Chapter Two: Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom
By Brett Beach
August 6, 2009
BoxOfficeProphets.com
I have long harbored an idea for a board game wherein one of the elements is attempting to identify a film based solely on the MPAA's written description. This sprung out of my discovery that the 1996 blockbuster (and really, does anyone these days still wish to have his or her block busted yet again?) Twister received its PG-13 rating for - wait for it, wait for it - "intense depictions of very bad weather." Say that phrase aloud and savor it for a moment. Share it with a friend or your own loved one close at hand. It is nothing if not accurate, but to me it is a poker-faced punch line, the first of many proofs that the MPAA has a sense of humor. This may in fact be the only sense that collective board exhibits, but such purple prose cheers me up in times of dire seriousness. Although there are a lot of generic "for violence and language", etc, there are more than enough unique descriptive copies to constitute hours of sober - or otherwise - entertainment.
Consider the breathless description for Natural Born Killers. It is "Rated R for extreme violence and graphic carnage, for shocking images, and for strong language and sexuality." I can almost hear Wayne Gale reading that aloud as copy to promote one of the episodes of the show-within-the movie, American Maniacs. If that had been printed on a poster back in 1994 or if red band trailers had been in vogue back then, who knows how much extra cash NBK might have grabbed whilst in theaters. I also love the assessments that bring moralistic values into the equation and unintentionally raise the issue of whether the MPAA is more akin to a censorship board.
To wit, Trainspotting is granted an R for "graphic heroin use and resulting depravity, strong language, sex, nudity and some violence." Harmony Korine's bizarre midnight movie Gummo received an R (after being edited down from an NC-17) for "pervasive depiction of anti-social behavior of juveniles including violence, substance abuse, sexuality and language." Each description features at least one solid turn of phrase and I conjure up the mental picture of this group of anonymous citizens experiencing an entertainment like Gummo and then being forced to somehow capture that in words that go beyond "disturbing images."
A few others that hold a special place in my heart are as follows. The 2002 literary adaptation White Oleander has one of the longest summaries still for a film that snuck by with a PG-13. It contains "mature thematic elements concerning dysfunctional relationships, drug content, language, sexuality and violence." Jackass was accorded an R for "dangerous, sometimes extremely crude stunts, language and nudity" while in a variation on that, Jackass Number Two was noted as having "extremely crude and dangerous stunts throughout" among other things. Obviously, the MPAA was spinning their wheels and avoided thinking outside the box for something new to say. I would like to end with a little shout-out to The Powerpuff Girls Movie that earned its PG for "non-stop frenetic animated action." My Grade 11/12 AP English teacher would be proud of the use of a solid vocab word in that concise description.
Twenty-five years ago, the summer of 1984 was a turning point in the ratings system as two different films that Steven Spielberg had a hand in - one as director and another as executive producer/presenter provoked a furor over their being too intense and violent to have been awarded only a PG rating. (Remember, this was the same year that Tipper Gore caught wind of what Prince was up to with "Darling Nikki" and, as a result, formed the Parents Music Resource Center, pushing for warning stickers on albums and other media. Concern was in the air.) Between them, the pair featured ripped out hearts, enslaved children, microwaved gremlins and darkly comic holiday anecdotes involving Santa Claus. I'll circle back around to the second film later. The era of the PG-13 rating would soon be upon us, brought about in part by the second adventure (sort of) of a certain fedora-wearing, thrill-seeking professor/archaeologist.
Confession time — I realized about five seconds into my viewing of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom last weekend that I had, in fact, never seen it before. I understand this may be grounds for my immediate dismissal from Box Office Prophets. Perhaps, though, you may wonder how I could possibly have been so confused in my memory that I only imagined I had already watched it.
Allow me to elaborate. The summer it was released was my first summer as a resident in the tiny town of Camp Sherman, OR (population at the time 350) having moved there the previous fall. The nearest town with movie theaters was Bend, which was a 45-minute drive on a good day. For the rest of the decade, most of my movie-going was in the form of videocassette recordings. But even that doesn't scratch the true surface of why I didn't see Temple of Doom. I could have gotten my parents to drive me. Trips to Bend were frequent for us as we ran a small business and needed supplies and items in bulk that necessitated the journey.
Truth be told, I remember getting burned out - at age 8, mind you - on all the hype and talk and ads before it came out and at some point, I basically said, "Not interested." Gremlins and Ghostbusters were also victims of this childish, for lack of a better word, mentality that summer. I certainly could have rented them at any point in the months that followed, but I didn't. The latter two I eventually caught on TV years later but I was certain I had finally gotten around to Temple of Doom in college, that I had watched a video dub of it in a friend's dorm lounge. I was familiar with the plot from so many years of hearing it discussed and dissected. It felt like I had seen it! My initial reaction is that it is the best of the series.
The first 15 minutes of Temple of Doom and the opening musical number in particular are some of Spielberg's finest work. When Kate Capshaw slinks out of the smoke on stage and "wraps" her body around the film's title card, it is electric. "Anything Goes" is a good credo for the film, as we quickly come to see, but it's the look and feel of the piece that is so dynamic. Cinematographer Douglas Slocombe shoots the scene as if he had been told to imagine Bob Fosse taking over a production number from one of Arthur Freed's MGM musicals. The rendition of the song is catchy and jazzy and upbeat. But the sequence is painted in cool blues and overwhelmingly icy blacks and it feels in its own way as chilling (but far more enticing) as the hellish underground inferno that provides the film's set pieces in the second half.
Spielberg uses the opening to set the tone for the rest of the film, as he has done masterfully for all four installments in the series so far. A case in point is the beginning of Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, which plops us efficiently down in the 1950s with a minimum of effort, achieves a tone somewhere sci-fi and noir, and via the escaping-a-nuclear-blast-by-hiding-inside-a-refrigerator trick, lets the audience cheerfully know that this will be the most absurd of all of Indiana Jones' travails. I enjoyed the rest of Crystal Skull, but felt that the opening was really the main point for all involved and the rest was just what followed after. It's like how the host of an awards show has to get things off to a pumped up start and raise the adrenaline of the audience and then more or less play traffic cop the remainder of the evening to make sure things stay the even course.
Temple of Doom is perplexing for me in that it is obviously a prequel, taking place in 1935, a year before the events in Raiders of the Lost Ark, but the character of Indiana Jones seems far more cynical, darker and brooding this time around. These are qualities one might expect to find in a character farther down the road chronologically. The taciturn, rough and tumble but playful (and slightly nerdy) mien from Raiders is absent. This Dr. Jones is an opportunist, kind of a sadist, most definitely a misogynist and just shy of being an all around bastard. And yet, he looks after Short Round, an orphan, and protects him fiercely when push comes to shove. Harrison Ford wisely never tries to make Indiana likable. The natural swagger of the character, his willingness to leap headfirst into ridiculous situations and Indiana's calm under fire make him inherently appealing, leaving Ford to have fun with the nastier side of the persona, which he does with understated pleasure during the portion of the plot where Indy has been put into a trance and prepares Willie Scott (Kate Capshaw) to be sacrificed.
As I discussed last week, part twos seems to have a knack for pushing farther into the dark heart of material and Temple of Doom is a template for that theory. The violence is more graphic; the humorous moments are a lot less light. However, it is the also odd film out among the four in a lot of ways. While the other three all feature a supernatural or quite fantastical payoff to the plot line, Temple of Doom ends with a showdown on a rope bridge and the villain falling into the jaws of eager crocodiles. After the breathless pace of the story and the presentation of numerous fates worse than death, this climax feels rather quaint, a notion reinforced with the arrival of the British cavalry to restore order and "save the day" at the end. While the other films are all about globetrotting and rushing from one locale to the next, Temple of Doom gets its scenery-swirling out of the way early and settles down in India for most of the running time. The character of Willie is also tough to take after the hard-drinking, tough-as-nails Marion Ravenwood. Capshaw has the brassiness down pat, but remains saddled with the thankless task of being dragged along at every turn.
Temple of Doom has a definite air of attempting to top its predecessor. By setting the film in the past, the film is free to make up new mythology for the character and series but also winkingly acknowledge the most beloved parts of Raiders, albeit indirectly. If you thought the snakes in the tomb were icky, how about traipsing through a hidden corridor lined with cockroaches and other creepy crawlies? Liked the horse/jeep/motorcycle chase sequence? Then what about a pursuit conducted in mine carts through the very bowels of a fiery underground lair? Faces melting off not gross enough for ya? We've got a dinner sequence filled with offbeat cuisine that just might cut through your cast-iron stomach. Spielberg, George Lucas and screenwriters Willard Hyuck and Gloria Katz (best known for penning American Graffiti and Howard the Duck) seem to anticipate a target audience of ADHD youngsters asking, "And now what? And now what? And now what?" They may have been a few decades ahead in that anticipation, but after inventing the modern box office bonanza with Jaws, Spielberg offered a glimpse of where box office behavior was headed with Temple of Doom. Opening on the Wednesday before Memorial Day weekend at a then ultra-wide 1,700+ theaters, the further adventures of Indy Jones took in $42 million in six days on the way to a final domestic gross of $180 million. As the number of theaters grew and screen count increased and the idea of an event picture replaced the practice of a slow and sustained run buoyed by word-of-mouth, the opening numbers posted by Temple of Doom (and the likes of Return of the Jedi the year before) would soon become the norm. Even a quarter of a century later, though, that figure still seems impressive.
Perhaps in praising it as the finest of the Indiana Jones sagas, I am professing that I appreciate a sequel that is willing to go the extra distance, that plays hard to get and doesn't care if I like it or not. Maybe I am willing to meet its masochism and weary world view half way. Perhaps. Or I may just be a sucker for chilled monkey brains.
Next week: Don't get them wet. Don't expose them to light. Don't feed them after midnight. But by all means, set them loose in New York City.