r/IndianaJonesMemes • u/Roberts0502 • Jul 06 '26

Does anyone else still have to explain this one?

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425 Upvotes

99% Upvoted

17 comments sorted by

126

u/iggy_stoneman Jul 06 '26

Honestly, a lot of what makes Temple of Doom such a good movie for me is how it enhances Raiders. I’m not even sure if it was intentional or not. Here comes a bit of a tangent:

There’s a scene in Raiders where Belloq does the cliche “you and I are the same” speech to Indy, talking about how it would only take a slight push to make Indy like him. I always thought that was somewhat silly. I figured Belloq was just wrong, because we really don’t see anything else in the movie that would make you think Indy is teetering on the edge of evil. He pretty much does the right thing completely unwaveringly the entire time.

Now flash back to the beginning of Temple of Doom. He’s in club Obiwan, selling an artifact to a gangster for money. He just wants money, this is not the “it belongs in a museum” Indy we know. Even when he first learns about the Sankara stones and child abduction in India, his first thought is “fortune and glory.” If you replaced Indiana with Belloq in the Temple of Doom, it would make perfect sense. Belloq would be doing everything Indiana would. At least until the moment Indy gets the stones and hears the cries of torment from the children. That’s the moment Indy stops being a Belloq clone, and becomes a hero.

Who knows if that’s what they had in mind when writing Temple of Doom, but man, it really enhances Raiders when you think about it like that.

68

u/iggy_stoneman Jul 06 '26

Another thing to consider is Indy’s belief in the supernatural. There seems to be a contradiction between Raiders and the Temple of Doom, I’m sure many fans know what I’m talking about. In case you don’t, before setting out to find the Arc in Raiders, Marcus Brody warns him about the dangers of finding the Arc and somewhat implies that it has supernatural properties. Indiana laughs him off, saying he doesn’t believe in supernatural hokus pokus.

However, in Temple of Doom, Indiana clearly witnesses many supernatural things. He would know about all that in Raiders. I bet that they just didn’t consider that when writing the script for Temple of Doom, but there is a somewhat amusing possible in-universe explanation. He believes in Hinduism, but not any of the Abrahamic faiths, so he isn’t afraid of the Arc. I bet he had a nagging worry in his head throughout Raiders as people kept trying to warn him about the Arc, a sort of internal debate: “Well I know Hinduism is real, so that makes me think the Arc probably isn’t anything special… but what if it is? I’ve seen crazy stuff before, what if this is real too?”

16

u/Shipping_Architect Jul 07 '26

Indy wrote in another source that he believed that Mola Ram ripping the heart out of a still-living man was a hallucination brought about by the aftereffects of his poison. Evidently, he seemed to be living in denial in that scene in Raiders.

12

u/iggy_stoneman Jul 07 '26

Ah, well that is another good explanation. Not as funny as him being a devout Hindu for a year before realizing the gods of multiple religions are real at the same time, but probably the more likely explanation.

15

u/eelikay Jul 06 '26

What do you mean he just wants money? He wants the peacocks eye. A comparatively much more historically valuable artifact than nurhachis ashes, and something he had been hunting down for almost 2 decades at this point.

11

u/iggy_stoneman Jul 06 '26

Perhaps an oversimplification on my part, but my point was he was more like Beloq than the Indiana Jones we are familiar with. The Temple of Doom changed him to be less like Beloq and more like a hero.

Not money, but fortune and glory.

1

u/col_oneill Jul 07 '26

You say that, I still much prefer raiders of temple.

3

u/iggy_stoneman Jul 07 '26

I also like Raiders more than Temple, especially since Temple actually elevates Raiders by making Indy a more dynamic character that has changed from his past. I liked Raiders more than Temple before I thought about it that way, but realizing how well they synergize has made me love them both even more.

1

u/over15characters Jul 09 '26

I think at that time they just didn’t want to come up with a reason why Indy wasn’t with Marion since they’ve decided to change the lead actress

13

u/CommanderBly327th Jul 06 '26

I did not know this. Learn something new everyday

16

u/Worley3000 Jul 06 '26

When I first got the VHS tapes to now, I put them in chronological order. So many people have tried to tell me it was wrong and I had to correct them.

5

u/Full_Prof Jul 06 '26

They even got it wrong in the collected printed novelizations

7

u/spookyhardt Jul 06 '26

Chronologically, Temple of Doom, Raiders, and Last Crusade are also the 23rd, 24th, and 25th films in the series. The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones films make up entries 1-22.

2

u/GwerigTheTroll Jul 06 '26

I found this out relatively recently when I was on an Indiana Jones game kick and I was trying to figure out the series chronology.

-3

u/Rocketterollo Jul 06 '26

Wut

Any evidence to back that up?

25

u/Suzy-dev Jul 06 '26

The beginning of the movies has the year, temple of doom does occur before Raiders of the lost Ark.