40 Films in Robotech: Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984)

    

This was the first Indiana Jones movie I saw in the theater…

 ROBOTECH MENTION:  

There are a lot of film references in Robotech media retelling the events of the one specific TV episode Annie’s Wedding. While Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom isn’t referenced by title in the TV show, a “temple” where human sacrifices will be made is mentioned, conjuring up Temple of Doom-type of visions. In Jack McKinney’s novelization of Annie’s Wedding, the character of Rook thinks of a revered old-time movie at the mention of the word “temple”…

This excerpt is from page 146 of the Jack McKinney Robotech book Metamorphosis (1987).

 SYNOPSIS:  

Not exactly a regular synopsis, this explanation of how Temple of Doom varies from its predecessor, Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), is pretty enlightening. This is from the book George Lucas: The Creative Impulse – Lucasfilm’s First Twenty Years (1992) by Charles Champlin…

Raiders of the Lost Ark had roamed all over the map for its cliffhanging thrills. Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom was quite different. It was largely concentrated in one place, the Temple of Doom itself, with its pitiable child laborers and its human sacrifices, involving the extraction of a still-beating heart, and a fiery furnace into which sacrificial victims (or unlucky intruders) were lowered. It was a tougher, more frightening film by far.     (p.100)

 AWARDS & KUDOS:  

Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom won the Academy Award for Best Visual Effects. 

 OTHER COOL FACTS:  

In Laurent Bouzereau's 2021 book The Making of the Steven Spielberg film West Side Story, Speilberg shares how Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom played a part in his long road to directing a musical:

"I've never directed a film musical, though there are musical numbers in some of my movies -- for example, in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, or a comedy like 1941. ...Opening Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom with a musical number was George Lucas' idea. He said, 'Hey, Steven, you always say you want to shoot musicals. You're a frustrated musical director!' So, we put together this crazy number based on Cole Porter's 'Anything Goes,' and Danny Daniels choreographed it. (p.13)

 ROBOTECH REASON:  

I was on the periphery on including Temple in this list. But, on the day of this writing (waaaaaay back in November 2024), I received in the mail my Garrett Brown-autographed Temple of Doom DVD cover. Brown, who invented the Steadicam, was the Steadicam operator in Sri Lanka for Temple of Doom – including the infamous rope bridge scene. I was able to obtain this through a fellow QRG Spoilers Movie Club member who worked at HSN in Florida. 

Another HSN Spoilers Movie Club member used to run a podcast called "SideTrack'd" and did an episode interviewing Garrett Brown. Check it out via this link.

To read my ⭐⭐⭐(out of a possible 5 star) rating for Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom on Letterboxd, click here.