Anything Goes | Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984) 4K Ultra HD

Whether it be a case of selective memory or rose-colored glasses, I find it fairly amusing the way disgruntled Indiana Jones fans, when complaining about how much they dislike later entries in the series, tend to either forget that Temple of Doom happened or act like it was ever one of the good ones. The truth of the matter is that the Indy franchise has been uneven for a very long time, starting with the second installment which, nostalgia aside, is a pretty big drop-off in quality from the first.

Between 1977 to 1983, Steven Spielberg had a phenomenal winning streak of blockbuster successes that included not just one but two films (Jaws and E.T.) that each respectively set a record for highest-grossing movie of all time. When he and friend/Star Wars mastermind George Lucas announced they’d be doing a sequel to mega-hit Raiders of the Lost Ark, no studio executive would dare give them notes or shoot down any idea they had, no matter how ridiculous. These guys were the dream team. Anything they wanted, they got. In this case, what they wanted was rather silly.

Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984) - Harrison Ford
Title:Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom
Year of Release: 1984
Director: Steven Spielberg
Watched On: 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray
Also Available On: Blu-ray
Disney+
Paramount+
Various VOD rental and purchase platforms

Technically, Temple of Doom is a prequel set one year before the events of Raiders, for reasons that never seem at all meaningful. Nothing in the story particularly needs to take place before Indy’s run-in with Nazis or his finding the Ark of the Covenant. The character doesn’t behave much differently, either, beyond perhaps being even more reckless in hunting for artifacts from the ancient world.

Full credit where it’s due, the film starts off on a great note with a tremendously fun sequence set in Shanghai that’s part screwball comedy and part 1930s musical extravaganza, propelled by Spielberg’s signature brand of kinetic energy and momentum. The opening set-piece is inventive, exciting, funny, and seems to suggest that this follow-up might have something to offer just as entertaining as the original.

In the next scene, however, Indy and his new friends jump out of an airplane in a rubber raft and the rest of the movie pretty much goes to hell.

From Shanghai, Dr. Jones travels to India and gets wrapped up in a quest to find a set of magic rocks called the Sankara Stones that have been hoarded by members of the evil Thuggee cult, who plan to use them to obtain ultimate power or something. Tagging along on this adventure are precocious child sidekick Short Round (future Oscar winner Ke Huy Quan) and pampered nightclub singer Willie Scott (Kate Capshaw, who so enamored Spielberg that he divorced then-wife Amy Irving and married her a few years later). Short Round manages to stay just slightly on the right side of the adorable-to-annoying spectrum, but the obnoxious Willie is a constant irritant who drags down every scene she’s in – and she’s in almost all of them. A friend aptly described the character as the Jar Jar Binks of the Indiana Jones universe. As Indy’s love interest, she’s a considerable step down from Marion Ravenwood.

Scripted by the married team of Willard Hyuck and Gloria Katz, who had written American Graffiti for Lucas but would later pen the disastrous Howard the Duck, Temple of Doom takes the larger-than-life adventure of Raiders and magnifies it to cartoonish proportions. The film is filled with an awkward mix of goofy, lowbrow humor and nightmarish scares. The plot involves kidnapped children, human sacrifice, and a still-beating human heart being ripped out of a man’s chest by hand. The big action scenes cross the line from far-fetched to eye-rolling, and the racial caricatures are pretty offensive. A centerpiece gross-out banquet scene implies that the weird and disgusting dark-skinned people of Central Asia love eating bugs, eyeball soup, and monkey brains – seemingly just to shock and appall their more civilized white guests.

Despite all that, Temple of Doom delivers some basic thrills and excitement, and was another big hit for Spielberg and Lucas. Kids at the time embraced it and may even remember it now more fondly than it deserves. Honestly, I don’t think it’s an awful movie. I enjoy some parts of it. (The climactic rollercoaster mine cart chase is ludicrous but a lot of fun.) Still, sandwiched as the weak middle entry between two much stronger Indiana Jones films, Temple of Doom was, for many years, the black sheep of the franchise. It’s funny, then, how time and a couple of controversial later sequels can warp that perspective.

Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984) - Amrish Puri as Mola Ram

The 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray

Paramount released Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom on Blu-ray in 2012 and on 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray in 2021. My copy of the latter was included in a 4-Movie Collection box set bundled with Raiders, Last Crusade, and Crystal Skull. The set only includes one UHD disc for each film packaged in its own SteelBook case. No standard Blu-ray discs were provided.

The movie’s opening scene features extended optical composites to impose credits and titles over the live-action footage, and as a result looks a little soft, flat, and drab. Picture quality clears up after that. For the most part, the 2.35:1 image is very sharp and detailed with a consistent grain texture visible. Whether that grain is real or artificial, I can’t say. Like the Raiders 4K transfer, a number of shots originally captured in soft focus appear to have been digitally sharpened, to mixed results. However, the side effects are generally less distracting on this one.

The disc’s colors and HDR grading mostly look pretty good, especially the crisp white of Indy’s tuxedo jacket in Shanghai. The bright orange lava in the title temple looks a little blown-out on my screen, but I can’t rule that out as potentially an issue with my projector struggling to tone-map the bright highlights.

The 4K resolution doesn’t do any favors to the film’s many matte painting backdrops and other special effects, which may be more exposed than they were on the original theatrical release prints of the day. Oscar win for Best Visual Effects or not, some of the opticals at the end of the movie stand out as looking really fake now.

Indiana Jones 4-Movie Collection SteelBooks

The Dolby Atmos soundtrack is very loud and chaotic, but (like the Raiders remix) doesn’t have much depth or dynamic range. Dialogue can be soft and muddy at times, while ADR work calls attention to itself. I also noted that my Front Wide speakers were never engaged.

The only bonus features on the UHD disc are two trailers. Any other supplements previously found on Blu-ray or DVD didn’t make the transition.

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Note: All screenshots on this page were taken from the standard Blu-ray edition of the film and are used for illustration purposes only.

4 thoughts on “Anything Goes | Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984) 4K Ultra HD”

  1. Believe it or not, there are people who consider this the best of the series. British movie magazine EMPIRE posted one such opinion last week. “It’s pulpier, funnier, sillier, scarier than Raiders. It is, pound for pound, the most consistently entertaining of the series, existing purely to thrill you, frighten you, delight you.” Temple Of Doom is the best ‘Indiana Jones’ film, writes
    Alex Godfrey (https://empireonline.com/movies/features/best-indiana-jones-film-temple-of-doom/)

    I also read the opinion online that Willie Scott is supposed to be annoying. She’s written like that, and Kate Capshaw did a perfect job.

    My two cents: fun movie, but no match for ‘Raiders’ or ‘Crusade’.

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  2. So I checked my 4-film UHD set (non-steelbook) after your Raiders piece, and it had a 5th disc with supplements (including the vintage 1981 Raiders doc I was looking for). I have no idea if all or even most of the previous BD special features are on that disc.
    Yeah Temple of Doom was merely OK and it’s always been tough to listen to Capshaw whining through the whole picture.

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    1. I just looked and the Crystal Skull SteelBook has a second disc labeled “Indiana Jones Special Features.” I had assumed it was just extras for that movie, but it’s probably the same disc you’re talking about.

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  3. This is my second favorite entry in the series partly for nostalgic reasons but mostly because the enemies aren’t Nazis. I love the different vibe of this movie. The gross out gags are fun too. As a kid I thought Capshaw was funny but in my adult viewings I do find her quite grating. Not her fault, just her character. I always wished the Indiana Jones adventures would’ve varied a little more in the locales and villains.

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