INDIANA JONES AND THE TEMPLE OF DOOM is 30 years old! Holy
suspension bridge! The first film will always be the best of the lot but I find
this much derided second movie in the (ongoing?) series to be the most fun. I
love the setting, the style and the fact that the female sidekick is such a pain in the
ass! I also like Short Round and I usually hate pointless kid sidekicks.
The
film got a lot of grief at the time because of its violence but I have always
loved that the film was willing to push things so far and still keep it
relatively bloodless. I mean, that has to be the most impressive heart removal scene of all time and there is NO squirting blood! You gotta love that! The general consensus seems to be that the third film was
better but I've always been irritated that in that movie they returned to Nazis
as the villain. All the bitching about Temple Of Doom seems to have made them want to stay
with a villain that did not have to be established onscreen so as to avoid
having to create one - just point at the SS officer and say 'I hate these guys'. Sloppy and sad. Sign me up for a round of Anything Goes anytime!
4 comments:
Oh my, I saw this at the cinema - surely that wasn't 30 years ago! This one was quite heavily cut here in the UK, in fact it's only in the last few years that the full version has become available. Can't say I'm a huge fan of this one (I found Indy's love interest and that little kid somewhat irritating) but I do prefer it to The Last Crusade.
Raiders... is my favorite, but Temple of Doom is a close second. It's such an interesting film, and dangerous in its creative choices.
Count me among the crowd who hates Temple of Doom. It was so over-the-top and cartoony that I couldn't enjoy it. Raiders had some of that, but almost everything in Raiders seemed fairly possible, if implausible. Temple lost me with that extended opening that just got more ridiculous as it went on. By the time they jumped out of the airplane on the raft, the movie had already completely lost me.
It went on from there. You mention not liking the third one because they returned to the Nazi well, I hated the way the second re-did the iconic scenes from Raiders. "Hmm, we had snakes in the first one, so let's do bugs in this one!" I don't remember the other examples, as I haven't seen the movie in a long time. The dinner scene was just silly.
And I hated Kate Capshaw's character (and Kate's acting) and Short Round.
But I'm glad you enjoy it! 8-)
(And to show that I'm not some elitist movie snob, the 1976 King Kong is one of my favorite films, despite its failings. So....)
Hunter
Hunter - you sum up all the standard complaints about the film perfectly. Everything that is generally hated about it I LOVE! :-) It is exactly the film I hoped for - more, bigger, funnier and with a nastier villain. And I was thrilled not to have a serious romance angle again- the first tale had a perfect couple and to have had another 'true love' would have angered me. The first is the best but I will default to this one every time.
And I love the '76 KONG as well! We all have our odd joys.
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