My Review of "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom"

Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom is an adventure movie that came out back in 1984. It was a time when there were quite a lot of adventure movies that spawned from the Raiders of the Lost Ark movie of 1981. Who could blame them, they're fun films filled with wonder and excitement.

This movie starts off in Shanghai at a bar called Obi Wan. You can tell there's a few nods to the Star Wars franchise and Raiders of the Lost Ark. Not all of these homages are as in your face as the Obi Wan bar though.

Here in the bar we're delighted by the song and dance number of one of our main protagonists Willie. She's a famous singer with a prissy lifestyle. Some would find that the opening performance could be deemed offensive as it's an all white female cast doing a show pretending to be Asian. I'm not one of them and I'm Chinese.

At least in this movie they had actual Asian actors playing Asian characters. There were a few questionable actors that looked like they were in brownface though. That's not cool but it did happen quite a bit back in the day.

So Indiana Jones is at this is at the Obi Wan bar and escapes with Willie and a little Chinese kid named Short Round. I know, I won't get started with the names in this movie. Although I do remember the first time I saw this movie and seeing Short Round when I was a kid. Even at that young age I was really excited to see a young Chinese boy that spoke my language in the movies. It was really weird because I've never seen anything like that before. After all these years I totally understand what they mean about representation.

As the trio escape these big bad guys in Shanghai they unwittingly escaped using the big bad guy's plane and pilots. Obviously, they get double crossed while they're in the skies of China and India. Through this double cross they somehow escape to a small village in India.

There they are greeted by down on their luck poor village people. They have a prophecy that someone would come from the sky to help them with their problems. Lo and behold the special person would be Indiana Jones and his 2 sidekicks.

I know what some people would have issue with and that's the white savior issues that surround this movie. Yes there is an element of that but it is his movie so what do you expect? There are some ill portrayals of Indians in this movie however you have to realize that they're part of the evil cult and that they also have innocent Indians in this movie as well. You can also see it as they've been brainwashed by the cult for something that happens in this movie that kind of explains the weird and ill behavior. Also this is all a fictional story based. Nothing here is actually accurate.

Another known issue is Willie. The last time I saw this was years ago and I remember not liking this movie anymore because Willie was always whining. She looked like she was setting women back years in feminist progress. Watching this movie again I kind of saw her as an everyday person. She's lived a certain lifestyle. In fact, she is probably a rough depiction of how we would react in the same situation as her. Obviously she's a lot more animated and dramatic but I could see myself freaking out just like her.

The rest of the movie is Indiana Jones and his two sidekicks trying to find a special artifact that belonged to the small village that helped them. It's up to Indiana Jones to decide whether he's going to keep the artifact for himself for glory and fortune or do the right thing. It's quite a predictable movie so you probably know what's going to happen.

One of the beauties of this movie is despite it being predictable the scenes still have that edge of your seat feeling to them. They are cut and edited so precisely to evoke emotions of anticipation throughout the movie. It's really quite a feat because this movie is pretty old now.

As I said before I didn't really like this movie years back when I re-watched it. That was mainly because of the Indian depiction and Willie's reaction but I have a different perspective of these situations now. I got a sense of how I used to remember this movie. It's a movie of imagination and wonder. At certain points of the movie I reverted back to my 6 or 7 year old self watching this movie for the first time. It was really fun.

The special effects surprisingly held up fairly well. I say fairly well because there are certain effects that just look really ugly and bad but for the most part it doesn't really take you away from the movie.

Overall, it's still a really good movie. Apart from minor criticism I can say that this movie brought me back to my childhood. This movie somehow was able to still bring that sense of wonder and anticipation even though I knew what was going to happen. That's why I have to give this movie an 8 out of 10. I was really surprised as I thought I was just going to find more holes to pick at. Instead I found explanations for my previous gripes about this movie.