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Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984) [Full Reaction] (Patreon)

Published:
2026-01-28 20:30:02
Imported:
2026-08
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Content

So Short Round is the main character in this one, huh? 😂 I'm looking forward to reading your thoughts on this movie! Thanks so much for watching with me. 🥰

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Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984) | Full-Length Watchalong Reaction

Comments

Christopher Smith

This one has the best (Short-Round) and worst (Willie Scott) of the Indie side-kicks.

Nathan Jasper

Short Round is such a cool character. And Willie is... well, she's Willie. With this being a sort of prequel, it makes sense Marion's not back though I would have much preferred her over Miss High Maintenance. Kate Capshaw is a good actress though, she's had some awesome roles and she did exactly what she was supposed to do - put us on edge early so we're gripping the safety bars when shit hits the fan later. LOVE this story though. Cultists scare the crap out of me and literally stumbling upon one that rips out hearts and drinks blood and gains mind control over people.... WILD From the mine cart chase through the bridge collapse definitely has to be some of the best action in the series. What's fun is that when the chaos starts, it does not stop. And while some of the stunts seem a bit... out there... Spielberg does it so well that it's more spectacle than cheese.

Sam

I'm with Tarantino on this one (and I rarely agree with Tarantino about anything), this is the best Indiana Jones movie, bar none. Tarantino also says it's the best Spielberg movie, which he is, as usual, entirely wrong about. Looking forward to your reaction. I have a nightmare of a board meeting tomorrow and watching this picture and your reaction to it might just give the positivity I need to get through it. 🙏

Steve Mercier

Sooooooo I loved this movie when I was a kid. I mean, it's Indie. It's got Short Round (awesome). It's got cool voodoo magic heart ripping action in it. Buuuuut then I got a little older. And this one is really quite problematic. There's the whole white savior thing with Indiana showing up to save the Indian village--which, I mean, was so common place (and...still is) in this time that I could almost look beyond this. But then you have a bunch of British colonizers showing up in the end to kill the evil foreigners as a deus ex machina that wasn't okay then, and still isn't. But for me, my biggest gripe with this movie is fucking Willie Scott. She is so fucking annoying--holy fucking shit. There aren't any real redeeming qualities to the character in my not so humble opinion, but following up Marion Ravenwood--the baddest bad-ass damsel-in-distress/love interest ever--with this air-headed knob was never going to come off well. That said, there are still some things I enjoy about this movie...well, maybe just a couple: Short Round (I already said that one), and then the action sequences in the end on the bridge are pretty cool. But hey: The Last Crusade is next. And that one's golden. That one's just a few notches below Raiders, and some of that has to do with--once again--Marion Ravenwood. So I look forward to at least one more future Indiana Jones outing. As for this one: eh?

Movies with KL

Yeah, the Brits showing up at the end was def underwhelming (the whole bridge scene I thought was the lowest of the whole last half). The portrayal of the Indian people in this movie is certainly not good at all. While watching, I attributed that to the movie just being so over-the-top, in general, then I went to Letterboxd and saw quite a few people mention racism in their reviews. There's def some cultural insensitivity on full display here to tell this story, but hopefully there wasn't anything malicious about it in production. And white saviourism is so damn common in storytelling. That's why I really enjoyed Short Round being the one who inspired the children to fight their masters.

Chris Thom

My favorite Indiana Jones movie by far. It has everything. Even the score is extra epic in this one. Disney even based their ride after it.

Movies with KL

Ahh, so there is a ride! That scene was the most "Disney amusement park ride" scene I've ever watched in my life haha.

Vincent Hollow

I don't know if you noticed but the British officer that Indy meets at the Palace is Delbert Grady from The Shining. Kate Capshaw was married to Spielberg at the time of filming, and I think it was Steve's idea to put her in the movie.

Vincent Hollow

We really deserved more Short Round. He has some of the best lines in this movie and kicked as much ass as Indy! "You told me stay against this wall! I did what you said! This not my fault!' "You call him Dr. Jones, doll!" "Hang on, lady, we going for a ride!"

Chris Thom

Yeah, definitely. Felt the same seeing it at eight. Then the ride opened when I was ten so it felt fortuitous. And it was a major tech achievement at the time, not sure if it still is. There's a big element from Raiders on it too. It's pretty neat.

Movies with KL

Despite having just re-watched The Shining recently, I didn't recognize him, no!

Chris Thom

So awesome that he won an Oscar. And one of the first people he saw after was Harrison Ford. Sweet moment.

Tyler Foster

No denying this is a problematic movie in some ways, but I still think it's pretty good. In a way, this is kind of like Star Wars compared to The Empire Strikes Back. Star Wars is a little more character-driven than Temple of Doom, and the tone of Temple of Doom is exaggerated for effect, but both lean toward being purely throwbacks to the serials of the 1930s and 1940s, with one being a space opera and the other being a rugged jungle adventurer, whereas Raiders and Empire are that, but more grounded like you say, more human. Among the criticisms leveled at the film, the "white savior" complaint is complicated. In my opinion, the "white savior" narrative is rooted in the idea that the white man in question has a less naive understanding of the world and is teaching the non-white people something. For example, many "white savior" narratives involve Native Americans, with the "noble" white people showing "savage Indians" how to behave. Temple of Doom reads more like a Seven Samurai situation, where a small town full of regular people who have no experience fighting or rescuing are looking for a hero who has the skills to break into a temple and then a prison, which is different. The movie also differentiates between types of Indian culture along class lines, and thus, the one village doesn't stand in for India as a whole. Ultimately, IMO, the movie is more guilty of broadly stereotyping Indians and Indian culture. The rich people turn out to be the villains, but the whole dinner sequence of Willie and Short Round trying to find something that isn't horrific is just cartoonish in an "I'm afraid of foreign cultures!" kind of way, and many aspects of the way the victimized villagers behave reads as very othering and detached from reality. That said, I don't mind the Thuggee cult so much simply because 1) again, it is a specific cult, so it doesn't necessarily reflect on the Indian people as a whole, and 2) it's *so* exaggerated -- if the movie were set in America, they'd just be devil worshippers, and the outrageous nature of their whole ritual would probably be seen as metal. In any case, I also think the important thing to do when older films have offensive material in them is acknowledging that these issues are present and thinking about why they're offensive without being dismissive; what would be wrong would be saying stuff like "turn your brain off" and "that doesn't matter." The part where Willie is running around screaming non-stop is pretty irritating (although I like the snake joke at the end), but it sounds like I'm more with you than with the rest of the commenters. Willie can be annoying, but she also is a consistent and well-established character who behaves like you would expect a woman from that lifestyle to act when thrust into this situation, and like you say, as she becomes more used to being in peril, she becomes more endearing. I think they probably could've figured out one more good hero moment for her to help give her more of an arc and made her a little less screamy, but I enjoy the fact that she's just out of place in this world, and I think many scenes, like the extended flirting scene you mentioned, are some of the best in the movie. Spielberg was going through a divorce when he made the film, and he and Kate Capshaw, who played Willie, became attracted to each other during the making of the movie. She and Spielberg have been married since 1991. One thing to note that is not really that important during the movie but does suggest a faint arc for Indiana Jones is that this movie takes place in 1935, the year before Raiders, which was set in 1936. Here, he starts out searching for "fortune and glory," hoping to profit off the treasure, but ultimately returns it to the village. I guess he also changes his opinion on museums between the two, or at least, he likes his friend Marcus's museum the most, because by the time Raiders rolls around, his POV is "it belongs in a museum!" which at the time was meant to represent his altruism, that the money is only important insomuch as it allows him to go on more archaeological adventures. Nowadays, of course, we'd rather the artifacts be handled by the culture they belong to -- another aspect of these movies that's stuck in the past.

Movies with KL

"Temple of Doom reads more like a Seven Samurai situation, where a small town full of regular people who have no experience fighting or rescuing are looking for a hero who has the skills to break into a temple and then a prison, which is different." - Yes, this is a good point. "In any case, I also think the important thing to do when older films have offensive material in them is acknowledging that these issues are present and thinking about why they're offensive without being dismissive; what would be wrong would be saying stuff like 'turn your brain off' and 'that doesn't matter.'" - Agreed. And acknowledging the time that the movie came from and what society was like at the time - not to excuse what was done, but to understand why it is present in the first place.

Tyler Foster

I knew there was one thing I forgot, and I remembered what it was. At the beginning, when Indy, Willie, and Short Round arrive at the airfield, a man with a British accent leads them to the airplane. If you know his voice as well as I do, you won't need his face to recognize him, but if you look closely, you'll recognize Dan Aykroyd in a blink-and-you'll-miss-it cameo. It was a reunion for Spielberg and Aykroyd, who worked on one of Spielberg's few widely-derided films. I guess we'll see if you ever end up watching it.

Tyler Foster

You've got it backwards. Capshaw and Spielberg fell in love during the making of the movie and married afterward -- in fact, they didn't even get married until after Last Crusade was well in the rearview mirror.

Vincent Hollow

Ahhh...okay. I was going merely by my memory of it, which I guess was a little rusty.