Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom is one of those movies that has always left a special taste in my mouth. The first time I saw it, I was a kid. My parents bought a VHS copy, and they watched it to see if they would allow me to then view it. They didn’t find it too objectionable, though they did ask me to close my eyes during the Thugee ceremony.

I’d like to share how my perspective on this film has changed over the years as I saw it through the eyes of its three main characters.

First Viewing: Short Round

On my first viewing, I completely missed the plot of the movie. I mostly saw it from Short Round’s perspective. The big grossout moments seemed to go on forever, and I had it burned into my mind just how many terrible things Indy had to endure over the course of the film. He and Short Round had to jump out of an airplane without a parachute, then they got brutally whipped, enslaved against their wills, and nearly killed on too many occasions for me to process.

Willie Scott was just a noisemaker to me, showing up in scenes just to scream and punctuate the horror of it all.

I was honestly scared to revisit this film for many years because I didn’t like seeing Indy get hurt. I preferred Raiders of the Lost Ark. But I realized over the years that that movie brutalizes Indy quite a bit, too. He gets shot, punched, thrown around, trapped in a tomb full of snakes, and dragged behind a truck. Basically, he’s always mistreated.

After I grew up and got married, I wanted to share my childhood favorites with my wife. She had never seen any of the Indiana Jones films, so we watched the original trilogy in order.

Second Viewing: Willie Scott

Thus, I went ahead and gave Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom another chance. This time, I identified with Willie’s character. She’s constantly horrified and overwhelmed by everything she sees. She has to jump out of a tall building with Indy at the start, and things only get worse when she’s forced to jump out of an airplane a little later. I have to admit that I was completely focused on her this time around during the entire plane sequence.

She’s the first one to realize that no one is flying the plane. She is the only one who notices how close the plane comes to crashing into a mountain peak while Indy and Short Round are busy improvising a solution with the inflatable raft. And her scream echoes off the mountain range as the raft falls and inflates under them.

While she may not get whipped or brutalized, Willie has to do a lot of hard things in the movie. This time, I was completely in her shoes during the grossout dinner scene and the disgusting bug scene.

Plus, I couldn’t help thinking how I would feel being in her place as a sacrificial offering to Kali. She can’t do anything to help herself during that entire scene. It’s all up to Short Round and Indy to save the day, which made me feel like a passive spectator of it all. Sure, Willie fights back as much as she can later on, but she’s mostly a support to Indy, not the main instigator of the action.

Third Viewing: Indiana Jones

In the past two viewings, I had watched Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom with someone else, whether my parents or my wife. This past week, I decided to watch it by myself. And that proved to be a very different experience. Maybe it’s because I’m older now, I have children of my own, and I can understand a more cynical perspective. Whatever the case, this time the character I most related to was Indiana Jones himself.

Indy starts the film as a cynical man. Everything he does, he’s only in it for himself. He cares for others in a general way, especially Short Round. But there’s not an ounce of humility in him.

After successfully negotiating a trade with some Chinese gangsters at the start of the film, his overconfidence nearly leads to his death when he drinks a glass of poisoned champagne. Thankfully, he drinks the antidote in time to undo the effects of the poison, but it’s a close call. However, it doesn’t lead him to learn his lesson that he shouldn’t be so quick to jump into dangerous situations.

During the grossout dinner, I was finally able to listen exclusively to Indy’s conversation with the people around him. All of the Willie and Short Round distractions could be safely ignored. It turns out that he’s probing for information in an extremely straightforward way. He gives away his entire hand like a poor poker player, which is why the bad guys quickly dispatch an assassin to try to kill him that evening.

Indy manages to survive that encounter and several other deathtraps before making his way into the titular Temple of Doom. And this is where things get interesting. The first true moment of humanity comes when Indy hears the cries of children suffering in the mines under the whip of slave drivers. He tries to stop the injustice, but all this does is get him and his two friends captured.

What makes this part of the movie so interesting is that it’s when Indy starts to lose things. First, he loses his freedom. Then he loses his agency when he’s forced to drink blood. At least this time it’s against his will that he drinks poison. He nearly loses Willie, but Short Round helps Indy return to his senses in the nick of time.

From then on, Indy acts selflessly. He’s learned his lesson that he can’t always depend on himself. Sometimes he needs a little help from those around him. The rest of the movie is a wonderful series of fights, chases, escapes, and duels to the death. But the real heart of it is when Short Round hands Indy his hat back, Indy apologizes to his young friend, and he dedicates himself to freeing all of the children imprisoned in the mine.

Antidote

To sum up, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom is an antidote for cynicism. It takes a character who is suffering from self-absorption and humbles him to the dust before enabling him to rise from the ashes and become heroic in every sense of the word.

I like this film more each time I revisit it. It used to be something I feared and dreaded, but now I see it as a grand adventure worth taking. That’s true of a lot of things in life. I would not normally choose to go through suffering, but when I’m presented with suffering, I can respond to it with courage and a good heart. Just don’t brag about having a good heart when Mola Ram is around.

This is the Deja Reviewer bidding you farewell until we meet again.

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