Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom

Stream on Disney+

Runtime: 1 Hour and 59 Minutes

Rated PG

“Hey, lady, you call him Dr. Jones.”

In 1935, archaeologist Indiana Jones narrowly escapes a dangerous deal gone wrong in Shanghai. Alongside his young sidekick Short Round and nightclub singer Willie Scott, Indy crashes in a remote village in India.

After getting to know the villagers, they plead for help: their sacred Sankara Stone has been stolen, and their children have mysteriously disappeared. Believing the two are connected, Indy sets out to recover the stone and rescue the missing children.

Themes:‍ ‍

Archaeology, travel, adventure, fedoras, the occult, the past, different cultures, sacred stones, myths, legend, kidnapping, child labor, brainwashing, cults, belief, worship, evil, sacrifices, courage, fear, selfishness, redemption, doing the right thing, coming to one’s senses, mind control, loyalty, friendship, the value of children, and heroes.

Language:

B*stard - 1 D*mn - 1 Sh*t - 1 Religious Exclamation - 8

Stuff to be aware of:‍ ‍

‍ ‍Alcohol and Drugs - In the opening scene, multiple people drink.

‍ ‍Gross - During a meal people eat live snakes. A waiter cuts open a huge snake and a bunch of a little ones squirm out. A man drops several in his mouth. Another man sucks the guys out of a giant, cooked beetle. There is also a soup that has eyeballs floating in it. They also feast on chilled monkey brain.

There is a scene with a ton of gross bugs. There are also two dead corpses that fall out of a crumbling wall.

‍ ‍Scary - There are some scary look statues that scare away local people.

There is a scene in which a guard comes into view out of nowhere during an intense scene and can be a jump scare.

‍ ‍Sexual - Indy reaches down the front of a woman’s dress to retrieve an antidote, and she remarks, “I’m not that kind of girl.”

A woman is wrapped in a blanket after bathing, but only her bare shoulders are visible.

A man and woman flirt by discussing doing research, nocturnal activities, and mating rituals. They kiss, but nothing happens any further. Later the woman tells the man, “I could have been your greatest adventure.” Indy pushed on a statue’s breast’s to open a secret passage.

Harrison Ford is seen shirtless multiple times.

‍ ‍Violence/Gore - Multiple people are shot and beaten up. There is blood in many scenes, but I will try to mention the more intense scenes here.

One man is impaled by a rotisserie equipment that has flaming chicken in it. A man tries to choke a character with a wire. We see a man get hung by a whip caught in a ceiling fan. You will see him get strung up, coked, and killed.

In a ritual sacrifice scene an evil priest pulls a man’s hart out of his chest. The heart is still beating and the man remains alive. He is then lowered into lava. The man’s fist is seen going into the sacrifices chest and the heart is held up for all to see. When the man is burnt up his heart bursts into flames. You see the man lowered into the lava as he yells and dies.

There is blood that when drunk, it causes a person to be controlled by an evil priest and connected to a voodoo doll that will hurt the person if the doll is hurt. The blood is poured out of a mummified skull.

A man and a child are beaten whips. The grown man’s back is seen with blood and lashes on it. The audience only seethe expression on the kid’s face.

A man is crushed by a rock crushing machine. You see him get drug into the machine and then blood is seen on the roller.

Alligators are seen eating clothes to represent people being eaten. A man is seen falling from a great height and hitting a rock wall multiple times on the way down.

‍ ‍Other - Some children are enslaved and must work in the mines under harsh conditions. They are malnourished and look very sad. The children are seen in shackles and beaten with whips.

There were people who worship an evil god and make human sacrifices.

Overall:‍ ‍

Seeing It With Your Family

These classic movies that many of us 80s kids grew up watching are exactly why I started this site. It’s easy to remember the adventure and excitement, but forget some of the content that comes with it.

Indy’s second outing may feel a bit rougher than you remember, especially when it comes to intensity. While it actually has less language than the first film, it more than makes up for it with some surprisingly graphic and unsettling moments. From the infamous “chilled monkey brains” dinner scene to the shocking ritual involving removing a man’s heart, this is easily Indiana Jones’ darkest—and grossest—adventure.

Parents may want to take that into consideration before pressing play, especially for younger viewers.

What I Thought

As a kid, this was my favorite Indy adventure, mostly because of all the gross-out moments, but also because I loved Short Round (a.k.a. Data from The Goonies!).

As I’ve gotten older, though, I’ve come to see it as the weakest of the original trilogy. That said, it still lands ahead of Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. When you stack it up against Raiders of the Lost Ark and The Last Crusade, this installment doesn’t have as good a story nor show as much personal growth for Indy. However, it does push him more fully into the role of a true hero, rather than just an archaeologist caught up in wild adventures.

I’ll always have a soft spot for this chapter of Indy’s story, it’s fun, memorable, and unique, but it just doesn’t quite reach the same level as the other two films in the original trilogy.

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