FAQ

Yes the entire crowd chants it during the sacrifice scenes

It's possible that Willie thought she would be more safe being with Indy rather than Lao since it's obvious Lao didn't care for her. In one scene after Indy threatens to kill her, he says: "you keep the girl, I can find another one". This indicates she has no value for him. Therefore she followed him to the plane.

After the plane crash it's very obvious she is more safe around Indy than being anywhere else in a unknown territory.

The film gives no answer but more than likely they were being held against their will by the Thuggees and were being forced to worship Kali. Then when the time came they would be sacrificed to the lava pit just like the victim Indy, Willie and Short Round witnessed.

There was a water mill down in the temple which was more than likely providing energy to a generator which was providing the palace with power.

Yes, religious extremists who practiced human sacrifice, where the English term "thug" may have originated from. As depicted by this film they were suppressed by the British Raj.

After narrowly escaping death at the hands of Chinese gangsters, archaeology professor, Dr Henry "Indiana" Jones (Harrison Ford), accompanied by his 12-year-old sidekick Short Round (Ke Huy Quan) and nightclub singer Wilhelmina "Willie" Scott (Kate Capshaw), crash land their plane in the Himalayan Mountains of India. They are taken in by starving villagers desperate for Indy's help finding their children and a magical stone they call "Sivalinga", which they claim was stolen from them by the evil residents of the ancient Pankot Palace, previously thought to be deserted. Indy agrees to visit Pankot Palace, but the new maharajah, Zalim Singh (Raj Singh), assures him that there is no evil in his palace ...until Indy stumbles upon a hidden passageway that leads to an underground temple where an ancient Thuggee cult has commenced worshiping the dark Hindu goddess Kali and conducting human sacrifices.

The Temple of Doom is the second movie in the Indian Jones series, preceded by Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) (1981) and followed by Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989) (1989), Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008) (2008) and Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (2023). Temple of Doom is based on a story conceived by American film maker George Lucas. The screenplay for Temple of Doom was written by American screenwriters Willard Huyck and Gloria Katz, who took inspiration from Gunga Din (1939), a 1939 movie with a similar plot. Indiana Jones the the Temple of Doom was novelized in 1984 by James Kahn and republished in 2008.

It is a prequel. It's the second movie in the series, but the events in the movie are set in 1935, about a year before those in Raiders of the Lost Ark, which was set in 1936. A title at the beginning of Temple of Doom confirms this when it reads "Shanghai, 1935."

Yes. As described in the film, Nurhaci was the first sovereign emperor of what became the Manchu Dynasty, the last ruling Dynasty of China. He reigned from 1616 to 1626 (when it was actually known as the "Later Jin" Dynasty) and is credited with unifying the warring tribes in modern day Manchuria and commanding them under a single massive military system. His descendants went on to found the Manchu Dynasty (aka Qing Dynasty) in 1644 and conquer China as we now know it today. Lao Che was able to trace his own ancestry back to Nurhaci, decided he wanted to possess the emperor's ashes and hired Indy to find them.

Although the "Young Indiana Jones Chronicles" depicts Indy as being part of an air force squadron during the Great War, he is merely an observer rather than a pilot. Although we see Indy fly a plane in The Last Crusade set in 1938, Temple of Doom is set in 1935. The assumption is that, in the intervening period, Indy learned to fly a plane but either didn't learn landing very well or quit his lessons before he could. The implication may also be that through various adventures, he's had the opportunity to fly planes, but always winds up crashing or bailing out before he ever got the opportunity to land.

Mostly, no. Lucas combined elements of an original Hindu myth with ideas of a fantastical nature. Nearly all of the details are fictional, however.

When Mola Ram sacrifices his first victim, in an infamous scene, he tears out the man's heart before lowering the victim into the lava, yet he doesn't do the same with Willie. The real-world explanations for this are twofold. For one, Indy's love interest cannot die halfway through the movie-a simple and practical plot point for the film. Two, having an actor sink his hand into an actress' chest wouldn't be appropriate for a PG movie (and PG-13 did not yet exist when this film was made). In the Indy canon, there's the possibility that Ram was just using Willie as a test of Indy's conversion and loyalty to the cause (we see him grin triumphantly at the camera after Indy shackles Willie's wrist to the cage). And then, she's obviously a woman, and as such quite plausibly not even eligible for the proper offering ritual in the first place, making the test reasoning all the more likely. It also serves the practical purpose of getting rid of undesired witnesses to the existence of the cult, so why not make it "entertaining" for them along the way.

He immigrates to the United States with Jones following his adventure. The Lost Journal of Indiana Jones, published in 2008, detailed that Short Round became an archaeologist and tracked down the Peacock's Eye (the diamond from Doom's opening sequence) to Niihau.

He probably got it from Indy himself. Indy talks about how he found Shorty living as an orphan on the streets of Shanghai after the Japanese bombed the city. "Short round" is a military term that refers to a mortar round or shell that either doesn't launch properly or only travels a short distance and doesn't explode. Such an occurrence can be very dangerous to the crew that launched it since the round can be highly unstable and explode unexpectedly. Indy probably gave his sidekick that name because of his exuberant and cocky personality.

There are two possible explanations: First, Shorty was desperate to bring his friend back and simply burned Indy in the hope that it would shock him back to his old self. As we see, the ploy worked and Indy comes back. The second theory comes from the film's novelization, in which Shorty, while laboring in the mines, sees one of the kids uncover a small vein of lava. When one of the thuggee guards comes over to investigate, the vein spits some lava onto his bare legs and the heat snaps him out of his trance. He's immediately taken away by other guards—presumably to be forced to drink the blood of Kali Ma again to return him to his trance. However, Shorty is a witness to the incident and figures out that heat or fire will wake up Mola Ram's hypnotized followers.

Yes. Harrison Ford seriously hurt his back during the filming of Temple of Doom and had to leave the production for a number of weeks while stuntman (and longtime Ford double) Vic Armstrong took his place for many of the action sequences, notably the fight with the large Thuggee on the conveyer belt. Fortunately, at that time, Armstrong was a close look-alike to Harrison Ford, so the switch went quite unnoticed for these scenes. Ford himself was added in later for close-ups and anything else that was needed.

He has a cameo as Earl Weber, the British man who obtains the plane for Indy, Willie and Short Round near the beginning of the film. He only has a couple of lines: "Ah, Dr. Jones, I'm Earl Weber. I spoke with your assistant. We've managed to secure three seats. But there will be a slight inconvenience as you will be riding with a cargo full of live poultry." He also recognizes Willie as an entertainer and remarks on it.

Indy saw clear magic and witnessed very mystical events during his journey in this movie, but he is still not very optimistic about the Ark in the next chapter chronologically. The real answer isn't clear, but it can be guessed that Indy had either written off the events that occurred in this movie with scientific theories or he had chosen to actually forget what had happened and decided that, as a scientist, whatever he saw had a "logical" explanation. His being possessed could have been explained by the fact that he was drugged, and he may have decided that much of the other things he saw were hallucinations caused by the drugging. Just because he saw evidence of the supernatural in Indian mysticism doesn't mean he automatically believed in the reality of Christianity/Judaism. Alternatively, he may have just been lying to reassure Marcus.

The shot of the Great Wall is likely included just for dramatic effect during the "red line" travel. The Great Wall is an iconic symbol of Chinese culture and history and was used for that reason. Also, the red line clearly shows the flight path from Shanghai toward the Himalayan Mountains, and it makes no diversion to the north.

Not officially. Steven Spielberg wanted to play a practical joke on Harrison Ford and Streisand, who was filming Yentl in London at the time, visited the set of Temple of Doom while they were filming the scene where Mola Ram has Indy whipped and forces him to drink the blood of Kali. Streisand dressed up as a dominatrix and started whipping Harrison Ford herself as he was tied to the rock, in order to "punish" him for all the successful films he's made. While doing this, Carrie Fisher also appeared with Streisand, dressed as a Thuggee guard and tried to "protect" Ford from the whip, and Empire Strikes Back director Irvin Kershner was also present and in on the joke. The joke was actually filmed but has not been officially released anywhere, though a low-quality copy has been circulating on the Internet for many years. See here.

The original release was cut in 1984 to obtain a PG rating, in order to make the film more widely assessible (avoiding a 15 rating as the UK's 12 rating did not get rolled out until 1989). When it came to the UK Region 2 DVD release, Paramount requested to release the original cut; however, the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) apparently required the consent of the director. This was not forthcoming, thus edits were replicated as close as possible to the original UK theatrical release from1984. The scenes that were originally cut from the UK version in 1984 were:

• In sacrificial Thuggee ceremony, the tearing out of the young victim's heart, and sight of it in High Priests hand was reduced, implying it was seized by magic

• Shots of the pulsating heart removed, except the final one when it burst into flames

• Greatly reduced terror of victim as he is lowered into fiery vortex, missing all prolonged emphasis on his screams as the cage descends. The film cuts away as soon as he disappears through trap door, and his death is reduced so that it ends a lot quicker

• Reduced sequence where Indiana cries out as his voodoo doll is burned in flames

• Reduced drinking of blood and whipping of Indiana, and deletion of the flogging of Shortie

• Reduced line "leave him alone, you bastards!" to simply "leave him alone!" (on some prints the line is excised entirely)

• Removal from soundtrack Indianas cries of agony as he writhes on ledge after drinking blood

• Close shots of Willie screaming as she is locked in cage and lowered towards the fire removed, and reduced sobs on the soundtrack and the sight of her suspended over flames

• When Shortie burns the guards chest with the torch, the sound of flesh scalding has been eliminated

• Heavily cut fight between Indiana and overseer, removing in particular heavy punches to back, chest, and head. Also the sound effects of all impact blows have been reduced, so they approximate to the sounds associated with old-fashioned fisticuffs

• Shortened sight of blood on roller after overseers death

• More reduced sound effects of impact blows on soundtrack, including screams of pain as fight leads into final chase in the mine cart

• Reduced sounds of punches to High Priest's head on rope bridge

• Removal of sight of High Priest's head cracking against rock face as he falls, and sound effects removed of his body bouncing off the cliff before he hits the water.

Although the UK DVD release continued to have these cuts, the UK Blu-ray release is the original cut of the film, identical to the US Blu-ray release, and is therefore the first time the film has been released uncut in the UK.

No, Temple of Doom is actually a prequel to Raiders of the Lost Ark and is set in 1935 while Raiders is set in 1936. Therefore during the course of the film Indy has not yet discovered the Ark of the Covenant.

Back in 1984 the PG-13 rating did not exist (the rating this film really deserves) so films had to be either PG or R. While the first half of the film is pretty campy, once Indy enters the Temple of Doom it definitely feels like an R-rated film when you factor in the shots of little children being beaten with whips, the voodoo doll, the torture scene and the infamous "heart sacrifice." What is very interesting is the following year Rambo: First Blood Part II was released and received an R-rating despite the fact that it wasn't quite as violent or intense as Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. In Rambo: First Blood Part II there is no blood and the action violence is very cartoony. However Rambo: First Blood Part II did have one usage of the word "fuck" along with other language such as "bastard" and "goddamn", and there was a shot of Stallone's rear end along with references to prostitutes, while Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom had little to no profanity (only one usage of "shit"), no nudity and only very mild sexual references. It is also widely rumored that if Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom had been made by anyone other that Spielberg or Lucas it would have been slapped with an R-rating (with a possible appeal to PG-13 once that rating was created).