1) "Temple of Doom"

2) "Raiders"

3) "Crystal Skulls"

4) "Last Crusade"


And I love all four films.

 

Temple of Doom is definitely my favorite of the Indy movies.

 

Too much stock has gone into the so-called hatred of this movie. It’s always been my instinct to judge the director’s work first before referencing his/her off-handed comments post negative criticism, especially when that director is Steven 'Mr. Sensitive-and-sometimes-placating' Spielberg. And I say this as a hardcore fan of the guy. Spielberg truly is a loyal crowd pleaser; loyal to a fault. I’ve always gotten the sense that he loves pleasing audiences the way a people dog, well, loves pleasing people. As a result, I suspect he stings easier and sometimes gives in apologetically, just a bit, to the ruffling of feathers caused by his filmmaking. I certainly believe him and Lucas when they say this installment is their least favorite, but that’s a far cry from outright hating it. I think Spielberg regrets how dark it ended up, not necessarily how bad. Fact is, he made this movie, and the movie speaks for itself. And, in my opinion, Temple of Doom is the most brilliantly impulsive, unhinged and unapologetic exercise in pulp adventure lunacy ever committed to the medium. It is, collectively, team Lucasberg’s monster from the id. It’s a pop-art masterpiece.
　
This is a fantastic sequel on its own terms and for its own peculiar manic energy. Harrison Ford is arguably at his most physically impressive and John Williams’ score is just so damn exciting. I enjoy Doug Slocombe’s classic three-point lighting scheme along with the deeply saturate palette of dusky red hues that grant this film its own signature look. I’ll contend that it's the most lavish in production design of the four installments, equivalently an MGM epic. The Pankot banquet of culinary obscenities, for example, is staged with a full breadth of frame and richly textured with exotic costumes and ornate detail. As a cinematic endeavor, this sequel is a wonderful model of storytelling kinetics chalked-full of throwback genre styles. I get a kick out of Willie’s involvement as a product of haphazard circumstance; let it not be said the conceit was left wanting by the filmmakers. If Kasdan’s Indy and Marion was Hawksian mixed with 'Rick’s Place' romance, Huyck & Katz’ Indy and Willie is just unfiltered screwball to the hilt. Their across-the-hallway sex romp gone awry charms me with its utter devotion to the species of Depression Era, Hollywood antics, and I’ve always admired Capshaw for bringing her A-game to what must have been such a physically exhausting show of absurd comedy.

The film’s overall absurd comedy is given bipolar contrast with macabre horror to such a degree that tests the limits of its own genius, mirroring the Busby Berkeley opening musical number with the Thuggee human sacrificing ritual as twin grand spectacles. Almost every scene is a spectacle, really. Countless set piece gags, seemingly thought up on the spot, amount to a cinematic shotgun blast to the face. Name me another movie where the hero murders a Chinese mobster with a flaming shish kabob moments before accidentally punching a cocktail waitress in the face; where the villain laughs maniacally as he escapes through a trap door with green smoke bellowing out; or one that features a subterranean roller coaster that launches mine carts over chasms like a Hot Wheels track. There’s a moment near the end, after a relentless cascade of nonstop action and dizzying mayhem, where Willy runs across the rope bridge into a medium close-up, looks off camera (at Ram) and just screams like Fay Wray X 10. That sums up the whole movie right there: chaos. But it’s also skillfully controlled chaos, narratively constructed from start to finish as one great big Rube Goldberg contraption, with a succession of geographical events linked through motion and where the causality is figuratively, if not literally, severed at the end by a fed-up Indy cutting through the rope bridge. And note how this narrative map of chain reactions is slyly referenced through the storied mythos of Shiva (..."who made you fall from sky.") and the three-leveled Sankara stones; Pankot Palace itself descending three levels deeper into hell.

Out of the series, Temple of Doom may offer the least in terms of thematic substance, but still rings clear in its thematic definitions. Where the Ark was intended as a blitzkrieg weapon of mass destruction, the lowly Mayapore village, sucked dry of its water and crops, depicts a different kind of ground zero, as the Sankara stones can either replenish or diminish life itself, depending on whose hands they fall into. And so Mola Ram and his Thuggee intend to threaten the world over with crippling infertility. This makes a weird kind of sense considering the film’s 1935 timeframe, where the plains of North America were knee-deep in the suffrage its historical Dust Bowl.

This film’s opening sequence finds Indy on the more roguish side of things, cutting deals with the criminal underworld by exchanging rare artifacts (presumably stolen, or raided) for diamond pay. Therefore, when happening upon the trail of the legendary Sankara stones, the mantra of 'Fortune and Glory' becomes an even more reckless and morally questionable incentive; indeed, when our hero first lays his hands on the glowing treasures, his gold-lit expression is one of pure lust. It is the screams of the slave children that counter this moment, tasking Indy with the role of liberator. This brings up the film’s darkest horrors. Sure, sacrificial scenes of flaming pits and hearts being ripped out may be ghastly, but they’re likewise kept in check by the sheer pulpy outlandishness of it all. These scenes are ultimately more fun than anything else in the same way vintage pulp covers would elicit thrills with images of fantastic horrors from the distant Orient. It’s about vintage imagination.

No, the elements in Temple of Doom that truly disturb do so on a more psychological level. This movie’s central conflict is about kids and the dehumanization of their abuse. The image of a dying, brown skinned child scrambling into his village and into Indy’s arms evokes the despair of third-world poverty. Conversely, even the boy Maharajah of opulent wealth and power is revealed to be a brainwashed captive of the Thuggee, one acting with murderous intent when he blindly slashes a knife into Short Round—kids perverted by adults to become brutal themselves. And while grim is the depiction of village slave children under Mola Ram’s cruelty, also consider how the buddy relationship between Indy and Short Round is momentarily flipped on its head for the very worst. Where prepubescent audiences are that their most vulnerable concerns the subconscious fear of being beaten by their own parents. Now, superimpose that fear over the premise of father-figure Indy rendered possessed by the Black Sleep of Kali; in my youth, nothing in this film wounded me more than the scene where he backhands Short Round then smiles-and-half-laughs with crazed delight. Bad guy’s ripping out hearts is one thing, but Indy turning so violently against his littlest fans is the stuff of nightmares. Honestly, those scenes always affected me more viscerally than Vader shattering Luke with the truth of his identity.

I’ll have words with anyone who claims that Short Round was a useless irritant. No way, man. It’s Shorty who single-handedly turns the whole damn tide, and the moment where a grateful Indy crowns him with his Yankees ball cap is really the heart of the movie. In conclusion, I have nothing but the dearest love and adoration for Temple of Doom. It is, at once, an action adventure of the lowest B-serial brow and a cinematic work of highest artisan order; the perfect hybrid. If it’s conception-turned-extreme content was the Pollock-like, reactionary antichrist of Lucas and Spielberg’s turbulent personal relationships, so be it. Art can be painful but equally rewarding with the results. Or maybe that’s just me being selfish. Whatever. This much I can say with certainty: if it were not for Temple of Doom, there would be no Last Crusade, as the latter was in more ways the one a direct response to the former. Sure, we still would have likely had a third Indiana Jones installment, but the transition between the two as they are now makes for the best kind of variety. And since Last Crusade is my all-time favorite film, I’m thankful for that.
　

 

Nowhere in that piece did you mention Raiders of the Lost Ark? I find that very odd as IMO that is the best of saga.

 

Well, the movie in question is Temple of Doom, so that’s the movie I talked about. Nor was I making any comparison between it and Raiders. I didn’t mention Crystal Skull either.

But I agree that Raiders is an outstanding film, and would be more than happy to dish my thoughts on it whenever and wherever the thread arises.

 

Sorry but I despise "that movie."

The rest were enjoyable. 4 was decend, 1 was fantastic, and 3 was my favorite.
But I guess it all comes down to personal preference

 

No. That would be Raiders, but I LOVED ToD! Saw it in the theater when I was a kid. Started the PG-13 advisory. It's the only one of the originals that has no Nazis and a different setting. Although, I feel like these movies promote a jingoistic attitude toward others. And the British being heroes is inappropriate considering the History of India and British Imperialism.

 

My British Indian fiancee and her Indian family absolutely love Temple of Doom. The thugee were an abomination!
Rewatching the films, it's clear that Temple of Doom is underrated. I sometimes sit and just watch the opening scene. Masterful. True comic book film making. Spielberg at the height of his powers. Love it.

 

It's second to Raiders on my list. I always enjoyed Willie Scott. Kate Capshaw had good delivery. People like to knock her as being too wimpy, but that's pretty much how most normal people would act if stuck in those situations.

 

The blatant sexism?