These mysterious strains, as we know. Paul Alvarado-Dykstra.

Where could we be? When could we be?

I don't know, but if only the music could give us a hint as to where we might be.

Hmm.

Is it heaven with the Angelic Choir? Huh, I wonder, but maybe it's someplace else. Could it be? Oh, wait a second. I think the music is about to tell us where we are, Paul. Oh, my God. Yep. The Oriental Riff. Just kicking off with, you know, I actually looked it up and this thing is actually called the Oriental Riff. It has that name and it is understood as a horribly Orientalist and racist way of indicating the presence of China.

It is, it is stereotype manifested as musical motif.

It is, but it is like, you know, look, the movie we're talking about this week is called Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. If you didn't look at the title of this podcast before you started it. And Paul, this is, this film represents such an amazing hinge, I think, because this is the moment when maybe not our idols turn. But this is the moment when, you know, like you start seeing a little bit of that soft idol underbelly that's growing as they get fatter and fatter and, more famous and more wealthy and perhaps less, I don't know, creative.

I might phrase it slightly, somewhat differently in terms of we are seeing a transition of these upstart, next generation, insurgent, independent, new generation of voices pivot into the establishment kind of excess of the industry mainstream, fueled if not intoxicated by their accumulated success.

And wealth. But you know what's interesting is Spielberg was always a creature of the studio system, right? Lucas, very much an independent and somebody who really took pride in that. But folks, you know what? Here's the thing. If you're listening to this, you know that I'm Javier Grillo-Marxuach.

Oh, and I think I'm still Paul Alvarado-Dykstra.

And we believe that we are in.

Multiplex Overthruster, Summer of 84.

And not just in the Summer of 84, we are simultaneously in 1935, Shanghai.

Shanghai, yes, indeed.

In the prequel to Raiders of the Lost Ark. And this was at a time when prequels were a startlingly new concept.

Let's get back to the idea that like, Lucas definitely an upstart, Spielberg, if not an upstart, like, not an enfant terrible, but an enfant beloved by Hollywood, you know, and they got together, they made Raiders. At a time when Spielberg's stock was on the decline, he made a movie called 1941 that didn't do so good, right? They made Raiders in record time and for a much lower budget than everybody thought. Spielberg came in under schedule and now it's on. And I remember the Time Magazine review for this movie, the headline was Keeping the Customer Satisfied. And that is very much where we're at. This is the moment when this goes from being art to being a piece of business, right? Would you say?

It's a piece of intentional franchise building. And it's interesting, the Lucas and Spielberg collaboration that is manifested or represented by this franchise, by this character, and also the kind of mirror image somewhat of Lucas created Star Wars because he could not get the rights to Flash Gordon. And similarly, Spielberg had an aspiration to make a Bond film, but was not able to do that. And Lucas said, Oh, I've got something better than Bond. This idea he'd been toying around with, also inspired by the serials of the 30s and his youth. And that is Indiana Jones. And the first film, Raiders, obviously a masterpiece. A perfect film. A perfect film, Lightning in a Bottle. And the Lesson of Star Wars was in success. A franchise, sequelized.

But the thing is they didn't learn the Lesson of Star Wars because the Lesson of Star Wars was in success. Make something that's even newer, bigger and more exciting. And I think those of us who have read the story notes for Raiders, which are widely available in a PDF on the internet know that this movie is mostly made of shit they didn't use in the first movie. Like a lot of ideas from Temple of Doom are in there. And they just kind of went like, you know, we didn't do the part where they jump off the airplane. Let's put it in the sequel, you know? And it just, you know, Paul, I got to tell you, of all of the movies we've seen, this is the one that has the biggest chasm between my original enjoyment and what it was like to watch it at the age of 56. Because I mean, the violence, the darkness, the racism, the sinophobia, the Hindu phobia. Oh my God, Paul, what the hell is happening in this movie? This movie is kind of hateful.

Boy, there's a lot.

No, and don't tell me that this is George Lucas and Steven Spielberg were having divorces when they made this, so they were in a, I'm going through a divorce right now and I'm smiling ear to fucking ear, man. Look at this, right? No, producer Brad, we're not cutting this, it's fine. The people can know.

I was gonna say, how about the first divorce?

There was a Temple of Doom quality to that one, sure. Thank you, producer Brad. Maybe it's because they were going to their first divorce, is what you're saying?

Yes.

Oh boy.

There's a lot in this film that is startlingly problematic.

Startlingly.

At best. And it's frustrating because you approach this film wanting to love it.

Yes.

And with so much goodwill for Raiders. And I know a lot of people that do love the film and are able to somehow look past some things that should not be looked pastable.

Like the Oriental Rift showing up 40 seconds into the movie.

I mean, yeah, that's kind of on the nose, kind of, kind of, kind of shocking. But there are, you know, there are bursts and moments that's like, oh yeah, oh yeah, this is great. This is what I loved. But then it's like, what the hell are you doing? What is this? It's this wild roller coaster ride between truly inspired choices and some just jaw-droppingly, inexplicably, insane choices.

Bad decisions, yeah. So let me, for those of you who have not seen Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, after a botched transaction with a group of Chinese businessmen in Shanghai at the Club Obi-Wan, Indiana Jones winds up picking up a new sidekick in the form of American vocalist Willie Scott, and he is rescued from this botched engagement by his other sidekick.

His pre-existing sidekick.

His pre-existing sidekick, Short Round, played by the great Kehui Kwan.

Who is, I think unassailably, the brightest highlight throughout this entire film.

You know, we're going to talk about that because I agree, but I disagree, but I agree, but I kind of disagree, but I agree. Anyway, as a result of a series of misadventures, Indiana Jones, Willie Scott and Short Round wound up in India, where it just so happens that the village where they've landed is being menaced by the Maharaja of Pankot, who is covertly running a cult, a thuggy, a revitalization of the legendary thuggy cult and conducting human sacrifices in the titular Temple of Doom, along with enslaving children. So Indiana Jones and his sidekicks wind up rescuing a bunch of kids from the temp, from the mines. And also they get the one of the lost Ankara stones, which is how the village kept its good fortune and fecundity. So Indiana Jones saves a bunch of kids. He saves a glowing rock and he kills a very, very bad Indian quasi voodoo religious leader in the process. Yeah. So, but we, we're going to talk about that also.

Lots to unpack.

You know, the thing I love about Mola Rampal is that he puts so many different faith traditions into his, we'll talk about that later, into his cosmology. Let's ring that bell and get the fuck into this.

Ding, ding.

So on the plus side.

Yes.

We have a spectacular opening sequence.

These are the best 15 minutes. In spite of the presence of the Oriental Rift, I will go to my grave saying these are the greatest 13 minutes ever. I love this opening.

This is a master class in cinematic mastery.

Yep.

In terms of the staging, the execution, just the engineering.

The racism? Sorry.

Again, I'm trying to start with positivity.

Yeah. Okay. Okay. We love the opening of this film in the Club Obi-Wan.

We love the opening. It is insane. And yes, it is rife with stereotype.

Yes.

But a couple of things. First of all, the choice to have a musical number of Anything Goes in Chinese in Mandarin is inspired.

Yes.

Didn't know we needed that.

May I ask a question? So first of all, in this film in Dreamscape, right? Because that was, Dreamscape was actually earlier this summer or earlier in the spring. Kate Capshaw was in that film too. Later in the summer, Kate Capshaw was in that movie too. These two films formed the beginning of my psychotic crush on Kate Capshaw that I had in the summer of 84.

Interesting.

Especially because she's singing this song that I love, right? But I gotta ask, Paul, what accent is she doing? Because she's singing in Mandarin, but she sounds like she thinks she's singing in French. What's happening here, Paul?

So I can't quite even begin to answer that question because what is so much more startling and dare I say, promising in this film and yet then very quickly, tragically unfulfilled, and that's being charitable, is that Kate Capshaw's Willie Scott character is introduced in the most spectacular fashion.

Oh my God, like a goddess, like some sort of golden goddess.

Looks incredible. I mean, from head to toe, as just a pillar of prize worthy costume design, hair, like a whole thing, it's magnificent.

I've only seen one person cosplay that dress ever, which I think is a crime because wow, what an amazing dress, right?

Oh my God. It's an incredible debut. And you think, who is this going to be? What? Wow. This is an amazing entrance.

And after she sings the beginning of the song, which is actually where the title, Indiana Jones, appears in the poster font, not in the usual font they use for the opening titles for Indiana Jones movies, which is another big departure here, where you really get the sense of, oh, franchise now.

Yeah, but we do get the Paramount logo match dissolve.

Oh, of course, into the mountain.

To the engraving of the mountain in the gong, which is clever.

The thing that makes me saddest about the character Willie Scott turned out to be, is that there's a moment as they're about to start the, because during the opening titles, Willie Scott, they're in this place called the Club Obi-Wan. It seems like a nightclub of a fairly decent size, but she comes out of the mouth of a dragon, because, of course. And, but then she goes back into the dragon for the big tap dance number, where there's like 20 women in like silver costumes, tap dancing. But right before she goes into the dragon, she stumbles. And she gives the cutest little half smile, like, oh, you know. And you're thinking, I love this woman. And boy, what they do to her later on in the movie. And boy, how that character turns out, wow, right?

And what she does to us. But I'm glad you brought this up, because when she goes back through the Dragon Mouth, yes, she enters some, I don't know, liminal pocket dimension is a pocket universe. Yes, yes. Of this implausibly scaled sound stage.

Yes.

In the confines of a relatively modestly sized, normal sized club, not club.

It's like the Club Obi-Wan has a pocket universe that nobody in the club sees where they stage vast lavish entertainment for no one in particular.

Well, and just this incredibly elaborate and very delightful and impressive Busby Berkeley inspired number, true to the period, which is great, but immediately, the film is breaking its own sense of reality.

Yes.

Right out of the gate in the very first scene, in a way that Raiders never did. And that is, to me, the first red flag in the film, which is that Raiders is such a study in discipline and internal consistency and verisimilitude of the world building. And right out of the gate, this film says, we're going to be a cartoon.

And what's interesting, Paul, that is so right. And I love to admit it, that you're right. It happens. I do. No, I'm not a bad man. I'm not a frenemy. I love this. Yes. Paul, it's also the beginning of what I think is like a real rot and decay in the Indiana Jones franchise. And I know that a lot of people think that Last Crusade was a big course correction and it's great and all that. And I don't want to argue with that. I'm not a fan of that film. But to me, this is the part where Indiana Jones, like you said, goes into being a cartoon. And Paul, like the first Raiders of the Lost Ark is shot in a different film stock that has a lot of grain. The lighting is very naturalistic. Like Raiders exists in a real world that you can believe. And the characters are very serious about what they're doing. The characters never behave.

There's an earnestness. Yeah.

They're in that movie. They're not in a movie serial and everything is real for them. And the longer the Indiana Jones movies go, the more they become sort of cartoonish. And even with Last Crusade, like the way the action sequences are shot, the types of shots they use, the polish of the production design, everything in these films gets more and more heightened as they go. I think to the detriment of the franchise.

Yeah. I have a lot of love for Last Crusade. We agree that it transgressively betrays the character Marcus Brody.

Yes, we agree.

I'll just stop there. But this is part of the push and pull of Temple of Doom, because then we do get finally reintroduction of Harrison Ford as Indiana Jones in a white dinner jacket.

He looks so good, doesn't he?

Let me just say, I do think a strong case can be made that Harrison Ford has never looked better in any movie than he looks in Temple of Doom. This is peak perfection, like ideal Harrison Ford. And just the suavness, the just the perfect, like, impeccable styling of him in this white dinner jacket, sliding into his seat across from Lauchay. But the other thing about this sequence, which is kind of like, again, a classic teaser sequence, opening a film.

It's the opening gambit from a Bond film. They're really going for it, yeah.

But what it then becomes more clear to me in the experience that's frustrating, we're catching the end of another Indiana Jones movie that's better than the one we're about to watch.

Oh, absolutely. Let me first set it up for our audience, you know, for that one person. So, Indiana Jones has entered the Club Obi-Wan, where Lao Che and his two sons are waiting to trade with him. They've made a deal to trade a diamond for an urn containing the remains of Nurhaci, the first emperor of Manchu dynasty in China. The deal goes wrong, right? They first try to lowball him with some gold coins, but it's actually a diamond. And then Willie Scott showing the kind of character she's going to be for the entire rest of the film, gives us what happens in clip number two. Producer Brad, start the pain, will you?

This is Willie Scott. This is Indiana Jones, famous archaeologist.

Well, I thought archaeologists were always funny little men searching for their mommies.

Mommies. Oh shit.

Yeah, we're in trouble. We're in trouble.

Just that they chose to like literally this is like the fifth line of dialogue in this movie. And it's like it's like the worst stupidest dad joke ever. Right. I mean, it's just anyway.

And yet and yet at the same time in this sequence.

Oh, so good.

The use has has a lazy Susan ever been more. No, ingeniously used.

Nope.

As a dramatic device.

Right.

In the history of cinema. No, this is such a masterfully constructed scene in terms of them doing the exchange back and forth across the table.

Lazy Susan.

With using the lazy Susan to add. And oh my God, that it's so brilliant. And yet at the same time, it is burdened with banality deployed through the character of Willie Scott.

It is also burdened with a really shitty prop for the Nurhaciurne. Because Paul, have you noticed how the Nurhaciurne is unsealed? Like literally when the hands are over, the top is kind of coming off. And then when they're looking at it, and I think they even put in the sound of the top wing, you know, at it. I'm like, these are the remains of an ancient Chinese emperor. Like, put some scotch tape around that.

Well, and also it's like, there's no way that stayed put. It's no way that, anyway, it doesn't make sense. It doesn't make sense. But anyway, they pull a fast one on Indy after they thinks that he's made the deal and toast him with a drink and they start laughing because of course they have poisoned his drink and the boss demands the diamond back in exchange for the antidote or else he's going to die.

And the best use of Willie Scott is in this because Indiana Jones, when he's trying to kind of strong arm the three men into giving him the diamond, he literally pulls her over and threatens to stab her with like a shrimp fork, like a shrimp fork. It's a large fork. It's like a barbecue fork that just happens to be there. But then Indiana Jones' friend, Wuhan shows up because Indiana Jones has is always one step ahead. Yes.

Yes.

So Wuhan shows up looking like a waiter, but holding them at gunpoint, right?

Underneath the tray, the serving tray.

And he does, the game's not over, now hand me the antidote, right? But Willie Scott has to rise on the diamond, right?

Yeah. Yeah. And also they're not impressed by his hostage taking Willie. They're happy to have him keep her.

Well, that's the thing is that actually they know something we don't, which is Willie Scott is probably better dead than alive.

Well, exactly. A better character anyway. It would spare us a lot of pain throughout the rest of the film.

But so now Indiana Jones has been poisoned, right? And then, but Wuhan's holding the bad guys at gunpoint, so it looks like we're going to get out of here just fine, right? But then, clip number three, producer Brad. Now, what's happening here is that it is revealed that one of Lao Chie's sons has pulled out a gun and shot Wu Han using the popping champagne corks as a cover.

Yes, which distracted Wu Han.

I followed you on many adventures, into the Great Unknown Mystery.

I go first, Indy. Don't be sad, Dr. Jones. You will soon be joining me.

You must drink, Dr. Jones.

Now, let's talk about the brilliance of how this scene is constructed, okay? Indiana Jones has a clock on his life. He's been poisoned, right? There is a vial of antidote that's in play. There's also a diamond the size of a golf ball, right? There are three men who want Indiana Jones dead, right? Or who are gonna- At least. Happy to watch him die, right? And there's Willie Scott who really likes the diamond, right? Paul, what happens next makes me so happy, and I know that it's awful. So Indiana Jones stands up from the table, and he's woozy, and you can tell he's dying from the poison. And that's when one of Lauchey's sons has too much to drink, Dr. Jones, in that horribly smug way that just makes you want to see him die, right? And Indiana Jones is stumbling around, and he- there just happens- somebody happens to be serving a platter of flaming meat skewers. He grabs the meat skewer like a fucking lance, and he throws it at one of Lauchey's sons, impaling him through the heart. And it is so satisfying, especially when the son's hand goes off and fires his gun twice.

And then chaos ensues.

Oh my God. But the construction of it, we have two McGuffins, five characters, or four characters now. You can see the bricks being stacked so well, Paul.

Yeah. It's just masterful scene engineering and suspense and action. I do want to say, though, the death scene we just heard of Indy's now deceased partner.

Of Wuhan.

Wuhan, yeah. Wuhan, who refers to having followed Indy on many adventures. Yes.

But into the Great Unknown Mystery.

He goes first. I want to see those adventures. Like, we're teased because again, we're teased by things that are better than what we're going to get. Exactly. From here on out in the film. And it's so, especially once we meet Short Round. And I'm like, I want to know how they met. I want to see like all that stuff. But no, we don't. But this sequence, despite that, is incredible. Panic ensues. The antidote and diamonds scatter on the floor as people are fleeing and panicking and chaos.

And then the band inextricably starts playing Anything Goes Again.

Yes. And then there's the balloon drop.

Oh, no, no, no. Before the balloon.

There's a big thing of ice.

Ily Scott is about to get the diamond from the floor. And then somebody knocks over an ice bucket. And it's that ice bucket everywhere, ice everywhere. And Willie is so flummoxed.

Yeah.

But she does find the antidote, which she puts in her cleavage. Right.

Yes. Yes. And then machine guns are pulled out. And Indy, who's stumbling.

And how cool is the whole thing where, like, Lauchey's son is firing a tommy gun at the gong, which Indiana Jones has severed from its and is using as a shield.

As it's rolling across the room. Yeah. To get across the room. Oh my god.

And then you see the gunshots on the making the gong sound and impacting the gong. It's so cleverly done. Oh my god.

Yes. And the sound design, the sound like Everything, this scene, I can't get enough of. It's so satisfying.

So satisfying.

This is a perfect example of a film peaking too early. Because this sequence is perfection.

Perfection.

And nothing else in the film is as good.

And it's about to get even better because.

Yes.

Indiana Jones and Willie Scott follow the gong out the window.

Yep.

They go down a bunch of awnings and just as they go down the last awning, clip number four happens, which is when they're rescued by Short Round, Indy's child sidekick.

Who are you?

Wow. Holy smoke.

Crash landing.

Short Round, step on it.

Okey dokey, Dr. Jones. Hold on to your potatoes.

Hold on to your potatoes.

And is there better life advice, Javi, in general?

Than to hold on to your potatoes?

Than to hold on to your potatoes. I have tried to live by that ever since I was a youth and first heard those words imparted upon me by the great Ki Hui Kuan. Who is...

Is it Ki or K? I thought it was K. Like K? Like the bus driver advancing the stone, K?

I think it's Ki, but I could be wrong. We'll have to...

You're probably right. You're probably right.

He is magical. He is absolutely magical.

But I also remember people not liking Short Round at the time. And kind of... I remember Short Round had like a smaller version of the Jar Jar backlash. Do you remember any of that or is that just all in my head?

A little bit, but I think that there was more Willie Scott backlash. Because if anyone's Jar Jar, it's Willie Scott. Yes, it is.

Yeah, no, yeah. Yeah, no, let's face it. Willie Scott makes Short Round look like Mace Windu. I mean, so...

Yes.

Whatever the fuck that meant.

Another thing too, I have avoided this film for probably decades. Because I'd seen it, I'd seen it repeatedly, but I knew it did not age well and I knew it had a lot of problems and there were things I was not eager to revisit. So I returned to this film for this episode with a heightened amount of apprehension. That was...

A heavy heart, honestly.

Yeah, yeah, and that was warranted. And yet, this was my first time reconnecting with young Mr. Kwan in the context of all that has happened since, of his resurgence and comeback and knowing and seeing who he grew up to be. And it is so moving to see this brilliant bright light of, again, I'll just say magic that he makes on every single frame of film that he is on.

You know, Kee Kwan is interesting because obviously as an Asian actor in Hollywood in the 80s and 90s and aughts, you know, he did not nearly get the kind of, like, I mean, he should have been Macaulay Culkin famous after this, you know.

Yeah, between this and the Goonies, like...

Exactly, and head of the class, by the way.

Oh, yes, yes.

Unless we forget.

I just, yeah, and, but it also reminds me, and this is as good a time to say it as anyway, anywhere, I can't help but question how a corporation with the resources and talent and data, and that is not a reference to his character in the Goonies, has not or did not, as soon as possible, especially after anything, everywhere, I'll let everything, I'm never going to remember that, get that right. Everything everywhere, everything everywhere all at once. How the heck did we not get a Short Round Disney Plus series?

Right?

Of him in the Cold War as like as international spy and man of mystery. This is corporate malpractice.

Yeah, I mean, and the thing that most bothers me about that is that, you know, like, look, Short Round is a character, he's been in the movie, the actor had this amazing journey where he like literally spent decades being a stunt guy and a martial arts teacher and is great.

And is beloved, is incredibly beloved.

And when he comes back in everything, everywhere, all at once, when we can finally in this country have Asian leading men, he is handsome, he's in the tux, he looks awesome, right? They give him an action movie, he's great, he's doing all sorts of stuff.

And is great in Loki Season 2.

Just fucking give a short round for shit's sake, like it's right there in front of you.

Like I want to know what happened to him. And he's growing up and having learned the lessons of Indy and then carried that on but in his own way.

Because you know this being a prequel in 1935, sometime between 1935 and 1936, Indian Short Round stopped hanging out together.

Yeah.

Hello.

Yes.

So Paul, I do want to add, I actually got to visit the Lucasfilm archives about two decades ago. And the one thing that I was not happiest, because there were so many things that made me happy, one of the things that made me happiest to take a photo of, is that they had short round sneakers with the blocks still attached to them, that he uses because he's so short he can't reach the gas pedal, right?

Yeah.

There's a great Rickshaw Streets of Shanghai race. They wind up at this airport where there's a Ford Trimotor plane ready to go. And Dan Acker, doing one of the worst British accents, this side of Dick Van Dyke does a cameo where he is, he is letting them into this airplane that he has chartered for them so they can escape, right? It's a Ford Trimotor, which is an awesome airplane.

Meanwhile, important beat, important beat. Indy does rummage around in Willie's dress to find the antidote.

He gets the antidote, yes he does.

And we finally get, I think, a little hint of the Indy theme. And we also get the first time, Short Round says, hey, Dr. Jones, no time for love.

No time for love, Dr. Jones, yes.

Which is pretty great. We also get a Wilhelm scream during the Rickshaw bit.

You know, Paul, Paul, Paul, Paul.

And, but also Willie Scott loses the goddamn gun out of the window.

Yeah, she loses the gun. She breaks her nails. She complains about burning her hands. It's horrible. You start seeing just what an annoyance he's going to be.

Again, the, the dichotomy of awesomeness.

Yes.

And aggravation. Yes. It is so potently pervasive here, because I have a note in this sequence. It's like, okay, she's already annoying. Like, I already can't, I already can't stand her.

And she should have stayed at the club. Why is she with us?

Yeah, we've just met. Why is she still, why is she? Yeah, exactly. Should have stayed there. Short Round is awesome. But here's the other thing. And I, obviously John Williams is a fountain of divinity.

Do a little heavy lifting here.

And a genius. I am not a fan of the score. And I get the impulse and imperative to be restrained in using the existing Indiana Jones theme too much in the film. But I feel like that's done to the film's detriment. And that the theme that is assigned ostensibly to Short Round is way too kind of sing songy silly.

I mean, dun, dun, dun, da, da, da.

And I, it is so, I can't kind of stand it. And it also goes to the tonal dissonance of the whole film.

The whole film.

Because we know that Spielberg has a penchant for child endangerment in this phase of his career.

The only thing he loves more than making fun of fat kids is putting attractive kids in danger, yeah.

And, but he puts kids in peril, takes it to a whole new level in this film. This movie gets so incredibly disturbing and dark. And I can only imagine that at some point, Indy maybe woke up and said, hey, this is not appropriate for a kid to be living this life. Even though, spoiler looking ahead, who's the hero of this film? Who saves everybody?

Short Round?

Short Round is the hero. One of the best things about the film is that the hero of this film is not Indiana Jones. It is Short Round.

Yep.

And that is the best thing about this film. And I'm so excited to get to that point. But to get there, oh, it's such a struggle. It's such a struggle.

Right now, we get one of the best sight gags ever.

Yes, yes.

Which is that as Indiana Jones, as Lao Che and his surviving son pull up to the airport, Indiana Jones is climbing the Ford Tri-Motor. Producer Brad, can you play clip number five, please?

Nice try, Lao Che.

Bye, Indiana Jones.

And the reason they're laughing, and the reason the song went into that ominous low key is because the moment Indiana Jones slams shut the door of the airplane, on the outside of the door, it reads, Lao Chay Air Express, Paul.

So what a great gag. So another great meta gag that I have to commend you on Javi is that so far you have chosen clips that only work if you're seeing what's happening on the screen of the clips and do not make sense if you're only hearing the audio and they have to be explained.

Paul Spielberg is a master of visual storytelling. I mean, I don't know. We're not podcast overthruster. We're multiplex overthruster.

Fair, but yeah, but the perfection of him entering this plane, reminding us who the antagonist's name is. Yep, the smile.

That smile.

Lauchay, the smug, shit-eating grin that he has won and has escaped and he shuts the door and it says, uh, Lauchay, Erfraid. It's like, but also, but also, here's the thing. That is a Looney Tunes gag.

Sort of. I don't know.

It is.

No, no, I could see this. I could see this. I couldn't see this important part of the Indiana Jones movie. I actually don't have that.

It's so, it's so on the nose. Like, there's so much in this film that just feels so Looney Tunes, cartoony. It is brilliant. This is brilliant.

This works for me all weekend on Sunday. I got, no. Oh, the thing I want to say, Paul, forgive me. Talking about the score, which I agree is not my favorite score, but.

And this is the moment when the plane takes off that we do first finally hear the Indy theme in full.

Because it's, because it's rhyming with the first movie, How He Escapes.

And the travelogue and tracing it on the map across China. Yeah.

So Paul, here's the thing. I will commend John Williamson one thing about this score. Okay. And it is not my favorite of his course either. In fact, probably the least of all the Indiana Jones scores as far as I'm concerned, at least in the original trilogy, but he doesn't go for the low hanging fruit of the sitar. Considering that he started, considering that he starts with the Oriental riff, like I just got to throw a little bit of whatever the opposite is of shade on, well, at least he didn't do that.

Yes. He gets points for that.

Yes.

And then also the tux look for Indy is very short lived because as soon as he's on the plane, somehow he's got his stuff in there. He quick changes back into his classic Indiana Jones adventure wear and then takes a nap.

I think, Paul, we have hit upon one of the great things about Indiana Jones, which is he shows up at the Club Obi-Wan and it is called the Club Obi-Wan. Just like the call sign for the plane in the first movie was OBCPO, which we all know kind of what that's riffing on. What's really interesting to me is Indiana Jones is like Han Solo, right? He's very good at the thing he's good at, but he's not great at a lot of things. And he makes up a lot of stuff and he has to improvise a lot. And he's often way in over his head and has to improvise. And what I love about him is that Harrison Ford has never been shy about letting Indiana Jones fall on his ass, letting Indiana Jones look like he's out of his depth, letting Indiana Jones look like he's really afraid, letting Indiana Jones look like he doesn't know how he's going to get out of it. You know? And I think that that's part of the magic of this character. He's not James Bond. James Bond, James Bond basically walks into any hotel in the world. They know who he is. They give him his caviar and Bob is his uncle. You know, like Indiana Jones does not have a plan. And Harrison Ford allows us to live in that uncertainty in a way that is so delightful. I think it's really the root of the character for me.

Yes. And then another thing, and we mentioned off the top, that this is a prequel to Raiders and it's very intentionally a prequel in part because Spielberg and Lucas wanted to showcase an Indiana Jones that was less ethically, morally evolved in order to have the character arc that he has in this film.

Except for one thing, Paul. Except for one thing, if I may, and I think you'll allow it.

Sure.

Every Indiana Jones movie has the exact same arc for Indy, which is that he wants a thing and then he gives up the thing for the greater good. He wants the Ancara Stone, gives it up for the great, he wants the arc, learns to give it up for the greater good. He wants the Holy Grail, learns to give it up for the greater good. He wants the Crystal Skull, knowledge was their treasure, never mind. I mean, he wants to stay in ancient Greece with Archimedes, he can't. You know, I mean, at the end of the day, he's basically learned the same lesson five times over.

Kind of, but I think it takes on a unique dimension in this film and certainly a much darker dimension.

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.

In terms of what he's confronted with that he could choose to avoid, but yet is compelled to action and involvement even at risking himself.

Paul, I have another lengthy clip here that you're going to criticize. We can talk over it if you like, but in a gag leftover from the original Raiders of the Lost Ark story sessions, Indiana Jones and Willie Scott are in Lauchay's plane, and Willie Scott has intimated that Indiana Jones has a crush on her. He puts his hat over his eyes and falls asleep. We have a time cut, and then the two pilots put on parachutes and jump off the plane, leading to the following exchange. Producer Brad, give us clip number six, please.

Okay, Dr. Jones, Dr. Jones, we'll wake up, please. We there already? Oh, good.

No.

The Plane!

By the way, the engine is sounding suspiciously like the Millennium Falcon.

Oh yeah, yeah. I can't imagine James Bond going, how hard can it be? Like James Bond just knows how to fly a plane. Indiana Jones doesn't. I love this about this character. And obviously he learned sometime between this and 1939.

Yes, I was gonna say, another reason why this had to be a prequel, because he can't, he can't, again, and this is intersecting with one of Paul's persistent vexations of films whose plots are dependent on the ignorance or stupidity of their lead characters. And this is a gimmick.

Do you feel like Indiana Jones is being stupid?

Well, he's ignorant. He's ignorant of knowing how to fly a plane, and that is engineered by this being a prequel, because so the scene and this gag.

So the scene and the grail one, he knows, yeah.

Right, and so otherwise this gag doesn't work. And it's like, okay, that's fine. Good, good, good. It's great. But it also is so gaggy.

I disagree. I disagree. I disagree. For me, this works, again, this works to me in a world that's like the Raiders world, maybe a little more heightened. But look, you can just as easily have this gag with the pilots shoot the controls of the airplane and disable the plane that way. But what makes it so much fun for me is that Indiana Jones is not perfect. James Bond would just grab the controls and fly the plane, but Indiana Jones is not that guy. And I think that's what makes him such a fun, he is a superhero, but he's a superhero who fails a lot. And him getting himself out of his own failures is part of the fun of these movies.

And yet, in this scene, I do not feel or register any earnest sense that this is actually happening to them, that they're acting like real human beings in this real situation. It's more like a cartoon.

Because what happens next is...

My favorite part of the scene is Harrison Ford's neck acting. Because when each...

There's neck acting?

Yes, when the one engine in the right turns, both of them turn to the right, but then he extends his neck. And then on the left, I just find it really funny.

It's his neck acting is good in this movie, his neck acting is good as his finger acting in Blade Runner. Because he does the most amazing finger acting in Blade Runner ever. So what do you think? Different purpose, right?

This one makes me laugh.

He's multifaceted. Yes. And again, it's like it's fun, it's funny, but it's not the earnest, like grounded, textured, carefully constructed reality of Raiders.

I think we can all agree that this is the moment when this movie goes off a cliff literally and figuratively because Indiana Jones' solution to this is to get a raft, an inflatable raft, grab on to everybody, jump off the plane, inflate the raft in midair and then use it as a way of cushioning their fall onto a slope that leads to a cliff that leads to rapids. And that's the moment when you just go, oh, never mind. Like, you know how I've been going, no, it works, it works, Paul. That's I'm done now. That's it.

It's it's it's completely fully committed to Looney Tunes. Like now there's like no question it is it is not a judgment call. It is like we're in we've crossed the threshold.

We've crossed the Rubicon of stupidity. Paul, you know, it's interesting because, you know, we need to get onto the plot of this film, such as it is. And I think we're going to get to the bottom of it. No, no, we are. But but but Paul, it's because, you know, like I think but we also have a lot of memories attached to this film. And look, yeah, when we made when we did Return of the Jedi, that was a two and a half hour podcast because that movie was really important for us.

Right.

And this movie was incredibly important for me.

Yes.

I was just in in getting out of middle school.

Right.

And me and my friends like skipped school to go see the first show.

This was a big deal.

Yeah. But here's what happened to me watching this film that I just it was like a golden moment for me. Right. We get in line at the theater and sitting next to us is this woman who must have been like a freshman at the University of Michigan, right? This is in Ann Arbor, Michigan. And she is just the archetypal cute redhead from every, you know, like like Charlie Brown aged kids like dream. Right. Yeah. And she's sitting next to us in line and she starts chatting with us. Right. And not just like chatting desultorily like, yeah, I'm like she. And then we and then we all sit in the theater together and we just cheered and laughed our ass. And then after that, we know we said goodbye. And I never saw this person again because I'm like a middle school kid. She's like, but I just remember, like, to me, this film is inextricably inextricably tied to the experience of having the archetypally cute redhead talk to me and actually experience a film sitting next to me with no like no pretension of being cool or whatever. Just like it was literally just me, my friends, and this weird person who'd gone to see the movie solo sitting next to us whooping it up. And it was wonderful. So I have this great experience of this film that's attached to this film. It's not so great.

That's amazing.

It was a really fun day.

Yeah, that sounds awesome. That sounds like its own movie.

Javi, was it at the Campus Theater or the big one?

It was the Campus Theater, yeah. It was at the Campus Theater, yeah. Which was like one of the big, in Ann Arbor there were a couple of still big movie houses. There's the Michigan Theater, which is the revival house there, which is wonderful, restored everything. And the Campus Theater was still showing first run movies. And that's where we also saw David Lynch's Dune, Brad.

We did.

But anyway, Paul, they go off the cliff in the raft.

Let's just walk through this. Let's just walk through this. Okay, okay, okay. They jump out of the plane that is out of fuel and the engines have failed and it's diving at first into the side of a mountain. And just in time, they leap out, inflate this inflatable raft that somehow prevents them from dying as they slam into a slope, a snow covered slope. And then sled down as the plane explodes on impact. And you're like, okay, that's just kind of loony tunes already, but then, oh, oh no, no, let's keep going. But then they have to go, the raft goes off a cliff and not a minor cliff. Let's say one of the largest cliffs on earth.

I think they use the cliff for the Jeep goes over in Raiders, you know, where like suddenly there's a cliff in the middle of Cairo, like.

Yes, yes. And so then they slid off the edge of this cliff to a height that would kill anybody, no matter what they're in. And they land in raging rapids. And then, of course, now they're in peril upon peril upon peril, going through the raging rapids. And all that while Willie Scott is just an insufferable asshole, just complaining incessantly, but also just like in not a way that's real, given the extreme insane peril that they're in.

By the time they're out of the rapids, she literally shouts, I hate the water, I hate being wet, and I hate you. You know, it's just like, oh God.

Yeah, it's like, you're lucky to be alive. There's no way any of you survive. Like this is just insane. And then, but yeah, then they settle into this tranquil river, and it turns out they have arrived in India, in India, because how do we know this? Because they bump onto a bank of the river and see a mysterious, silent Indian elder who leads them to a burned out village.

Yes, he was actually a refugee from the casting call for Richard Attenborough earlier, early in the previous year, but he didn't get, Ben Kingsley got the part, so now he's here with us. Yes.

And then they arrive at this village where they are swarmed by villagers who, for some reason, they come with it.

They're trying to touch Indiana Jones and Willie like it's Zack Snyder's Superman. And what they find out…

It's very weird.

It's very weird. But here's the thing. They find out that the maharaja of Pancot stole their lucky stone, which Indiana Jones realizes might be one of the lost Ankara stones, which have some sort of magical power, right?

But also there's some prophecy that like they're there to help save them.

Oh, you mean a white people are going to fall out of the sky to save them?

That's not problematic at all. No, it's so bad. And it's also that like, oh, we're in India. And what are we portraying India as? But as abject poverty.

Abject poverty, backwardness, and worship of white people. Paul, and then we get the first of many, ooh, Indian food is gross beats, where the villagers take the last of their food and serve it to Indiana Jones and Willie Scott. And she refuses to eat it because it's gross. And Indiana Jones has to kind of force her to do that. But during the scene, it's explained to us why the Maharaja of Pancot took the stone. Producer Brad, clip number seven. Cause this is setting up the whole movie now.

But why would Maharaja take the sacred stone from here?

He says, we must pray to their evil god. He says, we will not.

Excuse me, I don't understand how one rock could destroy a whole village.

He's saying when the sacred stone was taken, the village wells dried up and the river turned to sand. The crops were swallowed by the earth, the animals lay down and turned to dust. Then one night there was a fire in the fields. The men went out to fight the fire. He says, they stole their children.

Okay, look, all the White Savior bullshit happening here, but I gotta say, the thing I was most struck by watching the scene, Paul, Harrison Ford acts the shit out of this monologue. Oh my God, he literally would go in and give it his all in everything. And in a movie as silly as this one, it would have been so easy for him to phone it in, but holy crap, he gives it his all in this ridiculous bit of exposition.

Yeah, he is great. And again, the tension in this film, because on the one hand, you have problematic stereotypes. But on the other hand, I have to give it credit for saying, in the first film, we centered kind of Western Judeo-Christian lore and traditions that would have kind of centering them, but also that would have shortcut resonance with a majority of the target audience domestically. And so to try to expand the world of Indiana Jones to other cultures, on the one hand, I think is an admiral ambition. But the problem is, is that for people who are not steeped in that culture, it's hard to avoid, at least in this time and place and this array of creatives, to avoid unfortunate stereotypes. But also, it means you are lacking, it's a steeper hill to climb in terms of creating resonance for your audience, to invest in this lore and myth that's being presented to you, because you do not have the benefit of us knowing what the heck...

The Ancarstones are?

The Sancar... Sancara Stones, I think. And as opposed to the Ark of the Covenant. So, yeah, it's just a lot of interesting things going on that are a challenge. But Indy, you know, is there...

By the way, by the way, they had a couple Indian actors in there. They could have found an Indian dude and asked some questions, you know. Yeah, but I think, I think, Paul, what you're about to say is, and I think producer Brad will understand what I mean when I say, what can you do? It was the 80s.

No, no, no, no, I never need to hear that saxophone again.

Oh, that's too bad because the Frank factor for 84 has come.

It's the sax factor. But Indy, so anyway, so Indy, Indy, Willie and Short Round, or they've arrived in this village and they're just looking to get to Delhi. But now they are sent on a detour where the elder is going to send them to Pankot Palace, where the dark evil is. And Indy's like, okay, they want to get the stone back and he's intrigued by this. But also that the all these children and this is just the darkness of the fact that all these children have been taken and abducted. This is now immediately we're like, wait a minute, I thought this movie was supposed to be fun.

Well, here's the thing about that, Paul. It's also like there's a split MacGuffin here, okay? Because in Raiders, it's not like the Nazis have the Ark and they're using slave children. You know, they have the Ark.

That's it. Or they're not using people in concentration camps.

Yeah, exactly.

That would be sort of, I mean, it's like you...

It would be commensurate to the kind of grimness we're seeing here.

Yes.

But the thing is also splits it. It's like, is he going to... Because the next scene, Indiana Jones says, oh, the... I don't... You know, look, first of all, you can never trust Harrison Ford's pronunciation of anything. Okay? Because there is, for example, there's a character at the beginning of Raiders named Satipo and he calls him Shapiro, which I think was his agent's name. So I don't know. Anyway. So I think Harrison Ford says Ankara more than Sankara. So I don't know. You tell me what I'm supposed to say.

Yes.

Anyway, the next scene, he says that if you find the Ankara stone, you will get fortune and glory, right?

Yeah.

But then they have another kid who comes out of the mines to remind us that it's slave kids. So we're already splitting in terms of is Indiana Jones a callow adventurer looking for treasure? Because it would have been a much better movie if they hadn't known about the slave kids, right? They get there, Indiana Jones thinking he's going after fortune and glory to get the stone so he can just steal it for himself. They get to the Temple of Doom, find all these kids, and then his moral dilemma is, do I save the kids or take the stone?

Right.

That's a movie. That's a movie with a decision and an arc. This is a movie where the redemption and the MacGuffin are all in the same place, so it's very muddled at this point.

Yes. I know we got to keep going, but there are two things here that I think are worth mentioning. One is the fact that the script, the movie makes the point of in addition to the exposition of, here's the mission, the assignment, basically, also expressing that the elder believes that they, Indiana Jones and company, were sent by Shiva to recover the stone.

Prophecy, yeah.

Some prophecy thing, which also just feels stereotypical and unnecessary.

Maybe the Benny Gesserit were there and left word.

There you go. That would work better. But there's also, again, getting back to how wonderful Short Round is.

Yes.

There's a little detail, whereas Indy is intently listening and paying attention, he crosses his fingers, like his hands together. And in the background, Short Round is observing him and mimics the same hand movement. And there are little moments like that, that are, I just want to see a movie with Indy and Short Round.

You know, it's interesting. I saw a clip on Instagram, I think, when Dial of Destiny came out, where, you know, Ki Kwan went to the premiere or something. And I don't know if Harrison Ford had seen him before or what, but Harrison Ford just looks at him and goes, and in his gruff manner, you know, he's like, Ki, how are you? He goes, You're Short Round, aren't you? And then they hug. And I just, you know what? Look, for all I know, they never saw each other again after the movie wrapped. I don't give a shit. I see these two people together in this movie. And then this clip 30 years later, and they look like they had a great friendship. And you buy that Indiana Jones and Short Round are, have this weird partnership. And especially later on in the movie when they play poker, which is really fun. Yes. You know, it's really fun when they're playing poker. So you get the sense that Harrison Ford really bonded with this kid. And you see that in the films. And again, for all of Spielberg's child endangerment and mocking of fat kids, which I will never stop giving him shit about, he does direct child actors phenomenally well.

Yeah.

And boy, that he do a great job with Ki Kwan. I mean, it's wonderful.

Yeah. Yeah. It's incredible. But then immediately after we've been told that all the village children were stolen, one of them coincidentally happens to stumble out, and it is a disturbingly impoverished looking kid. It's uncomfortably disturbing. Yeah.

Yeah.

This child stumbles into the village and specifically into Indy's arms.

And he just happens to have a piece of cloth that explains that this is one of the Ancara stones. Yeah. Or Sankara.

Sankara. Yeah.

Sankara. Do you remember the Sankara stones, like the instant coffee Sankara?

There you go. That would be cool. And then the Fortune and Glory bit starts, but it's overdone in the context of the film. And then also, this is jumping in, but there's a moment where then Willie Scott says Fortune and Glory without the context of having heard it from Indy.

Yeah. Yeah, it's weird.

And it's just like, what? No.

It's screenwriters who do not have Lawrence Caston's gifts.

No, I'm sorry.

I'm sorry. And Kurt is trying to set up planting and payoff and trying to set up.

But not know how to do it.

Character dynamics. But it's like all the like it's like the way I broke it down before. If Indy thinks he's going after the stone, but his plan is to steal it from the village and just take it to sell to whoever. And he finds out there's kids there and all that. Then you've got a moral fulcrum that the film pivots on. Right.

Right.

But again, it's like you've got so all the information the film needs to give you the good character arc is there. But it's just the information is distributed in all the wrong places in a way that's just kind of grating and annoying, you know? And that makes all the motivations very unclear. Anyway, Paul, they get on elephants. They're gonna go to the Pentagon.

Yes, we cut to, yeah, the next morning and it's caravan time. And everyone gets an elephant to ride, including Short Round, who gets a short, little, cute baby elephant. And Willie, of course, who's an asshole, can't stand the smell of anything.

She's putting perfume on the elephant, yeah.

Yeah, she literally douses her elephant in perfume. And the elephant does soon get revenge by spraying a bunch of water on her and dumping her into the water.

My friends, my friends were originally with the parties all the time and live as ease. I think we'll camp here tonight.

And that's probably the most subdued of her outbursts in this movie. And the worst part of it, she has no arc. She is this person the entire film.

Yeah.

Oh my God.

Yeah.

It's nutty. But they finally get to Pancot, right? They finally get to the to the Maharaja's Palace.

Oh, okay. Now I gotta pause because we have a couple of things that are interesting. We do get in the camp scene. Interesting, and I'd forgotten this. We get a little bit of backstory about Short Round where Indy reveals that Short Round was orphaned by the Japanese bombing. That's interesting, but nothing else is made of it before. But again, it does continue to remind us of, oh, I wouldn't so much rather be watching a movie about how they met, just with the two of them.

Can you imagine Empire of the Sun if it had Indiana Jones and instead of Christian Bale, it was Kee Kwan? Come on.

Yeah.

That's a movie I'd watch.

Yeah. Then we also get the amazing poker scene.

The poker scene, yeah.

And with one of my favorite lines, which is Short Round saying, I'm very little, you cheat very big, which is just genius. That's a great line. That's a great line. And then we have this extended gag sequence of Willie being tormented by every single jungle creature known to man.

She's trying to take a bath, so she's sort of not wearing a lot of clothes. And she runs in one direction and there's a snake there. She runs in the other, there's a lizard. So while Indy and Short Round are playing poker, you see her naked legs running back and forth across the frame while she screams. Oh God, how tedious.

And my notes here are, I love Short Round so much. I hate Willie so much. It's just, this, ugh. And then-

She has no redemption in the film. She doesn't change.

No, no.

Like you want her to become a hero or something. If she's going to be this fucking annoying the entire movie, but it doesn't, it doesn't, no.

Yeah, or reveal some unexpected depth. Like, why is she this way? And then what does she have to go through to then become something better? Like nothing. No, no, never happens. And then we do get another exposition dump by Indy about the five magics and Cara Stones. But there is the payoff of the jungle creature terror of Willie with the snake.

Oh, because she thinks the elephant is bothering her with its trunk. And she finally reaches back and grabs what she thinks it's a trunk and throws it. But it's actually a snake that falls in Indiana Jones' lap.

Well, no, she throws it off into the jungle, not in his lap. But he is mortified and terrified because as we've established in Raiders, his one great fear is snakes.

Oh, let's get past this scene.

Which makes you wonder, how is he so confident, lackadaisical, trekking through a jungle that presumably is full of snakes? Anyway, in the morning, the caravan truck continues. They see the palace. There are more of these huge giant bats. And then we get ominous statues and Indy finds an ominous... Really, we've stepped into horror movie genre of what he discovers around the neck of one of the statues.

Well, this is sort of a call back to the Chachapoyan Fertility Idol's temple, where there's a skull sort of embedded into a wall or something like that.

But see, here's the thing. It's one thing when you find ancient, long, decayed skeletons that have been there for who knows how many hundreds of years or whatever, as opposed to freshly severed human fingers that have been tied together in a necklace and placed around a statue as a warning that freak out their guides from the village, who all flee with the elephants. And then Indy is like, well, we walk from here. And again, there's so many bats. They enter the palace grounds.

Now, I want to say, here's where they meet Chatarlal, who is the prime minister of this particular maharaja.

Yeah, and it's an unexpected, you're led to think, what are they going to find in this terrifying...

It's a nice man in a suit.

And it's, yes, it's a very genteel...

Here's what I want to just point something out here, because this is very important to me, okay? The actor playing Chatarlal is a man named Roshan Seth, who, you know, you probably won't see a lot of his work. He has, I believe, passed. He is in a movie called Mississippi Masala playing the father who has a hard time letting go of his past in... And wow, he is such a good actor. And he is so, and he is so emotional and empathic. And in this film, he's just playing such a... It really gives you an idea, like when you watch Mississippi Masala and then you see this again or... It just gives you an idea of just how underused this guy is. Okay? And what actors for the sin of not being white didn't get to do, you know? And again, we're gonna hit this a lot because, Paul, what can you do? It's the 80s.

Yes. No, God. No, God. But fun, fun fact, fun fact. Who directed Mississippi Masala?

Meera Nair, the mother of of Zoran Madhami, right? That is correct. It's amazing.

That is correct.

Speaking of major, because I said major instead of mayor, Indiana Jones and Short Round and Willie get invited to a banquet, which just happens to be attended not just by a number of dignitaries in just about the most overblown Hindu kitch costumes, right? Also the Maharaja, but also Major Bloomberg, because this is the name of Captain Bloomberg. Yeah, this was the name of Tim Robbins' character in Howard the Duck. And it's one of those things where you go like, it's one of those things where like, you know a screenwriter is just not firing in all cylinders when they're like, yeah, but isn't that guy's name funny? Like, and of course, Bloomberg is there as the symbol of British imperialism, and he's sort of a pompous and all of that. And of course, the Hindu character is holding him in contempt. And this is where we have a, we have a, there's a couple of things happening in the scene. One of them is the food keeps coming out, then the first plate is snake surprise, which is a giant snake, and then they cut the snake and little tiny snakes come out of it. And then the scary swarthy men eat the snakes live, right? Then we have the next course, which is, it's like the insides of, it's like full bugs that have been-

Giant beetles.

Giant beetles and they eat the insides of the beetles.

And you crack them open like a crab and eat all the junky goopy.

And they disgustingly, and the, yes, the very, there seem to be two meals going on. One of those Indiana Jones with Blumberg Chattarlal and Blumberg, Indiana Jones and Chattarlal having a conversation about the exposition of the movie. The other one is Short Round Willie Scott and a bunch of Indian men who have been cast in the most grotesque way possible to make them look like they're kind of eating funny food. And then, of course, Dessert shows up and it's chilled monkey brain. And you see them eating it with spoons.

Well, and you skipped the eyeball soup.

Well, the eyeball soup is when they... Oh, that's right. The eyeball soup is like... I think it's horrible.

It's just horrible. And like... It's...

Yeah. And the whole sort of, oh, Indian food is gross. Look at what these people are eating, which this doesn't look like any Indian food I've ever heard of, whatever. But also, like, somebody told me, like, recently, like, oh, yeah, my friend was bullied at school. You know, people kept asking her if she ate giant snakes and shit like that. Like, my Indian friend was... And it's like, this shit doesn't land on you until later when people... You know, because I was not bullying anybody based on this film, so I have no firsthand experience of it. But then when you have your adult Indian friend say, oh, yeah, I got bullied at school because of that movie, you go like, oh, fuck. Like, this shit has real world consequences.

It's a case study in representation and of it being done very badly and the damage that that can do for. Yeah, it's just it's so it's not funny. It's just.

Look, this is how bad this is. Salman Rushdie called this out in an essay. OK, it's like, you know, this is not good. This isn't something that sort of fly by night. Oh, we're going to ignore it or whatever. It's really bad. Yeah. But at the same time, Indiana. So at the same time, Chattar Lal, who is presented as a very diplomatic, soft-spoken man in Indiana Jones, have a conversation that actually makes sense. Producer Brad, can you play clip number nine, please?

Something connected. The villagers rock. And the old legend of the Shankara stones.

Dr. Jones, you're all vulnerable to vicious rumors. I seem to remember that in Honduras, you were accused of being a grave robber rather than an archaeologist.

Well, the newspapers greatly exaggerated the incident.

And wasn't it the sultana Madagascar who threatened to cut your head off if you ever returned to his country?

No, it wasn't my head.

Then your hands, perhaps.

No, it wasn't my hands. It was my... my misunderstanding.

Exactly what we have here, Dr. Jones.

I have heard the evil stories of the thuggy cult. I thought the stories were told to frighten children. Later, I learned the thuggy cult was once real and did of unspeakable things. I'm ashamed of what happened here so many years ago. And I assure you, this will never happen again in my kingdom.

That is the boy Maharaja of Pancot putting an end to the conversation. But I love that conversation where Chattarlal calls him out on being a thief and a fucking grave robber. And that somebody threatened to cut off his dick. I mean, that's...

And another example of opening a door to another non-existent movie.

A much better movie, yeah.

Of an Indiana Jones adventure I'd rather see.

Yeah, Indiana Jones and the Penis-Cutting Guillotine. We all wanted to see that.

So a couple of things here that are worth mentioning. As much as I desperately want to move on, when Willie Scott arrives in the scene, first of all, Indiana Jones is now in a suit for dinner. I don't know where he found the suit.

Weirdly, the same suit he had in Cambridge in the first movie, his brown Tweety Professor suit and bow tie just happened to be in his bag. We don't know.

They like I, where did that come from? And Willie is in resplendent kind of Indian princess garb. And she is already conspiring to marry the Maharaja. And now she's figured out what her new life plan is before she's met the Maharaja, who then is revealed to be a child. And then she's super pissed off.

Because she's a gold-digging, she's a shallow shrill gold-digger, Paul. That's a fully fleshed out character.

And yeah, it turns out the Maharaja is kind of like this bored kid.

But it gives Ki Kwan a great line, though.

Which was what?

He says to Willie, but maybe he likes older women.

That's true. That is funny. Again, yeah, yeah, Short Round does have a great line. Anyway, after the chilled monkey brains reveal, which is just... Willie passes out, cut to later, Indy checks on her, brings her a plate of fruit so that there's something she can actually eat. And then there is the weirdest, like, so forced and...

So forced. It's like trying to be screwball comedy, except there's no attraction between the two of them.

Or chemistry. And it's like, how does Indy have any interest in her other than wanting to have her never speak and to stop being an asshole and an annoying complainer?

Right.

And it's just, it's so, and it's this detour into, again, yeah, this attempt into thinking, oh yeah, this is going to be screwball comedy dynamic.

Let's hear a little bit of that, producer Brad. Give us the first clip of clip number 10, because yeah, let's hear that with great distaste, dare I say.

Wear your jewels to bed, princess?

Yeah. And nothing else. That shock you?

Nothing shocks me. I'm a scientist.

So as a scientist, you do a lot of research?

Always.

And what sort of research would you do on me?

Nocturnal activities.

You mean like what sort of cream I put on my face at night? What position I like to sleep in?

Baiting customs.

Love rituals?

Primitive sexual practices.

All right, cut it. Just cut it. We're done. We're done here. Just can, what the? You know, because Karen Allen is so great, first of all, I don't buy that Indiana Jones is particularly suave with women. I never did, you know? He's not great with Karen Allen and it's a real problem and their relationship is sort of scrappy and all of that. And here he's being like this suave seducer, but he's like, I don't effin know.

It's... And it's so out of nowhere. Like it is completely inconsistent with the dynamic that has been established up until this point in the film. It is shoehorned in and you just don't buy it at all because it's like, wait a minute, these are not the two characters we've been with. Now they're both making the sudden turn that's unmotivated and we don't buy. And I'm sorry, but Indiana Jones and Willie Scott are not Indiana Jones and Maren Ravenwood, nor are they Han Solo and Princess Leia. And this film is trying to think like, oh, we can just do that. We can just wave our hands and make that happen. And it's just so...

And by the way, I have the same issue in Last Crusade where I think that the romance between Alice in Duty and here's it's shoehorned in so they can tell a joke about it later. And it just like the one place where I genuinely feel like everybody has stumbled into Indiana Jones is in his relationship with women, you know? And it's like...

Although, and I know...

Other than the final scene of Dial of Destiny, which... Can I just give you my cosmology of Indiana Jones?

Here's Indiana Jones for you. We're gonna do a quick side quest tangent on broadly, broad things.

Yeah, sorry. I'm so sorry. Okay. Indiana Jones, right, escaped from the club Obi-Wan, returned to the United States safely, right? He was given the assignment of recovering the Lost Ark of the Covenant, right? At which time he returned to the United States and settled into a happy, childless marriage with Marion Ravenwood, and he settled his issues with his father over a series of really nice dinners. That's the entirety of the Indiana Jones story for me. And then maybe you've got the last scene of Dial of Destiny, which moved me to tears, even though I literally wanted to take a flamethrower to the theater. Discuss.

I just have two thoughts, and then we'll go back to Temple of Doom, okay? To a regularly scheduled program. Indiana Jones should have stayed. If they're going to do the crazy sci-fi thing of him going back to England.

He should have stayed, right?

That's the only satisfying way to end his story is to let him stay there. It just is so stupid, made no sense. And then the like awkward call back to the like Raiders scene.

That reduced me to tears. It reduced me to tears. It wasn't because of any, it was nothing the film earned. It was entirely earned by Steven Spielberg in 1981.

It didn't get me. It angered me because I was like, how dare you? How dare you try to redeem all this bullshit by bringing out my, yeah. By cheating. Cheating. So shamelessly.

Yes.

Yes.

I agree with you, Paul.

The other thing I will say, the one redeeming or most redeeming thing in Last Crusade about Alison Doody's character and the forced attempted romance, whatever, is Sean Connery's ingenious improv line, where she talks in her sleep. Which, I'm sorry, that's like a top 10 moment in the franchise.

Well, that's the thing, they did it for, yeah. Look, I think ultimately, let's get back to this film. Let's get back to Temple of Doom. Anyway, so Indiana Jones and Willie Scott ultimately don't sleep together because they start going at it because she is awful and he is being a bro. He goes back to his room. She's thinking he's going to run back in and have sex with her. He's thinking she's going to run into his room and have sex with him There's a great sight gag in this which is that there's an ornate mural behind Indiana Jones in his room except that one of the people in the mural is real and then he starts moving towards Indiana Jones.

The shadow starts moving.

No, no, you see him in the mural. You see the guy standing there very still and it turns out, oh no, that's a guy. They do it really well. There's a big fight scene where Indiana Jones winds up hanging the guy with his bullwhip by the ceiling fan in a really violent moment that... There's this much bad violence in Raiders but in this movie it feels so gratuitous and so cruel, you know?

Yeah. It's the cruelty. This film is dark and ventures into horror, really weirdly. But yeah, but this whole sequence you could lose because it doesn't make... I mean, the whole thing back and forth with Willie and Indy.

But when Indiana Jones runs back into Willie's chambers hoping that there's nobody there to kill her and they wind up... He winds up opening a passageway leading into the bowels of Pancot Palace.

In the most gratuitously awkward, stupid way.

So horrible.

But yeah, find a secret passage with an inscription that says, like, follow the footsteps of Shiva. Like, okay, whatever. Whatever. Indy and Short Round, not Willie Scott, enter these catacombs. And there are bugs everywhere, floor covered with bugs, blah, blah.

And booby traps.

And then yeah, they enter a chamber and Short Round accidentally triggers booby traps and traps them into a... Just a trash compactor, basically.

As a kid, I thought the scene was great. As an adult, I can't think of a more exact... And I'm going to play the clip, Paul, and I'm sorry. It's a long clip, but I want our audience to feel the exasperation because Indiana Jones and Short Round are about to be crushed, right? They're about to be crushed.

And impaled. Both impaled and crushed.

But Willie Scott's just being so prissy and unable to handle insects is just the most funny thing ever.

They call her for help. And then she has to then follow up into the catacombs.

Oh dear lord.

She's swarmed by bugs and-

Producer Brad, give us clip number 11. We'll talk over it. Cause we just, you know, cause also visual and whatever. Okay. Yeah. Let's go. Let's, let's do this.

What's the rush?

It's a long story, Willie. Hurry or you don't get to hear it.

Oh God.

What is this?

So Willie is squirming over all the insects.

Can I just say very, very high quality insect sound design.

Oh yeah. No, the insect food here is, is, is top of the top of the, yeah. Okay. Let's, let's keep. Oh yeah, no, this just keeps happening. I thought we were close to the front line, but we're not, because it just keeps going on. Oh God, yeah. By the way, best line in the whole movie.

Should be the name of the film. Yeah, we're not doing this whole clip.

This is just- No, no, we're talking over the clip. We are podcasting over this clip, Paul. This is the magic of our new thing we're doing. It just keeps happening. And he's trying to explain to her how to open the door.

But also, this is important to point out. We have seen the scene before Done Better in a little movie called Goddamn Star Wars.

It just keeps happening.

And again, the dumbest, like, it's not funny. It's not clever. It's like we've seen this done before better. It's agonizing.

Agonizing. And it just keeps going. It just keeps going. And at least Indiana Jones says the punchline to the sequence, which is, I thought it was going to happen 30 seconds ago. But this is still happening.

We are going to die.

That's a good line to read.

Okay. So, so, so, so wait a second. Shut Up Willie should have been the Indiana Jones and Shut Up Willie. What a bitch would have been the name of this movie. He finally said it. Shut Up Willie. I love that. Paul, you know, one of my least favorite things that happen in movies, and we saw this in Guardians of the Galaxy. In the Mandalorian TV show is when somebody is in the middle of a death situation. They're about to be crushed, blown up or whatever. They have to verbally walk somebody through the steps, and the other person just doesn't get it. And it's just so funny and tense. I fucking hate that trope so much. And this was like literally being trapped in that trope with Willie Scott.

Well, yeah, because certain things, certain tropes, once they're done masterfully, should be retired.

And this was Star Wars 1977, shut down all the garbage masters in the detention center, will you? Shut down all the garbage masters in the detention center.

Yeah, yeah. Because first it's like shut it down. It's like, I don't know which one, it doesn't matter. Just shut them all down. Like, and the scene is so efficient. It's so, it's just great. It can't be improved on. Why would you try to do that better and make it so obviously worse?

Because this film was clearly made of spare parts. And that's the part that's so angering about this movie is that they had a big hit with Raiders in 81. They needed to get one out. They had three years and they had to write the script and they just had a bunch of shit left over from the old one and they just figured, oh, this will be easy. It's the only way I can imagine. I mean, it's like, you know, so anyway, after this just insanely tedious and long exercise in mechanics really, in a machine like thing, we finally get to where this movie goes, Cuckoo Bananas Insane, in a way that's actually really disturbing, but we're going to try to keep it fun for our audience because what do we do if not keeping it fun? Right. So they finally get to the Temple of Doom where there is a human sacrifice happening. Right.

It's important to note the underground, deep underground Temple of Doom, so deep underground.

Yeah.

They have, they're right above a whole ocean of magma.

Yeah. Like they've literally gone into the Earth's crust. It's really weird, but that happens.

And which also means they should all be dead.

Yes, they should all be dead. Maybe they were all dead all along. That's why this movie is a prequel.

Whatever we, A, it would be too hot down there. Like they would all be dead. And they would be, it would not be breathable air.

Yes. And unlike Mustafar, where we all know that the stones turn to lava at a lower temperature than on Earth, which is why those Obi-Wan and Anakin don't die, because that's a science fictional world, this is on Earth, there is no work around for it. Yeah.

It's magic lava.

It's magic lava. It's magic lava that burns only Indian men and not Kate Capshaw, actually. It's pretty interesting. Yeah, right? So here's what happens.

You should be dead multiple times over, and not just because we wish it to be so.

Let's just describe this, because the clip is like five minutes long. Let's describe this over. We'll talk over the clip while we can do that. Yes, please. Play the clip. Roll it. Roll number 12. That's all you need to know.

Yeah.

My favorite detail about the sequence in which Mola Ram, the puppet master, we've only met him now. He is this very large imposing priest of Kali, the goddess of death.

By the way, kind of bold choice to wait this long into a film to reveal the antagonist. Yes.

And but he or the podcast. You know, Brad, you know, producer Brad, I'm going to give you the bell. Because we're on point. We're on point. Carry on.

Anyway.

So, but you know, we've seen Chattarlal, we've seen the Maharaja. Now we know this is the guy pulling the strings.

And the Maharaja kid is there.

Yes.

Chattarlal is there and there's a bunch of like men stoned out of his mind. Like they put the whammy on him. And everybody's got the whammy on him.

Chattarlal's got the whammy on him. Everybody, not Mola Ram, but the Maharaja. And then a bunch of cultists all around them in partial nudities, chanting Mola, Mola, whatever. I believe it's.

Kali Ma.

Yeah, no, but so here's my favorite detail about this. They are shouting Kali Ma, but then they're also shouting Mola around Sugaram. Yes, which is what which is what they're actually chanting, while the Indian guy who has his heart ripped out by Mola Ram. While he's saying Kali Ma.

Yeah, this is the signature visual killing move.

Yeah.

Yeah. Of the of the film. It's it's spectacular, but also grotesque.

OK. My favorite detail. My favorite detail of this is that the ILM guys called the because, you know, they had to make a doll of the guy who gets his heart ripped out. They called him Poon Job, like the like the guy from Little Orphan Annie, which is my favorite detail, if only because it's like, oh, my God, like it literally was just working on all cylinders, wasn't it? So anyway, but, you know, in honor of that, we'll call him Poon Job. So Poon Job gets his heart ripped out and he's still alive. Right. And then they turn the cage over that he's in and they lower him over the lava pit. And he's still alive and he's responding and he's can somehow still breathe. And then just as he gets close enough to the lava, his body erupts into flames and the heart in Mola Ram's hand explodes into flames. And it is terrifying, Paul. This is like a horror movie all of a sudden.

Yeah. That's literally my note is that this is a horror movie. Yeah.

And then after this, the ritual ends, everybody leaves and Indiana Jones aside, now's a good time for me to go steal the three Sankara stones from their altar.

Yes, because they're revealed and they glow.

There are three and two are missing when you put them together.

When they're in proximity, they have like a proximity alert, that is when they come together. One other detail. I just, you know, as I get this, as we've crossed the threshold into implausibility over and over again, and then some, but, so Molo Ram is able to press his fingers.

So hard that he can destroy your sternum and your rib cage, yeah.

Penetrates the flesh and bone of this latest human sacrifice victim of which we can only infer is in a long line of sacrifices that have been made. He reaches into the chest cavity of the victim, grabs the heart, and pulls it out, but yet pulls it out with just...

No bloodshed.

And also with surgical precision of severing all the primary, the aorta and everything, just cleanly.

Oh, there's no gore, there's no trail, there's nothing.

And it's not like ripped, like it's just clean cut sever, like it's... Yep.

And then, and then Punjab's chest cavity kind of like remakes itself, yeah.

Yeah, exactly. It reseals.

The magic of Molaram.

Spellbinding, spellbinding. So Willie Scott is freaking out until there's a mention of diamonds that somehow causes her to magically overcome her fear in a horror. Which also doesn't...

I blocked that out of me.

It doesn't make any goddamn sense. But then we have somehow, suddenly, all the cultists and everybody has dispersed, vanished from the temple.

Hey, the show's over, the show's over. They did the undercard, they did the main event. They had to go somewhere. Everybody left. That's the show. There's no encore. All right. Now, guys, you may have noticed that there was an unnatural pause in the podcast right now. And the reason for that is that we had to take a break because there was just too much doom. Wasn't there, Paul?

You got to pace yourself, you know?

Oh, my God.

Yeah. Yeah. A little doom goes a long way.

It was traumatizing. I feel I am a little traumatized. Do you feel traumatized?

I feel like I've had ample time to recover.

What I want to know is why is Poon Job's chest cavity full of lint and not blood and other organs? You know, when his chest kind of reformed anyway, well, let's let's let's leave Poon Job in the fire where he he finally found peace. And let's talk about Paul. The temple has been strangely like like everybody has left the temple and very, very efficiently, like startlingly.

So they've very well organized to get everybody out of there.

And I want to say it's weird to see a religious service where they didn't pass the basket around, you know, I mean, I'm Mola Ram really needs to work on his evangelical game because I think like you take you you rip the heart out, it explodes, Poon Job blows up, then you pass the basket. You're like, you like what you saw?

Yeah, you know, well, the only basket hobby lowers humans into the lava.

Well, I guess in that way, they did pass the basket, didn't they produce a brand? All right. So, so Paul, what happened? So now then, really, so we were talking about how Willie has this incredible fear. And then, of course, she's fine when diamonds are involved. And and now the Temple of Doom is is free of doom. It's free of occultists. So Indiana Jones is going to go steal these San Cara stones, right?

The the the coast seems to be clear. And but there is a perilous kind of not not railing or balcony, but kind of like a like a stone ridge along the wall that they're closest to.

The OSHA OSHA was not very active in India in the 1930s, was it?

No. And also there's a there's a conveniently engineered opportunity for Indy to deploy his whip to swing across a whatever. And so there's a little suspense of him trying to get across the and then land safely.

But there's a very nice line here, producer Bradley.

Yes, because Willie Scott, for some reason, suddenly gets a. is now suddenly concerned for Indy's safety.

Which is amazing. Let's hear it.

I want you two to stay up here and keep quiet. Shorty, you keep an eye on her. Why?

Where are you going?

Down there.

Down there? Are you crazy?

I'm not leaving here without the stones.

You could get killed chasing after your damn fortune and glory.

Maybe, but not today.

All right. Now, you got to look like, look, this is, we've agreed that this movie is not great, but I mean, his charm is just amazing. Like just the way he delivers his line and his smile, even in the middle, even in the pit of the Temple of Doom, he's Harrison Ford.

He's great. He's great. But even this great line and scene is undermined by the inexplicable psychic ability that has been bestowed upon Willie Scott to echo Indy's fortune and glory that he never said to her.

That she never heard.

And that she just is now summoning out of the ether and no one is commenting on this either, that that's kind of weird.

You think Short Round would be like, you weren't there, ma'am.

Anyway, whatever. So then let's get on with it.

Let's get on with this because this movie just gets darker and weirder and stranger and meaner.

Yeah. Yeah. Perilously.

So anyway, Paul, so he goes to steal the stones. He goes down. The stones are somehow they left the stones in the Temple of Doom after they left the Temple of Doom.

Remarkably unguarded.

Yeah. Because isn't they bring the stones for the ritual? Like anyway, so Indy goes down there.

And Indy does a little impromptu scientific experiment where he puts the stones close to each other. And they glow. Which makes them glow. And then he moves them apart and then they don't glow. And he's fascinated by this like a small child. And then he puts them in his handy satchel, which is like, oh, now there's a reason why he has the satchel.

Did he have the satchel? Okay, I guess. I don't know.

I think he's kind of always had this man purse satchel. That's very stylish. It's sort of camouflaged with the rest of his ensemble, so it's easy to miss.

Okay, fine. I forgot that he got his stuff to go into the temple. Never mind anyway, let's keep going.

Yeah, he's gotta have his stuff. What is Indy without his stuff?

Without his stuff, he's just a man. He's just Harrison Ford, the greatest movie star of all time. But yeah, that's fine.

But just as he's about to return, retrace the steps back with the stones, what does he hear, Javi?

I don't even know.

Singing, Molaram Sugaram, I don't know. What does he hear?

He hears close, but not at all, because he's hearing the screams of tortured children as he's about to leave.

Oh, is that what happens? Is this where they find out about this whole thing? Is that what's going on?

Did you not see this movie, Javi? Three days ago.

Three days ago.

So he has a momentary crisis of conscience that flashes across his face as Willie and I don't, to a lesser degree, Short Round, are like beckoning him to come back with the stones. And like, what is he still doing there? Why is he lingering? But he cannot help himself. He is compelled to follow the screams.

Yes.

Deeper into the Temple of Doom.

Can I ask a question about that? Okay, so let me ask a question about that, just semantically. Now, the Temple of Doom is this area where they rip out people's hearts, but the minds are not the temple. Those are the minds of doom, right?

Exactly. So that's what-

So let me come to Indiana Jones and the Minds of Doom, because really we spend much less time in the Temple of Doom than we do in the minds, right?

Well, but that's a spoiler. Oh, nevermind.

Okay.

Because that is about to be revealed.

You know, I've lived with this movie for so long, Paul, that just going through it sequentially is weird, because I feel like I've already seen all this shit, but I have. But it's like-

Yes.

It's like, I forget that like, no, I forget that dramatically, you have not actually seen The Slave Children yet.

No, and I get that you have been psychically dislodged from Linear Time.

That and also I watched a little bit of Last Crusade last night.

Oh, goodness.

So I need to re-combobulation is what I need.

Okay.

But let's continue.

Can I ask a question first?

Yes.

Of the first three films, what's the view count for each one?

I've seen Raiders well into the three figures. I've seen Temple of Doom probably 10, 15 times, and I've seen Last Crusade less than 10. It's not a movie I enjoy.

Paul? I've seen Raiders. I don't know that I've seen it 100 times, but I've seen it scores of times.

Yeah.

And Temple of Doom, hadn't seen in at least two decades. I've only seen it, I've seen it a handful of times. Maybe like three or four times. Maybe.

I've seen the first 15 minutes of it at least 100 times, by the way.

Yeah. Last Crusade, I've probably seen maybe a dozen times or 10 or so, but I don't know. So anyway, so meanwhile, it turns out it was a good thing that Indy did not go back to Willie and Short Round because they are caught. And then we get the reveal as Indy behind and underneath the temple, deeper into the bowels of the caverns.

Yes.

Is a pretty elaborate, I mean, not quite Mines of Moria, but a pretty elaborate mining operation.

This is the reveal of the big mining operation and all that shit going on.

And all these missing children are enslaved.

Yes.

Pretty horrifically chained.

Horrifically, yeah.

And tortured.

Yeah.

And so Indy is caught and he is thrown in a cell that then that also contains Short Round, because they have been captured too.

Now this movie now gets like just fucked up, Paul. I mean, I see you reading from your notes going beat by beat, but I want to just give a more holistic version of what's happening here.

Yes.

Indiana Jones. Okay, now it turns out Chattarlal and the Maharaja are under Molaram's mind control, right? Presumably, they have been fed the blood of Kali, which Indy will be fed, which is the mind control drug that Molaram uses, right?

Yes, because they are all essentially zombified. Yeah, they're all zombified. We get this exposition at this point as well.

Yes, that basically Molaram is running everything. He's got everybody under mind control, and he's going to put Indy and Short Round under mind control as well, right? He's going to have Indy drink the blood of Kali.

Yes, and by the way, what are the children mining for?

Well, they're trying to find the other two Sankara stones.

Exactly.

Because they were lost somewhere in this. But at this point, Indy winds up talking to a kid, not the Maharaja, but to a kid who explains the blood of Kali to him, and it's not pleasant. So let's go ahead and hear clip number 14, Producer Brad.

What is that?

We become like them. We'll be alive, but like a nightmare. You drink blood, you not wake up from nightmare.

Wow.

Okay.

So now, Javi, I believe the technical term for this is pretty dark shit.

Pretty? This falls on the category of PDS, pretty dark shit. So basically, Molaram has given everybody the blood of Kali. They're all under the black sleep. Their life is a waking nightmare and they're enslaved in the Temple of Doom. That's what's going on in this movie.

Dumb question. It has never explained where and how he sources the blood of Kali.

That's right. Yeah. Does he have a compounding pharmacy? Does he have Kali locked up somewhere and get the blood? I don't know.

He seems to have an abundant supply given the population of enslaved children he has mining and cult members under his thrall, which poses an obvious question, which is, how necessary are these Shankara stones if he's got the blood of Kali that he can control legions with to do his bidding?

And also, why does he have kids doing the mining when he's got like a bunch of cultists who look like pretty strong men doing the-

Yeah, that would seem to be a much more efficient allocation of labor.

Yeah, there's a lot of dudes in the Temple of Doom waving their arms, shouting, Molo ramsugaram, right? And why aren't they mining? Have the kids sing. They have better voices, by the way. You know?

Yeah.

I don't know, I'm just saying. I'm just saying, I'm just, you know what, I'm just giving options here to Mr. Rom about how he might run his business.

Yes.

The point being, Indiana Jones and Short Round, then they get, so Indiana Jones refuses to drink the blood of Kali, and he and Short Round get whipped. They get bullwhipped, okay? Indiana Jones gets whipped by, what's his name, Pat Roach in Brown Face, which is really, so we may remember Pat Roach as the Nazi that Indiana Jones defeats with the flying wing blade, the propeller blade in Raiders. He comes back and we love Pat Roach, the Brown Face is a little much, I gotta say. Yeah, but props to the, yeah, it's a lot much. But not to mention that he's also like with the beard, oh my God, it's so fucking racist. Anyway, the point being, Indy gets whipped by that guy, Short Round gets whipped by the Maharaja, by like another boy, right?

Yes, who is also like zombified. And so he's deeply under the whammy.

And then Indy is further tortured because somehow here in India we have Voodoo.

Yeah, so I want to get to that, but first, I just want to pause for a moment.

Yeah.

The decision, okay, Indy being tortured, we presume that's going to happen.

Right.

But having Short Round in peril is one thing as a child character. Yeah, it's terrible. Having this child whipped is so...

By another child.

Yes, is so fucked up. Like this is...

It's so up.

And it's just like, what the... What is happening? The dark turns just keep getting darker.

That must have been one hell of a divorce. I'm just saying, holy crap, Stephen, like, wow. Like 30 years later, you can blame your divorce, but we watch the shit and it's like, I've been through shit. I don't like that.

What is this?

Wow.

So first, Indy is successful in resisting...

The blood of Collie, yes.

Being poured down his gullet and he's able to keep it from going down. But then, yes, then they escalate things to whipping him in Short Round. And then voodoo. And voodoo. And this is where it gets crazy, because it's like, okay, I'm sorry, what hemisphere are we in?

We're kind of mixing up some faith traditions here, aren't we? Because my understanding is voodoo is like Afro-Caribbean mysticism.

Yes.

Right? And this is India. But yet the Maharaja has a little voodoo doll of India and he's like putting it in the fire and stabbing it and doing all sorts of crap to it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And yes, but Short Round, in one of multiple moments where Short Round emerges as the actual hero of the film, kicks the Maharaja to save Indy from the voodoo Indy, the voodoo Emmy, burning him over the fire. But that's when he and Indy are caught a whip. Then Indy is successfully forced to drink the blood of Kali and is presumably enslaved.

Oh yeah, he's got the whammy. He's in the black sleeper for the Kali Ma.

And he goes through these convulsions.

Oh yeah. And then Harrison does this evil Harrison face. The only thing better in terms of Harrison's acting in this is if he'd grown a goatee just spontaneously to become evil, Indiana Jones.

But we get the next best thing. And as a bookend to our previously referenced, the greatest that Harrison Ford has ever looked on film in that white tux in the opening scene, it is now topped by shirtless zombie, Indiana Jones, the dramatic underground lava temple, red lighting. And it is freaky, but he looks really good.

I want to go on record, there's two things. One of them was, this was the heyday of an organization called Body by Jake. Perhaps you remember Jake was this famous trainer to the stars and he wound up even, oh, I forget his last name, but he wound up having a sitcom about, cause he became a celebrity himself. And so Harrison Ford was famously a Body by Jake client. So when you got into a movie like this or take your shirt off, six months before, they sent you to Body by Jake and that's how you got like this. But what I think is really fascinating about this is Harrison Ford looks awesome, right? I should have looked that good at 25. I mean, at 56, there's no chance I'll ever, literally my best day, I won't look as good as he did there, but he's got a regular human being's body. I mean, he's awesome, but he doesn't look like he's been shaved, shellacked, and like, you know, and shredded. He looks like a human being, you know?

But he looks plausible. But he looks lean and in very good shape, but not in a preposterous, like, super heroic overdone thing.

If this were a Chris Pratt movie, and he removed his shirt at this point to be evil Chris Pratt, right, he would probably look like he basically worked out for nine months and then for three days starved himself all food, only drank red wine so his veins would pop.

And dehydrated, yes.

And dehydrated, and then when they called Cut, he passed out. You know, that's what men look like now when they take their shirts off. And this is like a human being. I just want to just stop for a second and acknowledge the awesomeness of Harrison Ford as a very fit but very plausible action hero.

Yes, yes.

Now Paul, now Paul, this is where we get Molaram's I Want song. I can't believe you're skipping, Molaram, oh my God, he sings this I Want song to Indiana Jones. It's one of the more romantic moments of the movie. Producer Brad, may we hear clip number 15?

The British in India will be slaughtered.

Then we will overrun the Muslims.

Then the Hebrew God will fall. And then the Christian God will be cast down and forgotten. Soon, Kali Babin will rule the world.

Okay. It's good to have goals.

The Muslims are gonna fall, the Hindus are gonna fall, and then the Christian God will be cast out and forgotten. So just everybody has to hate Mularam. He's an equal opportunity villain, isn't he?

Yeah. He's not messing around. He's going for total world domination.

Yeah. No, he doesn't seem to have anything against Buddha. I'm just gonna put that out there.

The Buddhists will save us.

Yeah, they're not gonna save anybody. They're just gonna sit around and be fine. I mean, they're gonna be like, they're gonna love what is, is what's gonna happen. So they're okay. They don't have to be... Paul, look, I have a theory that Mularam was just a successful local businessman and that this film was an effort on behalf of the British to besmirch his reputation. I think he just ran a local mine and this is all propaganda.

This is elaborate propaganda. This is an interesting theory.

Anyway, so now we're going to do the ritual again, because here's what happened. Apparently now, you know, now they've got a white woman they can sacrifice. They went away from the temple without passing the basket, but now they got some American movie stars to sacrifice. It's on like Tron now, right?

Yes. And Mularam has Indy lock Willie Scott into the cage of doom over the lava pit.

But thankfully, thankfully, it is the cage that only burns brown people. Remember? So we're okay.

We don't know that yet. We don't know that yet.

Okay. Okay. That's true. Sorry.

Got us.

Yeah.

Oh, yeah.

Sorry. Suspending and pay off. Yeah.

Uh, and I, I'm saddened at this moment because, because the whammy has been put on Indy. Indy is not able to consciously enjoy the satisfaction of putting Willie Scott in a cage over a lava pit to lower her down. I'm like, I'm like, this is my theory. I don't think Mola Ram needed...

I was going to say the same thing. Needed to give him the blood. If he had said, look, Indy, here's the thing. You can have the blood of Collie and be tortured with Voodoo and put Willie Scott in the cage, or you can just do it without us doing this and just enjoy the, enjoy the experience. You think Indy would have gone for it?

I think, I think there's a really good chance he would have.

I mean, it's 1935. He's not been, he's not been transformed spiritually by the Ark yet, so we don't know what.

So this is to be the great tragedy, the great tragedy of the film is that Indy is robbed of having the full conscious awareness and emotional fulfillment of lowering-

Of Willie Scott into a pit of lava?

Exactly.

Look, Paul, I think that there's every possibility that we're going to be accused of misogyny for this run, okay? And I want to just face that head on, okay? It's like Breaking Bad, right? Skyler White was maligned by the world, but I think the world and the popular culture owes Skyler White an apology, okay? She was just an ordinary person trapped in a horrible circumstance. Willie Scott is one of the worst written characters in the world, and one of the worst written female characters ever. And our disdain of her is not based in any way on misogyny, but rather on wanting to be entertained by a movie that we saw, right?

Well, I think to further clarify, and I can only presume that our listeners are a very astute, thoughtful collection of brilliant minds. Yes, indeed. But for any random person who might not be, I think it's pretty clear that her disdain is not directed at anyone other than the writers who have just horribly concocted this...

Oh, my God, right? Yes...

.train wreck of, frankly, if you want to claim misogyny of misogynistic impulses in crafting this female lead, which is just...

Yes, indeed.

That's what......especially in contrast to the triumph of Marion Ravenwood.

Of Marion Ravenwood, yes. Exactly.

So it's inexcusable to me. And that's why I'm like, I... Yeah, I'm sorry. No, you don't get a pause.

Now we're doing the ritual again, and somehow MoloRound does not rip up... But yes, please go ahead.

Was Lawrence Kasdan asked to write a sequel for this?

I don't know. I don't know how this wound up in Willard Hyke and Gloria Katz's hands, to be honest with you. But is it so that now by now Kasdan has written Return of the Jedi Empire and Raiders. I think Kasdan moved on to just direct his own movies.

I think the big chill.

He made the big chill and...

Yeah, he was he was focusing on on directing, I think, at this point.

Yeah, yeah.

Meanwhile...

Meanwhile?

In the minds where Short Round has joined the ranks...

Oh, that's right...

.but has not been given the blood of Khali for some reason.

This is the weird shit. Like, okay, so Short Round does not get given the blood of Khali. Just like later, Willie will not have her heart ripped out.

But it does seem like a lot of these kids in the mind actually have not... They've just been chained and enslaved.

I'm just saying Molaram is not an equal opportunity torturer or heart ripper. And it bothers me. Just consistency is good in character.

Yeah, so Short Round is in this situation chained and with a pickaxe to mine and being disciplined and stuff. And he's looking around and is basically like, fuck this, this is bullshit. And he proceeds to do what seems obvious, which is take the implements he's been giving...

To pickaxe his chains.

To mine the mines and instead mine the fucking shackles.

Paul, it's a real problem when you're enslaving people in a mine, okay? Now, this is where I think using slave labor in a mine is a bad idea. You're giving them sticks and pickaxe, you're giving them weapons, basically.

Yeah, but they're all cowering in fear. And this is understandable because they're small and the thugging cult members are big and ruthless. And yeah, whatever, but Short Round Escapes, and in doing so is inspiring the other children in the mine.

Right.

Because they have not seen Gunga Din. And so something is stirring in their spirits and souls.

I don't think Gunga Din was made until a year after this actually, so there you go.

There you go, fair enough. So then, meanwhile, Willie Scott's, the encaged, levitating Willie Scott.

But they're not going to rip her heart out.

No. Well, okay, so thank you. Why? Why?

Why? Why? I volunteer. I volunteer as tribute.

You've gone to all the elaborate spectacle and trouble to establish the baseline of, oh, this is what this, uh, uh, uh, tradition, this is what we do here.

This is what we do here. This is our face tradition.

The ceremony is, which includes first and foremost, like the signature element of the whole goddamn movie, which is Molo Romp sticking his fingers in the chest cavity of somebody and ripping out the heart. How does Willie Scott get to keep her goddamn heart?

Exactly.

Is this just an oversight, like he forgot or?

Oh, maybe he's tired. They're doing it twice and maybe he can only do it like once in a day. You know, maybe like, like, like, like, it's like, he's got to recharge.

I don't know.

Like, oh, we got, we got it. We got a twofer.

But now I got to like, you know, it's one of these things that just makes me so goddamn mad because it's like, what are you doing? You fucking screenwriters. This is not rocket science. You're going to establish something and then you're going to break that. You've got to explain it. There's got to be a reason. And there's plenty of mechanisms and reasons that you could have constructed to do that. But they didn't, which then, like, it makes no goddamn sense. And I know, like, it's all fantasy. It's a movie, blah, blah. But you have to be internally consistent to the rules that you yourself get to establish. So there's no excuse. There's no pass on this.

There's no excuse. There's no, there's no.

OK, so because I would rather have seen the movie where, I mean, of course, Willie Scott dies horribly, but alternately, where then Indy has to figure out a way to restore Willie Scott's heart back into her.

Oh, God, I don't want to see that movie.

Or maybe he saves Willie Scott, but the rest of the movie, we just have zombies as Willie Scott. Or they have to, like, lead around with them.

Yeah, or maybe she has to hold her own heart.

Maybe. Again, there's so many possibilities here. They're just like, we can't be bothered. And I just, it feels lazy and dumb. And I, yeah, so I know people love this movie. I'm sorry, but like, ugh.

Here's the thing, there's a lot of negativity in this one. And we got to, like, keep it snarky and fun, though. Because if we actually deal with the emotions that this movie is giving us as adults, it'll be Dirch-like. It'll be like an Arvo Perz symphony. I mean, you can't do that.

That honestly sounds better at the moment. But, um, so on top of this, Willie is then lowered in the cage, down in the lava pit.

And this is where we learn that this is the lava that doesn't kill white people, right?

Yes, because just from the sulfur and the fumes, what she's inhaling, not to mention the heat.

Yeah.

First, she should be rotisserie Willie Scott. Secondly, she should be dead. She should be asphyxiated.

Pooh Job exploded halfway down that pit.

Yes. She goes all the way down to the bottom. That is like inflammable, impervious and can breathe any kind of quality of air.

I mean, Christ, they cursed us with Willie Scott and then they made her invulnerable. It's like she's fucking Bruce Willis in Unbreakable, right? That's the, I don't know. That's a movie right there. What if it's a superhero, but it's the most annoying person that ever lived?

But as Willie is presumably gonna have to be totally submerged in the lava in order for her to finally burn because of the imperviousness of her annoyance.

Apparently being annoying makes you fireproof. That's the lesson of this movie. The more annoying you are, the more impervious you are to lava. See, this is what happens. Okay, go on, go on.

Emerges from the mines, having escaped, sneaks into the temple, sees what's happening in a war, approaches Indy, who does what?

He slaps him or pushes him away or kicks him.

Indy slaps Short Round to the ground.

Oh, God.

Yeah. It's so... Because it's zombie.

Yeah, yeah, and then, but finally...

What does Short Round do, think to do, to try to snap him out of it and break the curse?

Well, first of all, he says, Indy, I love you, which is like one of the nicest moments in this movie and he plays it very well.

He doesn't do that, I don't think he doesn't do that yet.

He doesn't?

I don't think so.

Yeah, he does it before he whammies him with the torch.

Really? Okay.

Yeah, it's his cathartic pleading to Indy that he come back, that he's just sick, that he's had the blood of Collie, and then he grabs a torch and hits him and shivs him and gives him a torch kidney shiv, which apparently is the cure to the blood of Collie.

Which also, I got to say, a remarkable stroke of luck and very curious, given that this temple is over a pit of lava.

Yes. You think casual burns probably occurred a lot and nobody woke up from the sleep of Collie?

You guys keep forgetting it's magic lava.

Oh, yeah, that's right.

There's no, no, it has not been established as magic lava.

It's not just magic lava, it's magic racist lava. Let's, that's the thing. That's where the magic.

So anyway, so he burns into the...

And yet, Short Round...

He burns the good back into Indy. He burns the good back into him, yes.

By a stunning moment of inspiration and fortune, if not glory.

If not glory, certainly not glory, but fortune.

He snaps Indy out of the whammy of The Blood of Kali with the burning torch into his gut. And Short Round is the hero because he saves Indy. And then they fight the guards and the cultists, the cultists are cheering for some reason. Maybe they just like a good fight.

I don't know what the fuck is going... This movie now becomes about 25 minutes of just nonstop bullshit action that is though enjoyable. Well, you know, look, your Paul plot we're going to go beat by beat, but I'm just saying...

Well, they've got to rescue Willie, I guess, which I wish... I guess. Like, they could just leave her there. They could leave her hanging there.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, also, like, the reason she's hanging the way she is is because... Who's going to miss her? It's because Chatar Lal gets trapped in the wheel that's actually lowering her. So his corpse is there. Like, what do we like...

Yes. So yeah, there's a whole fight in terms of... They're continuing to try to lower her down, and then it's like...

And then they fight, and then she's up a little bit, then she's down a little bit, and she's up, she's down, and it's supposed to be suspenseful, but it's just tedious.

The problem is that the majority of the audience at this point is rooting for Willie to die. And so to try to get us invested in rescuing Willie is a fool's folly at this point in the film. But it's the movie we're in. It's the movie we're in.

Like the Buddhists, we have to love what is. You know what I'm saying?

She finally, Indy like vanquishes the thuggy guard and he turns the thing and cranks up the whatever and rescues Willie who proceeds to slap him and then kiss him.

Oh, whatever. Yeah. You know what?

And then he gets the stones and then we get the best scene of the movie.

The best moment in the movie, which is this is we're leaving. Somebody says we're leaving. He says, yes, we're leaving all of us. And then the next moment, and this is the one moment where the yes, do go on.

That's the punchline of this moment.

Yes. What have I missed?

Indy and Short Round reuniting.

Oh, okay. Yeah, of course.

And returning each other's hat to the other.

I see. You are much closer to reading of this.

No, no, no. This is the greatest scene in the film.

The emotional climax in the movie for you?

Indy apologizes to Short Round. And again, this is an adult apologizing to a child for an act of abuse.

Yeah. I'm genuinely touched that you noticed this, and this is how you're interpreting. This is very good.

It's very impactful. And the fact that he is treating now Short Round as a peer in terms of the exchange and returning of the hats, they embrace, and this is when it becomes clear that why does Willie Scott not work in this film at all? Because the love story of this film is between Indiana Jones and Short Round.

Yep. Agreed.

And that's what this movie should have been entirely about. And it would have been, could have been a masterpiece.

So you think a much better movie if Indiana Jones... Well, anyway, I completely understand where you're coming from. However, Paul, I do want to say that the next moment in this film is profoundly satisfying to me. Which is when we're leaving Indiana Jones's...

The Ewok Uprising that's ripped off from Return of the Jedi?

It's not the Ewok Uprising, it's Indiana Jones's face. It's Indiana Jones's face because it's literally like, look, one of the things I'll say about this movie, for whatever disdain I have for this movie at this point in my life, I fucking love Harrison Ford. Yeah, yeah. And there's this moment where you see the slave kids being whipped and they're coming down this hallway or this tunnel, you know, and everybody looks up and there's Indiana Jones standing with the scowl of fucking death on his face. And it's basically like the moment, look for every-

The hero shot, the hero shot of Indy.

Every generation ex-Latchkey kid, you know, all you, and I was, you know, not one of those. I was lucky that, you know, but it's like, what you want to see is that adult protector standing there with this badass look on his face. And then he like, let me see the guards fall. He punches them out.

Yeah.

And it's like, and that look on his face, that is the dream grown up of every generation ex-er who's actually going to protect you and not just run away with a secretary. That is the daddy of our generation right there. And I just think it's phenomenal. And as much as I disliked this movie now as an adult, I got to tell you as a kid and as an adult, that moment works all weekend on Sunday. Yeah, it is. That's my profound interpretation of that.

You know what I love about that moment? The way it shot his face, it looks better than the hand-painted movie poster. It's like the same thing as the poster, but on film, it's unbelievable how great it looks.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's beautiful. And again, like we said in the beginning, this movie does have moments of greatness.

Yes, and this is one of them.

And you get glimpses of how great this movie could have been overall.

And this, and by the way, this is also the moment when, you know, look, and I don't think John Williams, this is not John Williams' best work, right? But I got to tell you, the track is called in the soundtrack, I think it's called Crusade of the Slave Children. This track slaps, like, it's, you hear it earlier in the movie, but in this context, now like this, muah! Oh my God, I love it.

Yeah, and this sequence, despite the fact that now, okay, Indy and Short Round, who are fighting to free these slave children and are inspiring those children to rise up in revolt themselves. But you literally have shots that are taken straight out of Endor and of like a row of Ewoks on a ridge, throwing stones down onto stone troopers. You have the exact same shot of enslaved children doing that to the guards.

Not to mention how these enslaved children suddenly have a glider that they're using to throw stones, never mind, that's Return of the Jedi. Anyway, so now it's just balls to the wall. Action though, right Paul?

Yes, yes. And it's intercut between Indy and Short Round and Willie kind of trying to escape and get out of the mines, while all the enslaved children have had no problem just going up to the palace. That's true. And racing out.

Paul and everybody say, that's right, they run up, then slave kids run up to the, they're running down the banquet hall, crashing stuff, grabbing shit. And Indiana Jones and Short Round, they don't know how to get out of there.

Why?

But the kids don't know how to get, oh wow.

Why don't they just all go that way? Like, it doesn't make any sense. Well, of course it makes sense.

Go up to the banquet hall, have some chilled monkey brains and they get the fuck out of there, yeah.

Then we wouldn't get the mine cart, a roller coaster, I'd say. But before that happens, there's a point where a guard, a big burly guy's got the drop on Indy, Short Round goes to save him. Indy is thrown into a mine cart, and so the wheels are now starting to literally turn. But then, meanwhile, Zombie Maharaja Kid has not been dispensed with. He still has his Indy voodoo doll.

And he still has this giant gold turban that he's wearing.

Yeah, and he is just going going stabby, stabby, stabby on the voodoo doll Indy, as Indy is trying to face down with the guard on now, of course, a stone grinder conveyor belt that leads to a giant. And this just feels like really?

You know, what it is, it almost feels like this, you know, there's that great scene in Galaxy Quest when Sigourney Weaver says, This device serves no purpose. Who designed this ship anyway? And you totally get the sense that this entire mine was designed by screenwriters, not for mining, but for screenwriting shit. Like, let's have tunnels that come out on a cliff.

Why?

Well, who gives a fuck? We don't know. It's like the geography of this mine makes no goddamn sense, except if you're a screenwriter and you're trying to set up set pieces that... Yes.

And you've watched a lot of Wile E. Coyote cartoons.

Oh, God. So anyway...

Then, Short Round, once again...

He's got the reverse whammy...

.is the hero saves Indy by taking out the Maharaja Kid and removing the voodoo pin, which has been left in the voodoo doll.

He doesn't take out the Maharaja Kid. He gives him the reverse whammy of the torch to the side.

Well, yeah, first he knocks down the Maharaja Kid and to get the voodoo doll away from him to rescue Indy. But then, yes, then he snaps him out of it with the anti-whammy of the lit torch.

The lit torch to the side.

To cause third degree burns on this child king. And then the Maharaja snaps out of it, who imparts one critical piece of exposition on Short Round, which is take the left tunnel to escape. Be sure to take the left tunnel to escape.

Clearly mark stairs up to my banquet hall palace.

Or the right tunnel, which is do not enter and has like skulls and crossbones and like this is a path to death.

They're literally trapped in the Pirates of the Caribbean ride at this point.

I know. It's a theme park ride. This whole thing is a theme park ride.

Yeah. It's like Mr. Toad. I mean, what are they doing?

Short Round, somehow at this point, is superhuman and takes out like a dozen full grown adult thuggy guards.

Also, Indy winds up, now, Indy beats the shit out of Pat Roach and gets him crushed by the crushing wheel. You get that big gore-less red splat on the wheel.

Exactly.

By the way, what is Willie Scott doing when Indiana Jones is beating up on Pat Roach successfully?

Complaining.

No. She is miming, punching as a cheerleader would. It's insane. It's like, oh God.

Wow.

Yeah.

Three words come to mind. Go Flash Go.

Go Flash Go, right? But Melody Anderson did a better job of that than Willie Scott did.

Much less fun. What I would not give for Melody Anderson in this film. Can you imagine? The joy.

Not just Melody Anderson, Dale Arden instead of Willie Scott.

Yes. Big time. So Short Round gets into a mine cart with Willie. Indy then has to swing in. He's like chasing to try to catch up, swings in to the cart. But of course, they don't take the left tunnel because Short Round doesn't tell Indy in time. Indy takes the right tunnel. And now we're off to the big action sequence that is again, kind of speeder bike chase-esque through the underground mines and wildly implausible in terms of geography and physics, everything.

Science, the world we live in, mining.

It's a spectacular effects sequence intercutting with miniatures and full scale live action. It is impeccably well constructed.

As with everything that that ILM did in the 80s primarily like you can just see these artists like just getting better and better and better at everything they do. The miniature work in this film is great. I mean, look, later on when we're when we're on top of that bridge and there's all that rotoscoping going on, I know that it's not exactly like like you can tell it's something that's being rotoscoped that's been rotoscope. When you like look at the amount of effort and craft that went into doing this film, it's phenomenal, you know? Yeah. So yeah, anyway.

Then Molaram of course floods the mineshaft.

Of course you flood the mineshaft.

And then we get two gags in a row, which is Indy, they're coming up to the dead end of Doom on the right end of the right tunnel on the cart. There's a lot of cart chase stuff we don't need to break down. And they cannot slow, the brakes are out, and so Indy climbs out front and uses his shoe as a brake.

Is this after the minecart, the track ends, and the minecart literally does a jump from one track to the other and it doesn't derail?

Yes.

Okay, yeah.

Yes, yeah. There are all sorts of evil, carnival shit that happens.

You know, I gotta say that was one moment when I thought, I remember watching this film at the Campus Theatre in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and when that happened, it was really weird because half the audience was into it and the other half almost left the movie. And you could tell, it was palpable in the audience how many people loved it and how many people were ready to cry bullshit when the card goes over the chasm. But anyway.

The people who loved it would be rewarded decades later when Indy finds himself launched in a refrigerator by an atomic blast and survives inexplicably.

You know, you are the only you're the only person. No, you're not the only person who hates the nuked fridge. I'm the only person that I know who actually doesn't mind that sequence all that much.

You're insane.

I know. I know. I'm not I'm not going to try to defend it, but I you know what? I hate that film. It's like like like they keep getting worse and worse. Like but but here's the thing. Like because because again, I for me, since I did not like Last Crusade for me, they just keep getting worse. Right. But I got to tell you, like there's two things in that that sequence in Area 51 is inane and stupid and the scene where the the shot where he introduces Indiana Jones, where like literally they drag him out of the cart. You don't see his face. They drop him. His hat rolls out. He stands up like Spielberg made that up on the day.

Yeah. It's a masterful shot.

I mean, literally in his in one of his worst films, he makes up a shot on the day that is better than anything I'll ever come up with. That's amazing. I mean, yeah, it's like it's like as much as we're bagging on this film, you can't get around the truth that Spielberg is just like one of the greatest directors and probably the greatest intuitive director of all time.

When he's on, he's on, but a shot is not a movie.

And then Indiana Jones has his foot on his little leather shoe on the metal wheel of this car.

That's the ground perilously through towards his feet that we're like, he's gonna lose his foot. And of course he breaks and slows and stops the mine cart but his feet are smoking and he's going water, water, water. Exactly, exactly. That's the gag. So, and then of course that is the cue.

That's when Molo Ram's flooding the mine cart.

For the flooding to reach them and.

Can I tell you all the difference between a great film and a bad film? Okay.

Sure.

Raiders of the Lost Ark is a great film. We can both agree on this, right? Indiana Jones is dragged behind a moving truck. He's holding onto it by his bullwhip, right? There is no way that his pants and jacket survive that, right?

Right.

But you don't care because the film is so well made, you buy it, right?

Yeah.

Here, he literally stops his mine car with the soft leather of his shoe. It's ridiculous because the movie hasn't accrued the goodwill you need in order to buy this and that's the problem. It's like this movie keeps upping the stakes, but it hasn't earned the goodwill you need to get into the insanity of this chase.

Also, the difference in those two sequences. Is that one of them is really good? Well, the staging and everything is better, and the story build up.

And the characters.

To all that. But just within the shots themselves.

Yes.

Our narrative focus is not on his back or his ass at all. So the film and the filmmaking has the sense to pull our focus elsewhere. So we are not focused on the thing that if we were focused on would not make sense.

Absolutely.

That is how you get disbelief, to suspend disbelief. Here, that lesson is to run out the window, because all that we are told to focus on is the thing that makes no sense.

Exactly. Exactly. So now they're on top of a cliff.

They are separated by the waterfall out onto the cliff. So now they're on either side of this fire, a giant fire hydrant eruption that is dissolving the wall of the cliff of the mine. And they yell at each other to meet at the rope bridge or something. But they're split up now. And so Short Round and Willie get to the iconic rope bridge across this impossibly vast cavern.

And we do get a funny gag as Indiana Jones is going to the bridge as well, right? Because this is where the two thuggies with the swords meet him. I think this is a funny gag where like he's running up the cliff toward the bridge. You want to get to it? Okay.

Yes. So let's talk about that. I mean, first short, it doesn't matter, but first Short Round is testing the bridge. He's very confident about, no, good, it's very well. And of course, one of the, because Willie is terrified. It will not cross the bridge. And of course, one of the planks gives and Short Round almost falls to his death. But of course, that's where we see that there's alligators and they're alligators or crocodiles down there.

Look at those snappers, Ralph.

Yes. But yes, then we get the gag callback to the iconic, right? Improv raiders moment.

Kyra Swartzman. Yes. Two thuggy show up with swords and they do like a big, you know, really cute thing. Yeah.

Yeah. And so Indy instinctively, as we saw him in Raiders when he was more exhausted, because he's older then, reaches for his pistol, but it is not there. But here's the problem. This is a prequel.

So now it's well, I don't think Indiana Jones is supposed to know he's done this before. It's purely for us. And why wouldn't he reach for his gun?

And yet the way the gag works, it's that we've seen this before, it's happened before, but it has not happened before.

Does he play it like it's happened before? Your ill will toward this film is...

I don't know.

I'm just... Anyway, it bugs me. I just laughed. I still enjoyed it.

It's funny, but it takes you out of the movie and it's like a cheap gag.

Like all the other things that have kept you in the film up until now.

Exactly. Indy is chased by a horde of thuggy guards.

In a call back to Star Wars, by the way, you get a call back to another Harrison Ford movie. First you get a call back to Raiders, then he goes up to the front of the screen and it's just like in Star Wars where he's intimidating the stormtroopers, but he turns around.

There's a big horde of them and then he's running to the bridge as Willie and Short Round are already crossing it and at the other end of the bridge on the opposite cliff, they are met by Mola Ram who captures them.

By your mom? Sorry. This movie has reduced me to inanity. Guys, now look, this sequence is, I think, great. And one of the things I love about it is now we've got Indiana Jones in the middle of the bridge. He's got the stones, their stuggy guards coming from either side. Yeah. They keep closing the distance. There's some really interesting shifting between telephoto and regular lens here because when they go telephoto, the quality of the stock changes and the thuggies get closer, right? But basically, you can tell that they're getting closer and closer to Indy. Now, Molaram has put Willie Scott and Short Round on the bridge. So Indiana Jones can't do anything funny.

Yes, because he's again in a call back to the opening sequence, is they've negotiated a trade.

Yes.

To trade Willie and Short Round for the stones. Yes. But Indy is threatening to drop the stones, because Indy threatens to drop them into the-

The crocodile-infested river, yeah.

Yes. But doesn't. Although, this does call to mind unavoidably, but unknowingly to the filmmakers romancing the stone, because we've seen this happen, essentially.

Bridge Foo. It's actually interesting that both of these films that are so close to each other in release, and almost in like genre in a weird way, like they both have Bridge Foo, right? But here's what I think is really interesting.

Well, and they've had like the threat, like the thing that everyone's after, go into a crocodile.

Into a pit of crocodiles, yeah. Sadly, we don't see Molaram's hand get bitten off by a crocodile, which would be better than the way they kill him in this movie. But here's what I really liked about this. Producer Brad, can you give us clip 16? This is as everything is closing in on Indiana Jones. Yeah. But, but, and by the way, but the punchline's great because you see the thuggies coming from one end to the other. And for the first, it's actually not the first time Indiana Jones cusses. He cusses, he cusses in the, in the, in the tramp steamer in Raiders when the Nazis show up in the sub. He actually tells Captain Katanga, he goes, oh shit. But this is the first time that a Lucasfilm hero has looked straight at the camera and gone, I'm fucked. And been profane about it, which I love. I mean, this got such a laugh in the movie theater because Indiana Jones is cussing, that doesn't happen, you know.

This is a great moment. And it is, again, for all this film's problems, you have moments of sheer brilliance and true originality, which is what we want from these films, why we love them, why we go to them. We don't want to see retreads. We want to see something new that we have not seen. And here we do because Indy literally has nowhere to go. There is no way out. They're closing in on him from both sides. We've never seen him in this situation before. He does not have the bargaining leverage. It has failed. And he has moments, very short, brief moments, to come up with a plan for a situation he has probably never even ever had a reason to remotely conceive of. And what does he do? He speaks to Short Round in Chinese.

Yes. And you know what, let's just play Clip 17, because this moment is really triumphant and fun. I really do like this quite a bit.

Hello lady, we going for a ride.

Now, you know, that's the thing for everything that doesn't work in this movie, when you get to something like this. And yeah, Molaram is a racist caricature over the top villain. But holy fuck, Indiana Jones, like this moment where they're like bargaining against each other and Indiana Jones is just fucking gonna... Wow.

I love it. And the sheer magnificence of Harrison Ford giving that read.

Oh my God.

As only he can do. Like that's... It's the best line in the movie.

It's weird because I feel like honestly, this is probably Harrison Ford at his acting peak and yet it's probably the... That's not the worst Indiana Jones script, it's one of the worst Indiana Jones scripts he's been given. And he is so committed to it. I mean, he is very clearly in... I am the star of this movie and it's all on my face mode and he plays it. Yes.

Also the choice and I do not have the script in front of me and I don't know that it would matter but I can only guess because of how it is delivered that presumably on the page or maybe not, but the way Ford has chosen to deliver it, it's Mola Rom, Prepare to Meet Kali, period, in hell. Estimation point as a separate sentence.

He just wants to make sure he knows where.

It's so perfect.

And the laugh that Short Round got when he goes, lady, he know nuts, he crazy. That line got, and I think that's sort of an essence of Indiana Jones which is in this film, this is the equivalent of him getting on the horse to go after the Ark in Raiders. It's like, I don't know, I'm making this up as I go. And that's one of the great things about this character. And of course he cuts the bridge. The bridge snaps in two. Indy and Molaram and Willie and Short Round are on one end, the thuggies on the other end hit the cliff and die rather quickly and get eaten by the crocodiles. So now it's just Indiana Jones and Molaram on the bridge fighting over these stones. And it's really interesting, the climax of this movie is not about some big action set. Presumably we've seen the big action set. It's just about these two dudes and who's stronger.

Trying to climb up now the severed bridge that is in Potter against the side of the wall as we've seen all the thugs tumble to their crocodile doom.

Yes, by the way, just so you know, special dummies were invented for this film.

Yes, animatronic dummies that flailed.

Did you read the same Starlog article I did where they talk about the animatronic dummies that flail their arms so they don't look like dummies? Okay, there we go.

Of course. It's great. It's great. And so the Crocs are eating well today. As finally Mola, Ram and Indy fight on the ladder, as also Indy is trying to compel and hold him back because Mola Ram is after Willie and Short Round.

No, Mola Ram is after Indy. Indy has the stones.

Well, and the stones too. But yeah, but I mean, he's wanting to take them out.

He wants to, it's just not good.

And it's not good for anybody. And then they get into a fight again on this rope ladder.

They're literally on the bridge. They're hanging on to against the cliff. And then Mola Ram tries the whammy.

He tries now, like what he forgot to do to Willie Scott. He's then, he tries to do his claw of doom.

He got some rest. He's rested. He's ready. He's tanned. He's rested. He's ready.

To pull out Indy's heart, as also, Indy orders archers on the opposite cliff to fire at them. It's just, yeah, yeah. But anyway, Indy is able to prevent his heart surgery.

Indy grabs Mola Ram's wrist.

Yep.

He moves his hand away and then he begins, he tells Mola Ram that he has betrayed Shiva. And he begins to say a prayer in, I don't know which dialect it is, which Indian language it is, I apologize. And then the stones start burning through the satchel. They start glowing and they burn through the satchel and then they start falling into the river and Mola Ram.

Yeah, one by one and Mola Ram catches one, but it burns his hand so he reflexively tosses it. And it falls into the, it falls, but then Indy grabs it because we think it's going to fall down to the crocs, but Indy grabs it and defeats Mola Ram.

Now I got a question for you here. Mola Ram famously falls off the cliff. He falls off the rope ladder or the remains of the bridge. He goes down the cliff. You see his head hit the cliff and have a little plume of dust or whatever. And then he falls and he gets eaten by the crocodiles. I got to tell you, Paul, that death feels so unsatisfying to me. Unlike, say, Zolo getting his hand bitten by a shark, by a crocodile. Zolo getting his hand bitten off is such a great set. I mean, the villain survives that, but it doesn't matter. That's his end in a way. And like, Molaram just sort of falls off and he's dead and he gets eaten. And even with the grace note of his head hitting the cliff, it doesn't land. And I've just always puzzled as to how they could have done that differently. But then again, they probably done the whole movie differently. But it's a very unsatisfying character death, right?

It feels like there's some shots or something missing, like to really just play that out fully. And I don't know if it was technical limitations or creative or whatever. But it does feel a little like, oh, that's quick. That was that's done. And we don't get the full satisfaction.

It's not Arnold Tote melting or Belloc exploding after shouting, It's beautiful. You know, you don't get that great satisfaction.

Yeah, because we do. Because yes, this franchise, you know, delivers some iconic death.

But you know, but you know what, what satisfaction you do get if you are a closeted fan of British imperialism.

Yeah.

You get to see the fucking British army under the tutelage of Captain Bloomberg show up and fucking fire their, I think they're Gurkhas because actually the soldiers are in turbines and, but it doesn't matter. It's like literally the British show up and fight off the thuggies to save Indiana Jones.

It's like a Christmas card to British colonialism. It's so crazy insane.

And the worst part of it, Paul, is that there is an extended shot in this sequence in which the main carabiner, the guy literally with his gun closest to the camera, he doesn't know how to operate the gun and he can't get the return to reload. And you're just going like Spielberg, cut, cut away from this. Your main guy doesn't know how to operate his own pro. Anyway, am I the only one who's been vexed by this for 40 years? Because literally like having one guy who, yes. Really? Paul, you've been vexed by this. Paul, you noticed, didn't you? That the lead duke can't operate his own gun?

Yeah, I just didn't bother you as much as it bothered me. To me, it feels like this is not.

This entire movie to me is that shot.

It's a poor, negative, unfortunate representation not just of colonialism but then of the inferiority of the colonized, conscripted locals to the British crown.

It's also just a... Look, I'm sure they were trying to get the shot, they were running out of light, whatever, but it's like, how do you leave a huge mistake like that in the middle of your climax? I don't get it.

I mean, at this point, who fucking cares? And Indy climbs up the bridge ladder, onto the cliff, with one of the three stones, the one he managed to catch, the other two were gone into crocodile gastroenterology, and it just so happens. Imagine the luck.

It's the one stone from the village.

It happens to be, he had one out of three odds, and he happened to save the village's very stone, and we cut to them.

Which means there's two villages, there's two villages that are going to remain in famine and misfortune.

Yeah, those unseen villages are fucked. They're fucked.

Their crops are dried up, their kids are going to mine for the rest of their lives, they're fucked, yeah.

They're all just going to die in drought and desolation. But we don't see any of that.

Nope, we do not.

Instead, we cut to our heroes, so to speak.

Triumphantly returning to the village.

To a village that's now flourishing. And we finally get a full play of the Indy theme.

Yes.

And all the liberated kids return in emotional jubilation to their families.

Somehow all the saris have been washed and are now bright.

Yeah.

Everybody was wearing very drab clothing at the beginning, and everybody's wearing very bright saris. It's good.

Thank God. Then, because, you know, we haven't been tortured enough, we get another angry, whiny, willy rant.

Oh, God, yeah. She wants to find a... She wants a phone or something. I don't fucking know.

And then the Short Round's elephant, baby, cute baby elephants, sprays them. I think this is after, like, Indy uses his whip to, like...

Yeah, she tries to go away to find a phone or she can find a guy to deli. He uses his whip to bring her back so he can kiss her. It's just...

And then they're all embraced by, as white saviors, by these grateful Indian village impoverished kids.

Yeah.

And that's the end of the movie. And I just like...

Yeah. And that's, and that is the end of the movie. And it's like, ah, like... And you're left feeling like, you know, this is an interesting, it's interesting, Paul, because, you know, you think about all the great Amblin movies, right? Goonies, for some, Back to the Future, right?

Next year.

Batteries Not Included, maybe? What are the great Amblin... Everybody remembers the Amblin movies of this period, you know?

ET.

ET., right? Yeah, that was good. You know, but I'm trying to think of how many, like, as the 80s went on, were actually made by Spielberg or Lucas, you know? Because after this, Spielberg kind of like, he didn't... The Last Crusade wasn't until 89. Lucas didn't direct again until, you know, like Phantom Menace in the late 90s. You know, Zemeckis made Back to the Future. Richard Donner directed Goonies. You know, like, this to me was kind of the film where Lucas and Spielberg kind of like just became moguls and stopped, you know, doing what they did with Raiders, which was to make this great film, you know? This to me was the point of transition between Steven Spielberg and George Lucas, the maverick filmmakers, and Steven Spielberg and George Lucas, the franchise-maintaining moguls of their time, you know? Does that make any sense?

I mean, at least for a good stretch. I think, yeah, focusing on other things, having, you know, made unparalleled and unprecedented achievements in terms of commercial success.

Oh, absolutely, yeah, absolutely, yeah.

So it's hard to fault them for that. But yeah, it is weird. It's a weird feeling.

And it's a weird movie and it feels tossed off and it feels like it feels like a piece of business, you know.

And definitely an unfortunate reflection of some of the deficiencies of the era in terms of thoughtful representation.

What you're going to do? It was the 80s.

Exactly.

All right.

That almost would work with the closing shot of Temple of Doom. It almost would. But it would be great if then you had one of the villagers emerge.

With a saxophone.

With a saxophone.

You know, Paul, I think that this is as good a time as any for me to conjecture that as with the, you know there was a famous web page called The Walk of Life Project. Are you aware of it?

I'm gonna say yes.

It's dedicated, you know what, it's dedicated to the idea that the end of every movie would be improved if instead of whatever music they use, they use the Dire Straight Song's Walk of Life, right?

I am remembering this now, yes. And it works.

Like, like, 2001 A Space Odyssey they do, and it works. A Few Good Men, it works. Gone With the Wind, it all works. I bet that Alan Silvestri's saxophone end for Romancing the Stone would be the perfect end for any movie.

And on that note, Barry Lyndon, In the Bedroom, Peterson Brad, how did Temple of Doom do? OK, OK.

Temple of Doom opened on May 23, 1984, the Wednesday before Memorial Day weekend at number one at the box office. It made $25 million its opening weekend. The other films in the top five were The Natural, Breaking, not Breaking 2, Electric Boogaloo, Romancing the Stone and 16 Candles. And for the year, Temple of Doom was the second highest-grossing film of 1984.

After?

Ghostbusters.

Yes. Ah, aha. So producer Brad, what is on the docket for next week? What are we gonna go out to the multiplex?

Well, before we go to next week, we need to take a short business. We had a listener write in. Oh! Zen. Zen wanted to know, he loved the episode on Never Say Never Again, but couldn't believe you guys didn't comment on the kissing scene between Cosme of Randauer and Kim Basinger and the amount of spit and the travel between them and how committed the actors were.

We didn't talk about that. I thought we did a whole run on that. That must have just been beamed directly into my head because that's one of the few things I remember from that movie. Paul, you don't remember the spittle, no?

I mean, it haunts my dreams.

You know, Zen, I want you to know that I'm with you there. I remember it. I understand it. And yeah, I was kind of both gross, but also a real Valentine to actorial commitment. There you go, thespian commitment.

I'm going to suggest, if not explicitly request, to our dear listener that he might be able to help contribute to civilization by memorializing that particular shot as a gift, which I think needs to exist.

Yes, yes. Paul, brilliant as always.

So we'll see if that can be manifested somehow.

Now, producer Brad, we're going to go to the movies next weekend. What are we watching? What are our choices?

Next week, we're going to June 1st, which is the second weekend of the summer. And I'll show you the movies. Three movies opened that weekend. And here are your options.

Star Trek 3, The Search for Spock. Oh, oh yeah, done. Oh my God. Oh, that's-

Done?

Yeah.

That's it?

You're committed?

Yeah, but let's see what else we got. I mean, obviously, we're- Once Upon a Time in America, that movie is such a knee-slapper. It's just the feel-good movie of the century.

No. Can I just say, let's just, given how long that film is, imagine how long our podcast episode would be.

Oh my God. So let's move on. Let's move on.

So we're committed to Star Trek?

Is there anything else?

What's behind door number three?

Streets of Fire and Star Trek 3 open? How can- No!

We gotta do both.

Double feature.

No, no, no. We gotta do both.

Yeah, I can't not do Streets of Fire.

We have to do-

Tom Cote, good to know you.

We can see two movies in one weekend.

Or we can save Streets of Fire for the following, it'll still be in theaters in a couple of weeks.

There's gonna be a weekend or two coming up that we're gonna need to find a movie that's not opening then.

I say let's do Search for Spock and Bank Streets of Fire because we're gonna, both of those are gonna be bangers. Or bonge as the French would say.

I'm very excited but I am tempted to suggest as a palate cleanser from large franchises. And given that it doesn't feel like that long ago since we did Star Trek 2, should we maybe do Streets of Fire first and then Star Trek 3?

You know Paul, here's the thing, 14-year-old Javi wants you to go fuck yourself. 57-year-old Javi is saying, fuck yeah. There you go.

Producer Brad will say that Streets of Fire doesn't last as long in the theaters as Star Trek 3.

So let's go see Streets of Fire.

Yeah.

Okay, let's do it.

We're going to get to Star Trek 3.

Because 56-year-old Javi has learned patience, much like Obi-Wan said of Luke.

Yes, but honestly, I'm ready to party with Streets of Fire.

Let's party, let's do it.

Yeah.

All right, Streets of Fire.

Hey, tonight is what it means to be young. All right, all right, let's, and also.

Also, I am going to guess, out on the limb, and I've not checked this yet, but I'm rolling some dice that I think are probably weighted in my favor. I'm going to guess that Streets of Fire is a shorter film.

Probably.

It is an hour and 33 minutes. Yeah.

My friends, we're going to watch Streets of Fire, and I couldn't be more excited. Until then, we will see you in line at the Multiplex.