Indiana Jones and The Temple of Doom is the second film of the Indiana Jones franchise. After arriving in North India, Indiana Jones is asked by desperate villagers to find a mystical stone and rescue their children from a Thuggee cult practicing child slavery, black magic and ritual human sacrifice in honor of the goddess Kali.

The film was directed by Steven Spielberg, and executive producer and co-writer George Lucas in 1984. The budget was $28.2 million, and the box office $333,1 million.

After the Hollywood Renaissance ended, the film industry become more interested in making deals than making movies. They started to do sequels of the successful films, like The Goodfather, Jaws, Rambo and Star Wars. The first film of the franchise, Raiders of The Lost Ark, was a total success. Based on how the movie was well received, they decided to do a sequel of the film.

Steven Spielberg and George Lucas were famous for they for their previous successful. Lucas was famous for writing the story of Star Wars, and Spielberg for directing the E.T. film. By that time, both were highly recognized, and the and the expectations on their work were big.

When the second film was announced, the public was exited and their expectations on the film were very high. After the film was realized, the criticism began to rain.

In the essay “Faith Under the Fedora: Indiana Jones and the Heroic Journey Towards God”, written by Chris Yogerst for the University of Wisconsin, Yogerst states that, “The success of his films allowed the director to make whatever project he desired. The problem was that Spielberg’s financial success led to criticism over the intellectual and personal depth of his work”. What Yogerst is trying to say that expectations were higher, since his last work was great.

I agree with Yogerst, I believe that the problem was Spielberg’s success; when someone does an excellent job, it is always expected that the next work is as good or better than the first one. If the the film would have not been a sequel, perhaps the critics would have been lower.

One of the highest critics was that the rating system was inappropriate, the violence and darkness of the film were not good for the childs.

In the article “Indiana Jones, Directed by Spielberg” written by Vincent Canby for The New York Times, Canby assures that, “There’s no doubt about it – the movie, in addition to being endearingly disgusting, is violent in ways that may scare the wits out of some small patrons”. I found his opinion interesting, since his main point is that even though the film is weird and disgusting, we will find it delight in the horror and like it.

I concur with Canby partially, I agree that it is endearingly disgusting. I found disgusting certain parts of the film, like when they did the rituals of human sacrifice, but I disagree in the part that “we will find delight in the horror and like it”. Personally, the scenes made me feel uncomfortable and I found them quite disturbing, I never felt delight in that.

We all have a different matter of taste in the films, and that’s the reason they will always be different opinions due a subject. What I could find super interesting, someone else could find it totally boring.

The most controversial issue in this film was the darkness, the public was expecting something different, even Spielberg admitted that he wasn’t satisfied with his work.

Spielberg said: “I wasn’t happy with the second film at all. It was too dark, too subterranean, and much too horrific. I thought it out-poltered ‘Poltergeist.’ There’s not an ounce of my own personal feeling in ‘Temple of Doom.” 

In an interview to the full crew, Spielberg and Lucas explained why the film was dark and they gave the reasons of why they wanted to do it in certain way and style. In the interview, Spielberg states that “George said that it was going to be a very dark film. The way Empire Strikes Back was the dark second act of the Star Wars trilogy… I personally find very spooky.”  “When George Lucas came to me with the story, it was about black magic, voodoo, and a temple of doom. My job and my challenge was to balance the dark side of this Indiana Jones saga with as much comedy as I could afford.” George admits that “The story ended up being a lot darker than we intended it to be. Part of it is that I was going through a divorce at the time and I wasn’t in a good mood; and part of it was that we wanted to do something a little bit more edgy.”

I believe that it’s important to know all the reasons of why films are made in a certain way, we have to see the full picture to able to give an opinion.

How do social and political issues affect movies at specific moments in history? How do movies explore and potentially affect society and politics? The film was object of some controversy for his so negative portrayal of India and Hinduism. Since it makes the Hindu culture look like it’s satanic and bad.

In the movies, the truth is usually modified in order to make the film more interesting and to sell the idea easily. I believe that the idea of the Hindu culture being satanic was disrespectful, maybe they did not do it with bad intentions, but they should have been more careful with the subject.

Are the story and style conventional or unconventional? I believe that the film is a mixture of both, but it is more conventional than unconventional. This film follows the same pattern that is sold to the public, we have the protagonist who goes through a series of events that risk his life and the people who accompany him, in the end he fulfills his mission, saves the girl and stays with her, having a happy ending that satisfies the public. But on the other hand, we have the darkness of the film that it’s not that normal and it’s disturbing.

Even though the film was quite disturbing in some parts for me, I really enjoyed it. Spielberg did an excellent job balancing the darkness with the humor. This film keeps you intrigued and the best thing is that at no time you get bored, just when you think that nothing else can go wrong, something more bad happens, we can compare it with Murphy’s law.

In this case I am going to agree with most of the critics, Indiana Jones and The Temple of Doom isn’t the best film of the saga, but just because it’s not the best it doesn’t mean that it is a terrible movie. If you are a person that enjoys films with the genre of adventure, action and mystery, you will definitely enjoy the film, but if you are a person that doesn’t like topics like magic or human sacrifices, this film might not be for you.