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Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984)
Starring Harrison Ford, Kate Capshaw, Jonathan Ke Quan, and Amrish Puri. Cinematography by Douglas Slocombe. Edited by Michael Kahn. Produced by Robert Watts. Written by George Lucas, Willard Huyck, and Gloria Katz. Directed by Steven Spielberg.
The year is 1935 and Indiana Jones is negotiating with a gangster named Lao Che for the ashes of a Ming dynasty emperor in a flashy nightclub. The deal goes sour and bullets start to fly. Jones escapes the club with the cabaret singer Willie Scott and is quickly picked up by his twelve year old sidekick, Short Round. The three hop on board an airplane scheduled to leave the country only to discover later that it is owned by Lao Che and the pilots have hopped out with the last two parachutes. The trio jumps from the plane in an inflatable raft seconds before it crashes and eventually slide to safety. They find themselves inIndia where the meet a shaman who tells them of his village’s woes. He says that since the Maharajah of Pankot stole their sacred stone, their crops have withered, the animals have died, and the children have disappeared. Sympathetic to their plight, Jones heads off to Pankot Palace to investigate.
With the amazing success of Raiders of the Lost Ark, it wouldn’t make any sense to not follow it up with a sequel considering its serial roots. So in early 1984 George Lucas and his old friends Willard Huyck and Gloria Katz, who had worked with him on American Graffiti, started developing Indiana Jones and the Temple of Death (later changed of course to Temple of Doom). The sequel would actually be a prequel and would be set a year before the first film in the series. The anticipation for the inevitable blockbuster was high; so high in fact that when the film was announced theaters turned over forty million dollars in guarantees, making it profitable before production even began.
For Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, Lucas and Spielberg needed to come up with a new villain to oppose their hero. Using Nazis as the bad guys in Raiders of the Lost Ark was an easy sell; everybody already knows that Nazis are evil. What they needed was an antagonist that would make the audience shudder. Lucas used George Steven’s Gunga Din as inspiration, borrowing the band of “Thuggees” and inventing for them a truly horrible leader, Mola Ram. Mola Ram was the type of guy to literally pull your beating heart out of your chest with his bare hands. While crude heart removal certainly seals the deal for leader of the bad guys, it makes for a disturbing visual, especially to younger viewers. Too make matters worse the second film in the Indiana Jones franchise was released in a time when the MPAA only had four ratings: G, PG, R, and X. The film was given a PG rating which opened up to children, but many theaters reported that kids were fleeing the theaters screaming. Steven Spielberg contacted Jack Valenti, the president of the Motion Picture Association of America, and suggested to him that there be an “in between” rating of PG-13 or PG-14. So on July 1, 1984 the MPAA issued a new level in their ratings system, PG-13, citing films like Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom as inspiration.
Budget: $28,000,000
Total US Gross: $179,870,271
Genre: Adventure
Runtime: 118 Minutes
US Release Date: 5/23/84
Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1
Awards: Academy Awards: Won for best visual effects. Nominated for best original score.
Tagline: If Adventure Has A Name… It Must Be Indiana Jones.
Quote: “Well I always thought that archaeologists were always funny looking men going around looking for their mommies.”
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