The Radical Child

The first Indiana Jones film sequel, actually occurring chronologically before the first, opens with American songstress Willie Scott performing a Chinese rendition of the titular theme from the old Broadway show Anything Goes in 1935 Shanghai, where the eponymous college professor, archaeologist, and adventurer negotiates with Chinese mobsters in an exchange of treasured artifacts, which culminates in a shootout that leads to Indy escaping with the woman who semi-serves as a love interest, along with his trusty sidekick Short Round, portrayed by Vietnamese child actor Ke Huy Quan (who would ultimately append Jonathan to his name upon becoming a United States citizen, his other notable role being Data in The Goonies).

The party of three escapes on a cargo plane whose pilots eventually bail out, and after a lucky escape, they find themselves in colonial India, where the first village they encounter has lost a precious stone along with its children used by an evil shaman as child labor, and Indy decides to help them, traveling to a Maharaja’s palace for a hearty “meal”, and that night, after an assassination attempt, he finds a passageway into the eponymous temple, Short Round coming along and Willie following suit to rescue them from a trapped room that nearly kills them, although she needed to overcome her fear of bugs (which I very much share, so it would be hard for me in such a situation).

The remainder of the film involves the three dealing with the cult that stole the sacred stones and kidnapped the children and concludes satisfactorily. It’s very much a good film, but it’s probably my least favorite of the series due to being way too dark and gross at times, and when it originally came out showed the flaws of America’s film rating system (it was instrumental in adding PG-13 to it, although I more think it should have been rated R). Apparently in the eyes of the MPAA’s film raters, saying the f-word is a lot worse than ripping someone’s heart out or otherwise attempting to murder someone, which says a lot of the sorry state of how Americans perceive certain “offensive” content.

The film’s overall xenophobic attitude is another reason I don’t hold Temple of Doom to the in the same regard as other Indiana Jones films (and Short Round is a memorable sidekick, but not in a good way), given the portrayals of the Chinese and Indian people and society, and that I think is another factor to consider when giving movies content ratings. Even so, John Williams’s score is also notable, given the mentioned Chinese rendition of one of the older Broadway showtunes, along with several pieces fitting the Asian locales throughout the movie, along with “The Raiders March” and its various remixes, the ending theme worth sitting through the opening credits to hear. Not a bucket-list film like Raiders but has nonetheless aged well.