...If Adventure has a name...
*Bum...bada-bum bum!*
It must be Indiana Jones!
*Ba bada BUUUUUUM! Ba baduuuuuuuuum!* (you know the rest...)
The year is is 1935. America is crawling its way out of The Great Depression, a man named Adolph Hitler is taking control over Germany, and there's nothing but hard times ahead for the planet Earth. But let's not worry about that too much, because in a remote part of asia, in an abandoned palace, the young Maha'raja's mind is being controlled and people are getting their still-beating hearts ripped out of their chests right before they're lowered into a pit of lava.
Never mind where this spiraling, geologically impossible pool came from and pay no attention to the fact that the bald guy with the creepy head dress seems to be breaking through the human ribcage with relative ease...because if you do, you're going to ruin this movie for everyone. Have a little common courtesy.
Although this has been called "The worst Indiana Jones movie", that still puts it way above a lot of other films about swashbuckling archaeologists (but I won't mention Tomb Radier by name). Independantly of the rest of the trilogy, this film proves that George Lucas has the ability to avoid destroying everything he touches. Yeah, Yeah, Star Wars was amazing. We all know that. Shut up.
All I can think about when I see Temple of Doom is the tumor LucasFilm Ltd gave me when I contemplated how I paid $30 to go see Episodes 1 through 3 (George has refused to comment on the correlation between the growing occurances of prenatal anurisms and that look on Hayden Christensen's face when he's "angry")...but I digress...It may not have the same happy-go-lucky feel that the other two had, but that's because it's NOT THE SAME!!! Wouldn't it be amazing to see a sequal to a movie that had nothing to do with the original? Oh wait, I just did...HOORAY!
What's great about this movie is that its so much darker than the other two. It dosn't matter how many nazi Indy mows over with his semi-automatic weapon because nobody likes nazi's. What I'm talking about is the villager who's done nothing but live his life for the past 20-some years. An yet, here he is getting his heart ripped out and then getting deep fried in the hottest vat of oil in the eastern hemisphere! That's some scary stuff! This is the kind of stuff Indy deals with when he's looking for an artifact nobody's heard of.
Also, you can't discount the side-kick factor. Don't get me wrong, I love Sala and Marcus and Henry Jones Sr, but there's just something about a chauvanistic chinese kid in a yankees cap telling the awful lead actress exactly what she can do with that sequined dress. Kinda makes you feel all warm and fuzzy inside. In fact, I'm gonna watch it again right now...and so should you.
1 comment:
I had never seen Raiders of the Lost Ark when I saw this one when I was in Japan with an all Japenese audience (which would make sense), and you really get a chance to see about subtitles because the film was in English with Japanese subtitles and many a time my laughter was the only thing heard in the theatre except for Harrison Ford's heavy breathing as he tried to run in a manly kind of way, even though his running is a bit on the bizarre side.
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