Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom

All Nazis may be villains, but not all villains need to be Nazis

Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984)

5 / 5

This is far and away my favorite of the Indiana Jones movies. This often surprises people, as ToD is widely considered an outlier in the “canon” of the character. There are reasons to think that: Indy doesn’t “grow” due to the story, nor does he “learn” anything. He perceives a problem (the Indian village in which he finds himself is missing both its sacred shrine stone and its children), and his curiosity coupled with his sense that something wicked is afoot leads him to discover a horrible child-labor enterprise overseen by an evil wizard. In reacting to the increasingly dangerous circumstances in which he finds himself, he saves the day as much to save his own skin as to find justice for the downtrodden villagers. It is easy to view those things as somehow too simple, insufficient (or more arrogantly, inappropriate) for the “modern” audience. 

But those things are features, not bugs. Temple of Doom presents Indiana Jones as a cocksure explorer-rogue in his prime, having a slam-bang two-fisted adventure. There are clear victims who need saving, a stolen treasure to be recovered, and clear villains who need to be punched, shot, crushed, or thrown off a cliff (sometimes gruesomely–this movie and the same-year’s Gremlins are together responsible for the creation of the PG-13 rating). Willie Scott is a classic damsel in distress, and if Short Round isn’t the best sidekick ever, he’s in the top three. 

Most importantly, Indy’s arrival in the events of Temple of Doom marks a true inflection point in the plot. Without Indy (and Willie and Shorty) drifting downriver into the village of Mayapore, the villainous denizens of Pankot Palace would have actually won. But because Indiana Jones gets involved, evil is vanquished, justice is served, and balance is restored to the land. The biggest knock on all the other films in the series is that Indy’s presence is ultimately superfluous. In the other films of the series, the villains are all killed (either directly or indirectly) by the artifact-macguffin at the center of the action, and would have been even if Indy had never been involved. All the other films of the series say Indiana Jones is one of the greatest adventurer-heroes ever. Temple of Doom is the only film in the series that truly shows us that.  

5 stars of 5: This is a personal favorite.