Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom/Awesome

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • Indy, brainwashed, being woken up by Short Round. Then, instead of just running off with the Shankara stones, he saves Short Round, a villageful of children and Willie. Then he proves how the Indy Ploy doesn't always work, twice (once in a subversion of the above awesomeness), before proving that, while cutting a shaky rope bridge, sometimes it does.
  • Just to prove Indy's big bad protector of children credentials there is a scene in Temple of Doom with two slavers beating a child. Cue whip crack, one slaver dropping a club, both of them turn, the music kicks in and the camera reveals Indy emerging from the shadows. Two loud thuds later both slavers land on the ground. Ten feet away. And then slide 15 more feet after they land.
  • Most of the movie is High Octane Nightmare Fuel, with the most terrifying villains of all the movies. Then Indy gets dangerous, and the tone switches to one of pure uninterrupted asskicking. Also inverting The Worf Effect.
  • A scene in the Novelization (ok, not technically part of the film, but still) tells why Lao Che's pilots don't just directly kill Indiana and Company in the airplane: as one of the pilots approaches a sleeping Indy with malicious intent, an egg drops from a crate above Indy's head. Without much effort, Indy gingerly catches it while still frigging asleep, and freaks out his would-be killer. The narrative jovially sums up the badassery:

Indiana Jones was not without flaw, but he had a sense for falling eggs.

  • "Mola Ram! Prepare to meet Kali! IN HELL!"
  • Mola Ram gets one just before, when Indy threatens to drop the Shankara stones into the river.

Go ahead, drop them! They will be found. YOU WON'T'!"

  • Lao Che gets a terriffic bad guy moment near the beginning of Temple of Doom

Willie: What's that?
Lao Che: Antidote.
Indiana Jones: To what?

Lao Che: The poison you just drank!

[Cue giggling.]

  • This and Crowning Moment of Heartwarming, when Short Round and Indy are pummeling the Raj and his slaver in unison as the camera cuts between them. If the earlier hat-swap was the emotional synchronous moment, this is the badass determinator moment. Dammit, Short Round should have taken over the Indy name for the fifth film.