Retronauts - Retronauts Episode 251: Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom

Episode Date: October 7, 2019

Retronauts East (Jeremy Parish, Benj Edwards, Chris Sims, and Ben Elgin) returns to the ’30s to evaluate the failings and successes (mostly failings) of Indiana Jones's most Problematic-with-a-capital-P adventure—and its impact on games, of course. Frickin' mine carts....

Glory, Kid. The other people are Ben Jedgge. Ben Elgin. Nice try, Lausche. That's not your names. I see. I see. Okay.

I see how it's going to be. You're going to be one of those guys this time. The wise guy. I'm always one of those guys. It's true. It's been a while for this. So hi, everyone. We're revisiting a topic that we tackled last year, Raiders of the Lost Ark.

And naturally enough, we're moving along to the sequel, or rather the prequel. But whatever, it's the sequel. It's Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. The movie is so good that they had to change the entire American movie rating system for it. That's how good it was. It's an interesting movie because it has some problems. And I know Binge doesn't think we should talk about problems and movies based on current standards when they're 35 years old. And that's a fair argument.

But I personally disagree. And guess what? I'm running the show. Oh, yeah. That's okay. I'm pretty sure we knew what the racism was bad in the mid-80s. Yeah, I mean, if you watch movies that are directed by black directors in the 80s, they sure do call that stuff out. I mean, even Blazing Saddles calls out racism in Hollywood. And that's the 70s. 74. So, yeah.

We should do a Blazing Saddles podcast, except there were no video games. Yeah, so. But, you know, it is difficult to talk about this movie and not address. that, although not only is the cultural context of 1984 important to understand this movie, but also the cultural context of when this movie was set, which was 1935, and the waning days of the British Empire. So all of that factors in there as well. But that's not really the focus on here, because Temple of Doom, yes, Temple of Doom, was a very influential movie, in some sense is a good influence, and in some senses a bad influence.

But it definitely is an interesting follow-up to Raiders of the Lost Ark, and therefore merits discussion. And also, there were some video games based on it. And by golly, that means we get to talk about it on Retronauts. So everyone, buckle in. This mine car is going off the rails. Cover your heart. That was pretty, that was very authentic. You sounded just like Willie.

Oh, God. I can't do that without getting shot. All right. So Indiana Jones and the Temple of Dunes, and the Temple of Doom was the highly anticipated follow-up to Indiana Jones. Sorry, originally it was just Raiders of the Lost Ark. They added the Indiana Jones later. And it came three years later, just like George Lucas and did all of his Star Wars movies,

a three-year gap in between. And naturally, once again, Star, Harrison Ford was directed by Stephen Spielberg. The story was conceived and planned by George Lucas, written by some other people whose names I didn't write down. Did I write them down? I didn't write them down. But basically, it's a Lucas concept. And you could kind of see the Star Wars, like the thing, the shape the Star Wars prequels would take forming here. Like, there's some hints of the future, for sure.

But there's some good stuff here. Certainly, I respect the fact that this movie has a lot of sexiness to it. And most of the sexiness is directed at indie as opposed to Kate Capshaw, the co-star, the female co-star. Like, she wears a revealing bodice in much of the movie, but really the focus is on the fact that Harrison Ford gained about 30 pounds of muscle after Regers of Lost Ark, and it's basically just a slab of sexy man beef. There's a lot of, like, wet Harrison Ford. He spends a lot of time without a shirt on it.

There's a lot of strategic taking off of shirts, yeah. It does, the effect does lose something because once again, Harrison Ford became badly injured while filming this movie and you can you can definitely see it like he gets around in a very awkward way in some of the action scenes or some of the scenes that aren't like pure action but are just like him moving around the stage like you can you can see something and for a while i was like did he you know watching this again for this this podcast i was like did he like get really out of shape because he's huge so i couldn't tell if he was like beefed up or just like kind of let himself go from all the cocaine benders and marijuana and and heavy drinking he did with

with Carrie Fisher. But no, he's like super, super muscular. It's just that he totally screwed up his body again. Like he does in all these action movies of the past. What did he do? Yeah, what happened to. I don't remember exactly what it was, but he just like pulled something in his back. And you can definitely see.

Like, there's some real awkwardness to the way he kind of moves around sometimes. That's kind of very appropriate for old Henry Jones Jr., though. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, it just reminds you that if Indiana Jones were a real human being, he would basically be like shambling you know like Batman and the Dark Night Rises

where he has like no cartilage left in his body that would be Indiana Jones this movie is the closest that Harrison Ford gets to that Jim Steranko concept art the big square-jawed pulp novel cover yeah he really bulked up in the early 80s and then kind of let that taper off and became

less of an action movie star and more of just like a drama star but for a while he was just like watching how big I can get, and this movie really shows that up. I didn't mean to talk so much about Harrison Ford's body in this, but it's out there. It's like front and center, watching it on the big screen or in high definition, you're like, Harrison Ford's body. Okay, I got it.

Well, he also gets like a lot of, there's a lot more variation in this one because we get like a body. Well, in the way he looks, right? Because we get kind of the James Bondy. Yeah, he starts out of the Tocito kind of thing. Yeah. Classic, you know, classic hat and jacket indie. and then we get shirtless indie quite a bit.

And then you get just the shirt indie. And that shirt is very unbuttoned. Yeah. Extremely unbuttoned. There's a lot more cleavage from Harrison Ford than from Kate Capshot, let's just say. Yeah. Yeah, very much. All right.

So I think, in other words, this is a movie with a little something for everyone, whether you are. Whether you like beating hearts. Pretty ladies or beefy men or both. Or racism. This movie's got you covered. Or racism. But what can you do? Yeah, this was a...

Yeah, this was a... a prequel to Raiders of the Lost Ark, and therefore there are no returning characters besides Indiana Jones himself. It's the only movie that that Marcus Brody doesn't show up in. Is that right? Or does he show up in Kingdom of the Crystal Skulls?

Was he dead by then? I don't know what movie that is. It's the one with the ants. I don't think he is in it. I don't know what you're talking about. One hour jungle chase scene thing or whatever that. I did watch that, but I don't remember if he's in it or not. There's a fridge.

It's great. Yeah. Doesn't sound like any movie I've ever heard of. The fridge is like that's right. All right. I mean, people can talk trash about Kingdom of the Crystal Skulls, but I feel like the real treasure was knowledge is no better or worse than I understand their power now. Temple of Doom, I think, sets a precedent for Kingdom of the Crystal Skulls,

which is sometimes enjoyable and sometimes, eh, Indiana Jones. When we did, when we talked about Raiders, I talked about how my evaluation of Raiders as a perfect movie. like it's so good and so like everything fits together like clockwork it does the best job of recapturing the serial aesthetic of moving from one set piece to the next and connecting them all and telling this one grand adventure and then killing a bunch of Nazis at the end which is the best way to end a movie in fairness there's a lot of Nazis getting killed along the way yes I'm fully in support of that also yes and I think last crusade is a personal favorite movie of mine Like, it was, you know, I saw that in the theater when I was seven, so it was a big. You were a baby. Yeah, I know. It was a big, you know, movie for me. And I still think it holds up pretty well.

The interplay between Sean Connery and Harrison Ford, I think, is very choice. Absolutely spectacular. I think, I think Allison Dutie as Elster Snyder is a very good foil for Indy. Temple of Doom is bad. Temple of Doom is a bad movie. It has parts that are good and parts that are bad. It is, it's very, it's technically. well made.

Except the parts with the crocodiles. Those edits at the end with the crocodiles, those are really bad. Those are very bad. But there are some very good edits,

like, you know, some, some like ironic juxtapositions, like the Indiana Jones closing the plane door and it reveals Lauchet, but also when Willie

Kepshaw is like, you'll always remember tonight, it's the night I slipped right through your fingers and it cuts to Indy being strangled and reaching out and there's like a shablisha. being cast of his fingers on the door. That is corny as hell, though.

I love that. It's so good. It's funny. This movie never gets better than the opening sequence. Well, no, but that's a top ten sequence right now. The whole musical number of anything goes up to closing the door and saying nice try, Laoshe, and the reveal on the door. That's perfect.

Did you know, though, that Lawrence Kasdan has said that he wrote that whole sequence in the beginning? The guy who wrote Raiders of the Lost Ark wrote that. That's unsurprising. They sniffed it out of his original thing and just tacked it on and didn't give him any credit for it. That's what he says. That's kind of seemed like a different movie. Yeah.

So that's why it's totally different and good. Well, because I think what Temple of Doom is trying to do and if not failing at is doing it a lot less successfully than Raiders does, is it also. It's also trying to echo the adventure serials, right? It just doesn't hang together as well. But where Raiders, Raiders tells one continuous story that moves from set piece to set piece, Temple of Doom kind of goes and tries to bring in other stuff from the 30s and 40s, like the big musical number and like the exotic locations, which led to colonialism and orientalism and which still I think, you know, whatever problems you may have with the way the indigenous

peoples are presented in this movie, it still is very much kind of relevant and timely to the setting. So I understand why it happened that way. I mean, it's sympathetic to their plight, but it's still not a great portrayal in any way. I just always think about the scene where Indy is talking to Willie, who by the way, Willie's also not a

great character. Like, Willie's bad. There's very bad. Like, Kate Capshaw, I think, could have done much better. I don't think she could have done, like, as well as Karen Allen does as Marion, but like, that character is rough. But I always think about the part where Indy tells her,

you're insulting them and you're embarrassing me. And I'm like, that's Indy talking to the filmmakers as well. So, let's talk about the premise because I can tell you exactly why this movie's horrible. Well, I don't want to get into it. I just want to jump on something Chris said. And this is something that I kind of dawned on me as I was watching this over the past couple of days to prepare for this podcast. You know, in Raiders of the Lost Ark, the film culminates the Nazi. base. And you spend like 10, maybe 15 minutes there between like in the sub-base and then

in the theater above that where the they finally open the arc. The entire second half of Temple of Doom takes place in the equivalent, which is the temple of Pancaut Palace and then the catacombs underneath. Actually more than that. It's like it's like an hour and 10 minutes out of an hour and 50 minute running time. So most of the movie takes place in one area. and it just feels really oppressive. Like, everything feels kind of stuck there. And I get, in terms of the narrative, why that had to happen. But, like, I would not have enjoyed Raiders of the Lost Ark nearly as much if it had spent

the second half of its running time in the Nazi base, the sub-base. Like, that would not have been good or interesting. It lacks the movement of Raiders and of Last Crusade, where, you know, Raiders goes from place to place. And Temple of Doom goes. to a place and stays there. Yeah, Temple of Doom, like, they get to Pankajal Palace after, like, I don't know, 45 minutes, and then it just kind of stays there.

And instead of getting, like, lots of rambling, you know, you never know where you're going to go next kind of adventures. It's like, you're in the Mines, you're in the temple, you're having a gross out food scene that was basically just ripped off from the dark crystal, except more racist. And, yeah, it's just, it stagnates, I think, is a big problem. the finger part is really funny though Yeah, well So did you want to talk about

There's a lot of trite elements to this film There's the triteness of the food scene There's the triteness of the mind cart chase There's the triteness of what you're talking about Like that thing where he's reaching for the shadow And it happens to be what she's talking about That's so stupid No, that's good, it's good

And there's a little Short round It just does that ironic juxtaposition all the time Short round, the cute Asian sidekick, you know, and then Willie, it's just the most horrible thing about this entire movie is she screams the whole damn time and you just wanted to shut up because it's horrible. And I don't know how that started. Like, was Steven Spielberg married her eventually later, right? Yeah, that's why I think that's why there's no chemistry between her and Indy because she's like, hey, Stephen. And she's like, oh, yeah.

I was just thinking about this last night. It's like, did Steven Spielberg like seeing her scream the whole time? Is this why he said, oh, more screaming? come on Kate more screaming you can do it and she's just yeah so like every every stereotypical thing for her to do she does yeah she's afraid of the animals she's afraid of the food she only cares about the dying like from the very beginning the stereotype she only cares about the diamond because that's because you know women love diamonds although although to that scenes credit the gag with the diamond and the ice that was actually funny I think again I think she I think she's

clearly a throwback character right like she's clearly that you know the 1330 She's Dale or Jill of the Jungle kind of. Yes. But I think she's meant to be so far over the top that it's comedy, but she never quite gets there. Yeah. Like she's not like it, they don't land that gag at all. And the result is that Willie's really bad. Yeah, I think a big part of the problem is that she never has a really functional role in the script beyond being like a victim. Whereas

Marian, uh, she would like clobber dudes in the back of the head while they were trying to beat up India or something. She did, Willie did punch one guy, like, at the end of the movie. I was like, thank God she at least got one. But, yeah, it was way too little way too late. She managed to reach past some bugs and pull a lever. Yeah, that's true. And then she caused the trap to activate all over.

And I think that, like, the reason you can tell she's supposed to be, like, lampooning that stereotype, she literally talks about breaking a nail at one point. Like, that's her big problem. She puts up the most passion into that line. more than any other line in the movie, and I broken hell! Like Batman. Like, she's intense.

But instead of like satirizing the stereotype, it just is the stereotype. And that really, given how good Marians, just her introduction is in Raiders, like it is a, why wouldn't they try to do that kind of character again? Yeah, I mean, they start out with, you know, the famous paramount mountain dissolve only this time it's to a giant gong and this, you know, large

Asian man hits the gong and you're like, wow, what's going on? There's this red light glowing from some sort of mysterious sculpture and you're like, is this a strange exotic temple in the jungles? What's happening? And then Kate Kapshaw steps out in a sequin

dress and starts singing anything goes in Chinese. It's so good. It's so good. I really like that scene. No, that scene I agree it's perfect. It is, it's so unexpected because you go into, you know, after watching Raiders, you go into it expecting one thing and it kind of plays off the cues. And the whole movie plays off cues and jokes from Raiders to various degrees of success. But that one I think is one of the more subtle ones because it's not so much an overt reference as more like playing up expectations and then shifting them and saying, oh, this is something else entirely. Suddenly it's not like a threatening. opening it's a very fun opening but then it becomes threatening over the course of the conversation very james bond i know why they didn't do the same character marian it's because it was written by different people well also it's a prequel yeah but also i mean the whatever laurence casdan had going in his head i mean this is the dude who wrote the empire strikes back you know this guy's

awesome and so he wrote raiders of lost ark and it's great but some other people came in and wrote the rest of the Temple of Dune after Temple of Dune after the original segment that we were just talking about. So they may have not had the same sense for an interesting female character as, you know, Lawrence Kasdan did it. Well, I mean, one of the

co-writers was a woman, so... It doesn't matter. I mean, women can do stereotypes just as well as men. It doesn't have any, you know... That's very advanced of you. Yeah. I mean, it's just, it's, you know, it's a personal thing. However, the view of writing a story.

It's different. I just feel like the most charitable read of Willie is that she's a joke. And then that's also kind of the least charitable read of right. But yeah, it's just hard to believe that there's anything like any kind of connection there besides Indy just

wants to, you know, have a quick lay, basically. If you take out, if you take Willie out of the plot, the movie doesn't change. Right. If you take... Well, they die in the spike room, but they can find some other mechanism. If you take short round out of the plot, then everything short round does can be done by Willie, and everything Willie does can be done by short round.

You don't really need both of them and short round for all of his flaws. And I like Jonathan Kwan as a, you know, I grew up in the 80s. I think he's really fun. But why is Willie in the plot? Right. I think basically they were trying to recapture the Raiders dynamic where you had Indy, you had Marion, and you had Sala. and so they They basically take Sala and make him a kid

And they'd like take Marion's flintiness And transfer it on to short round Where he's like the really tough one And Sala was kind of like Sala was like the fixer He could get stuff done but he was not an action star And they kind of transfer that onto Willie

Except they forgot to bring the fixer part over So she doesn't have anything going for her They like drained all of the important stuff from Marion and put it in in short round. Yeah. But yeah, I mean, he basically is the sidekick character. He's, he's Sala, but he's a kid. And I don't actually, I can't think of what the problems are with short round.

He's a great character. I don't think he's a, like, capital P problematic character. I do think it's weird that Indy has acquired a boy who then vanishes. He has all these allies. He also has the guy at the beginning of the movie who's masquerading as a waiter and has the gun so he just like has allies different places which is kind of a like going back to pulp and serial rooms like that's kind of a shadow thing right now yeah yeah absolutely so i don't see any kind of weird relationship there or you know any i just think it's towardness i just i don't

think it's untoward i just think it's odd that he has this psychic character that's never explained but you know i also don't need an explanation you know he found him on the streets of shanghai where he was living as an orphan as a pickpocket and was like, Hey, kid, you're, you're pretty good at this. Want to, you know, want to make an honest living instead? An honest living driving my escape car from a shootout. Put some boxes on your feet and drive my car for him. Indy's a bad teacher.

He is. He's a very bad teacher. I mean, that's, that's actually text in some of the parts they took out where, you know, in the first movie, he was going to be, like, having inappropriate relationships with some of his students. So he's not a good guy. And I feel like you don't really ever see that, like this, this kind of, like, kind of sleazy playboyed side of indie, except in, like, the, the dance club scene kind of gets to it because, you know, then he's got the James Bond thing going on. He's wearing the white silk tucks and everything and he's kind of debonair and he's got all these allies and, you know, he's kind of devil make care of drink the champagne without checking to see if it's poison first. I think that's because Harrison Ford's too likable.

I can imagine them filming that and seeing it and being like oh this doesn't work because this guy is like really affable and a vulnerable character The scenes where he's kind of creepy to Willie in this Like even the ending with the where he like Snags her with a whip and pulls her in for the kiss

Like it just yeah it doesn't quite work I feel like that was the vision That probably would have worked with Bert Reynolds as Indiana Jones Maybe maybe Like laying naked and hairy there Yeah imagine this movie but it's but it's Bert Reynolds as Indy

Sally Field as Willie and Dom De Louise is short round That's great Or Jerry Reed I'd watch that Using the magic of technology We can now make that happen

I think we should Now I'm wondering with you wondering like what's far around Steelers Like who is the who is the worst Guardian for like young wars Is it Indiana Jones or Batman? Batman? We look

We don't know what happens to short round By the time Raiders roll around Yeah I really want him to be an If they actually go ahead and do that, like bring back Jonathan, Jonathan Kwan. Let's see what happens. Yeah. Where is he in that now? I would rather watch a movie about him carrying on Indy's legacy in the 60s.

Than Shia Leboof? Than Shia Leboof, yeah. Shai Leboof. Well, Ben, what do you think about all this? I don't know if we gave you a chance to talk at all. We still have to explain the context, the concept of the movie. Sorry. So what's the concept, Ben?

Lay it laid out for us. Yeah, later. That's way too broad. should we just like go from the beginning? I don't know. I don't know. We were talking about, you know, about good and bad indie movies earlier. And it's really like, I feel like this does presage some of the stuff that didn't work in the movie that Chris doesn't want to acknowledge.

He just did. He mentioned a certain name. It's true. He did. I just, I heard they were making that one, but I don't think they ever did. But, you know, like, just like the not hanging together and they're just going for set pieces for the sake of set pieces. Like falling out of an airplane. in a rubber raft and surviving strikes me as like just a tick less ridiculous

than surviving a nuclear explosion in a refrigerator. Yeah, that's what I was saying earlier was like the bad stuff that people complain about in Kingdom of the Crystal Skulls, like it all is, it's right here. Yeah. So, so I guess let me give a quick rundown in this movie now that we're 25 minutes into the podcast. So this is, you know, again, the prequel to Raiders of Lost Ark, it's set about, what is it like What was it what it was what it was what year did Raiders take place was it like 38 37 yeah something like that so this is 1935 so it's a few years before Raiders and it starts out with indie trying to make an exchange of the cremains of a Chinese emperor for some sort of rare diamond and that goes south so he escapes and drags along a singer who was at the club with him and got caught up and everything and his

assistant short round, who is a Chinese orphan that he kind of fell into the orbit of Indiana Jones and is his driver and so forth. And they escape by plane, but the plane is owned by the guy that they had the bad deal with. So the pilots of the plane jump out, you know, the abandoned ship, empty the fuel tanks, and the plane crashes. So they jump out, fall in a river, land in a river, like I said, and that takes them downstream to a town in India, where people have stolen the mystical stones that keep the grounds fertile or whatever, and also they stole all the children. And so Indy and his retinue go to the nearby palace where the bad guys are based and have an adventure, stop the revival of the thuggy cult from spreading across the world and

conquering the planet and save the children and bring back the Sankha stones. Good to the last drop. Yeah. So now you know. Because there's a whole like D&D dungeon under the palace. Yeah, absolutely. With a river of lava. With magma.

That seems very, very architecturally unstable. It's great in the winter. 20 miles of mine cart tracks. It was hard to heat those old drafty palaces though. So yeah, having that magma there could be real handy. So the premise there for the, uh, for the, for the, minds is that basically there are five mystic stones called the Shankara stones that are tied to the god Shiva. And the thuggy cult that follows the teachings of Kali want to claim the Shankara

stones and use their mystical power to conquer the world. But when the British destroyed the thuggy cult in the 19th century, a loyal priest hid two of the stones in the mines beneath the palace. So now the priest of Kali Molaram is enslaving children to dig one for gyms to finance their new empire and their world conquest and also the two missing Shankara stones because they have three of them. So he's like a dude on a McGuffin quest. He's like Thanos, but with more blood drinking and a better laugh. And so Indy gets caught up in that and saves the kids. What do the Shunkara stones do?

Because the one of them is like, yeah, it's never really clear. The one of them that they have in the village is like, making the crops go. It's basically just a mystic stone. It's a tie to their patron god. Okay. I mean, Shiva was the destroyer god, but Shiva was also like an icy lady with no clothes on. Yeah, that's different. But also, wait, that's not, that's not canon?

Okay. But also like, like, yeah, the, the, the, The gods of the Indian pantheon have many facets. And so Shiva was also like a protector, a warrior. I just, look, I'm not, I'm not a YouTube channel pointing out, uh, plot holes. Tell us about the sins of the cinema, Chris. I just, you know, is it ever really as so much like why the bad guys need the Shankara stones? Because they seem to have like mind control and heart ripping down at this point.

They don't. But I mean, why did Hitler really need the law? Lost Ark? Yeah. As a radio to God, I mean... Well, I mean, historically, Jeremy, he lost. Yeah. He wanted to take over the world.

These guys just want to take over the children, don't they? No, they want to take over the world eventually. They do? Yeah, they want to take over the world? Yeah, they do. At one point, when Molarama is explaining his plan, he's like, first we'll get the British out of here,

and then we'll destroy the Muslims, and then we'll destroy the Hebrew God, and then the Christian God will be cast down, and the thuggies will rule the world. He's pretty open about it. Yeah. The thuggy were in a lot of 80s media. And I don't know if that was just like a weird, like, because of Indiana Jones, like,

or if it was just a general, like, throwback to pulp stuff. I think it was an Indiana Jones thing because, so are you talking about, like, romancing the stone or something? No, I mean, like, they show up in, like, a lot of comics. Like, there's a big, like, thuggy plot in the 80s suicide squad at D.C. Was that early 80s or? or late 87. Okay, so probably Indiana Jones. Probably from Indiana Jones. So the inspiration for Temple of Doom being set in India was basically that the writers loved India and they loved Indian culture and art and were just like, we want to do a movie set here. So they looked and said what would be appropriate for Indiana Jones, you know, first half of the 20th century before World War II. And so they set it in 1935. And, you know, I feel like there is a pretty good amount of historical context happening here that I did. didn't really appreciate it until I started researching it.

But, you know, this does take place under the sort of the waning days of the British Empire, which pretty much went away after World War II. But at this point, they still had their, you know, their stronghold in India, which they had controlled for like 200 years. And you do have kind of like the British captain showing up randomly at the dinner and then saving the day at the end with the riflemen. Yeah, which is not. He's just kind of there.

Yeah, have the regiment commanded by the white guy come save everything at the end is one of the things that doesn't feel great at this point. At least it takes two white guys to save the day. The, you know, the British were... I mean, yeah, they were in charge at that point still, so yeah. But it's important to understand that like the... Oh, crap. The Maharaja, who, you know, the kid who runs the palace under the prime minister is not like... the ruler of all India. India was broken into lots and lots of regions. So he was kind of like

the local color, the local ruler, just for that particular region. So yeah, so a lot of this has to do with kind of the collapse of British India and the resurgence of traditions and groups and cults and so forth that had pretty much been exterminated under the British rule. but as the British influence in India waned, then these started to make a comeback. So I feel like that part of it's actually pretty smart. Like, I, you know, I think in terms of history, the context actually works there and the story makes sense. How they handle the story is another question, but the idea of like, oh, yeah, the influence of the British in India was waning because they lost their control over most of the world by that point. So naturally, as they kind of lost their power, then the groups and the religions that they tried to exterminate would finally start to bubble back up and find hold again.

So, like, to me, the historical part of Temple of Doom actually makes a lot of sense. And I think it's pretty smartly conceived. The part about, you know, like ripping someone's heart out and catching flame and drinking mind control blood, maybe not so much. I do think there's a way to to do this movie and have it be better because... Oh, no doubt. Yeah, again, at its absolute best,

Temple of Doom is a full-on white savior narrative. And I think a lot of that comes from the fact that all three of our hero characters in the Willie and Short Round are outsiders. And I think you fix a lot of this movie if you make Willie Indian. And then there's, you know, a better connection.

If she has a connection of some sort Yeah, if there's some kind of personal investment, then and some kind of character that we like who is connected to this instead of being these outsiders that these people have to go to. Yeah, she's literally only there because she was hoping to marry the Maharaja and become a princess until she realized, oh, that would be illegal. Yeah. Or maybe not.

We haven't even We haven't even mentioned the voodoo dolls, man. I forgot about the voodoo dolls. You know, the great Indian tradition of voodoo. Yeah. That's trite crap, too. That's what I'm telling. That's bad.

It's just a lot of stuff thrown in here that's just not that great. It's like, you're making the worst possible soup. Like, let's just throw some voodoo dolls in there. I mean, you can say it's the worst possible soup, but no, there are other much worse soups. Indiana Jones derived films from the 80s that make you realize, oh, like Temple of Doom has some problems, but it's not complete garbage. Yeah, I agree.

I mean, it has some. redeeming qualities relative to those other things. He's no Zapp Rousdauer. Yeah, but we're also comparing it to some of the coolest pulp films of all time, like Raiders of the Lost Ark and Last Crusade. You know, those are really great movies as far as my generation, my cultural standpoint and everything point of view is I love those films. So we're comparing them to that, and that's a high standard to live up to.

Yeah, and you can't go wrong with fighting Nazis unlike. all these other pulp settings. Yeah. So, yeah, we're missing out on the Nazi element here. It's just a bunch of, you know. But it's also, and yeah, it's sort of. Problematic native conquering. And then these children who are running to them.

And, yeah, and the fact that he clings to Willie, the only reason they cling to go is there's the only two white people on the ship or whatever. And then, you know, why else this lady, I don't know, why is she with him? I don't know why they were really. She gets caught up in the... Oh, she gets dragged along because she has the antidote to the poison that he drinks at the beginning

and then he's never at any point says, okay, you can leave now. He takes her on the cargo plane. I guess... Which is kidnapping? Although I can see where she would be like, maybe I don't want to hang out with Laushe after he's like, oh, go ahead and kill her.

I'll just get another one. So... Look, that's fair. Yeah. So I can understand why she would want to come along. Yeah, it's just, It's always going to be hard to do this kind of setting without it just being super colonialist. Because, I mean, obviously, you know, it was that time.

It was a time of colonialism. It's literally a colonialism. Yeah. But, like, just having that point of view. And I think, like Chris said, it would have helped a lot if we had had a character who lived there. Any positive main character. Would have been fantastic. But as it is, it just, it really leans into the colonialism.

Like, you have, you know, you have Harrison Ford saying things. Like, this is the first time. anyone's seen this in a hundred years, except for, you know, all the hundreds of people who actually live here. Well, you know, it's like discovery, like, oh, we discovered this new land that has all these brown people living here, but we discovered it. Yeah, I mean, that was the mindset of, but it might surprise you to find out I did not rewatch this movie before we came in to do this.

I haven't seen this movie in 10, 15 years. So when I say that it is technically well made, it is very memorable. like I like and again I loved Indiana Jones as a kid and this was the one when I was a kid and we had HBO it was about the time that this one was on all the time so I probably saw this one as a child way more than I watched Raiders and obviously Last Crusade wouldn't have been out same with me that effed you up yeah it did me too I mean I was Chris and I are only a couple of years apart so I was that age where when this came out what year did this come out 84 84 okay so it was a couple of years later yeah and it was on HBO and it was on HBO and it was on HBO and it was on HBO and it was on HBO and it was on HBO. and stuff and yeah I saw it I saw the whole heart ripping and everything I saw that that little Maharaja kid like that really bothered me when he gets like when he suffers later he gets uh voodoo dolled right and stuff no he's the one doing the voodoo dolled I hated everything about that character because I was thinking about as a little kid point of view it's like why is he hurting them you know yeah he was mind you drink the black blood of Khali yeah but you can't understand that when you're a kid and he actually like like the act for that guy did a good job of selling it like but doesn't he get slugged by indie or something at the end you get slug by short round and then comes back out of the line control yeah that's why they had a kid yeah so someone could punch you can punch the kid

yeah but no there was a lot of technically excellent stuff in this film it looks good yeah it looks good there's a lot I mean there's so much gorgeous matcaneer except the cuts of the crocodiles what the hell there's it's so bad it's like stock footage it's so bad the crocodiles don't look good but like you know as dumb as it is jumping out of the plane with the inflatable life raft and surfing it down the all it's missing is surfing USA

playing like in the James Bond movie but like that it's shot really well like it's got that beautiful blue sky the crisp white snow the yellow of the raft it looks really good the scenes in the underground lava cavern where they're doing human sacrifice look really good

the shot so that we're not super entirely negative the shot of Indy would after he's done being mind control when he goes and beats the shit out of the slavers is a really great shot. The mind cart walks up to him or like is pushed up to him and the lights kind of illuminated

in a standing against the like in silhouette almost. Yeah, that is like a top three shot that is the Jim Sterranco art. Yes, that's the iconic Indiana Jones shot. And it's from this movie. And there's a lot of amazing effects work in this. I mean, there's a ton of just gorgeous matte painting work

all over this movie. And then and then some of the composite, I mean, some of it works better than others. Yeah, like the plane crashing on the mountainside is extremely bad. It's cheesy looking. But, yeah, most of it is really good. So there's in the ending scenes with the, so the crocodile parts are bad, but the parts where they've got like indie fighting and dangling over the canyon. So the canyon, I saw this once when I was a kid and a special about how they were making

things. And so lots of the canyon bits were matte paintings. But they had things where the actual set that Indian was on and wasn't really. long enough so his legs dangled past the end of the set and like into the mat painting um and so what they actually had to do is they went in by hand and like blacked out indie leg shaped bits of the mat painting on every frame for like an entire 10 second shot so they could composite his legs dangling over the canyon and it works like you don't even notice like if you're really looking for it you can tell something's going on there but i thought that was in a real canyon

I mean, yeah, I'm sure there were some actual cany shots in some parts, but a lot of it was Matt Pannings. That's great. No, it's a very well-made movie. I feel like there's just some problems with the writing. And that's really, you know, at the heart of it, that's what makes the indie movies great when they're at their best, is that they're just so well-written. And there definitely are those moments where you're like, oh, it's classic indie. But I feel like sometimes they try to sell it a little hard. You get that little light motif.

John Williams is like, I'm doing my best for you. George. I'm trying so hard. God damn it. And it just doesn't quite sell it. But I don't know. Like this movie still was profoundly influential. And I think the first thing we should talk about is the fact that it was extremely violent, extremely gory by the context of its time. It was a PG-rated movie when it first started. PG means if you are like eight years old, go see it. It's fine. If you are eight years old, you should not go see this movie. Maybe, maybe by today's standards, okay, but at the time, like, you know, the, the heart ripping and the gore and the shooting and the, the punching and all, all the violence.

It was, it was wearing the black blood of collie. Monkey brains, that's apparently a real thing. Sure. I mean, I'm somewhere. I just had some of a friend of mine tell me about that. Yeah. For example, would be proud. Um, yeah, so, like, it was.

It was a very controversial movie at the time, and this was one of two movies that, I want to say, help inspire the PG-13 rating. Is it this in Gremlins? Or maybe Gremlins was also way up there. But I remember... It should be a hard arm. I remember this movie, when it first came out, I was... I went up to visit my grandparents on vacation, and I saw a big cover story on the newspaper, one section of the newspaper. one section of the newspaper at the entertainment section

just talking about like PG-13 ratings are coming and it's because of this new movie Indiana Jones don't take your kids to see this it's really violent and dark so I didn't get to see it for a few years and when I finally got to see it I was like that's pretty violent and dark

yeah dark is a great way to describe it yeah I mean I really the supernatural elements of the black boat of Kali and how it takes people over and it makes them want to rip people's hearts out and stuff is like super dark, sinister kind of like an idea that

really torments you more than the visuals in a way. You know what I mean? You know, when I was researching this, I read that this movie happened around the time of George Lucas's divorce. And so a lot of the stuff that he was

working through personally kind of came out in the tone of the movie. And I don't know how much truth there is to that. His wife ripping his heart out. I mean, he, yeah, if you want to be literal about it, sure. Really, really would explain Willie.

I mean, I, you know, there may be some, some things that he's kind of, you know, the writing is kind of working through there. In any case, it is a really dark movie compared to anything else Lucas had done to that point. And I feel like there was this kind of push toward darker and darker media in the 80s as people began to, you know, just see what you can get away with in Reagan's America. but this definitely cross the line and they really pulled back

with future indie movies. They were like, let's make it happier and lighter. I mean, Lucas actually said, or maybe Spielberg, said that the Last Crusade was an apology for Temple of Doom.

Yeah, that makes sense because Last Crusade is very much a in the way that comics will do like a Back to Basics reboot. It's very much a Back to Basics India.

movie you know it's got it's got two different kind of opening set pieces it's got the young indie set piece and then it's got the sequence on the beach it's got india's a professor again which we don't see in temple of doom nazis obviously and then the ending with donovan drinking from the the false grail is very evocative of but way less gross than the ending of raiders you know like he gets old and dusty and dies he doesn't melt with a blood shooting out of his eyes. Yeah. Yeah, I feel like Temple of Doom is almost a horror movie and some of the, just compared to those, you know, it's got like horror, very dark horror elements. I agree. And I can't, I can't, you know, resent the creators for going in that direction because I feel like it was a

natural kind of direction to take this sort of movie, given its influences and its roots and everything. But, you know, everyone kind of needs to experiment and see like what works, what doesn't. This definitely didn't work, but I understand why they went in this direction. When did Nightmare on Elm Street come out? I want to say that was like 85, 86. Okay, so that's after this? Because I feel like that's, you know, the Friday the 13th, Nightmare on Elm Street were really big in the 80s around this time, maybe a couple years later. So I'm wondering if there's any relation of like there was a tone going towards like, oh, some horror movies are really doing well. Maybe we should.

Oh, that was 84 actually. You would have had, in a horror movie, you know. You would have like the kind of rise of you know slasher movies in the late 70s and like I feel like there's a lot of just general gross out stuff in the 80s like you know even Jedi Return of the Jedi has like

Java's gross like job was really gross I was thinking about that yeah I was tongue I mean yeah like the the confluence of serial adventure action and horror was not a new idea I mean alien was basically Star Wars 2001, Star Trek, whatever, meets

Jason, basically, Friday the 13th. But I think that... I do think there's a big difference, though, because when we talk about, when we talk about Raiders, there's the scene at the end, where the Nazis melt. There's the, when they put them in the, the pit and there's a bunch of snakes on the floor, the asps,

like, that's not really gross, but, you know, if you're afraid of snakes, it is, I guess. In Last Crusade, there's really just, you know, the false grill at the end. Oh, there's rats. There's the rats. Rats. Oh, rats.

Like, that's, that's the good kind of trying. You never made it past the rats. I like that. But in Temple of Doom, it is throughout. Yeah. Like, the eyeball soup and chilled monkey brains is pretty early in the film. Yeah. And that's like the second, you know, quote unquote, gross meal time scene.

Right. And there's the bug scene. There's the bug scene. There's the bug scene. The human sacrifice. Yeah, there's people being burned alive. There's the guy being squished in the rock roller, who, by the way, is the same actor as the large German mechanic

and the swordsman in the marketplace in Raiders of Los Angeles. He was a very versatile, large guy who died. There's a lot of horror movie gross out stuff throughout Temple of Doom, as opposed to just being, like, it is climactic in Raiders when it happens because we haven't seen anything like that. By the time the Maharaj is using the voodoo doll, it's like, yeah, of course he is. Why not? I will say the crushing ceiling with the spike scene is also a pretty good scene, like, especially with indie telling, really, like, we're going to die.

I mean, taken on their own, almost all the scenes, the action scenes and set pieces are pretty good. It's just when you add them all together. I mean, even Lucas said, like, they wanted to go darker, but then they put everything together and we're like, oh, we went too far. Like, that was too dark. There's like child slaves being whipped in this movie. This is a movie where they turn Indy's whip against him. I think that's significant. There is a scene where they use his whip to slash his back, to whip him, to abuse him.

And, you know, it struck me while I was watching this that it's significant that they gave Indy a whip as his primary weapon because it's not really a lethal weapon. It causes pain. It can definitely inflict injury. but aside from the guy who chokes himself on the ceiling fan with his whip the whip doesn't kill so it's a way to soften the hero he doesn't use his gun very much in this movie

and he very rarely uses his whip like against people right yeah I mean it's like to swing people off swinging implement it's utility but yeah right it's utility it's self-defense but it says a lot about the character but then to take that away from him and then use it against him to injure him, to abuse and punish him, torture him.

To me, that says something significant about this movie that I don't think I've ever really seen anyone comment on, but watching it this morning, I was like, hmm, that's, yeah, like, there's something about this that is very unsettling. And that happens right next to the same sequence where they then give him the mind control drug and turn Indy himself against his friends, which is kind of the part of the thing. Hey, kids. Do you like Indiana Jones? Want to see him get tortured and then try to murder a child?

Want to see him slap a kid around and send a woman to her death? Well, that's what we're here for. So the whole time the viewer is presumably... Maybe George Lucas can do some journaling. Yeah. George Lucas. You silly man. So the viewer is identifying with Indy this whole time.

We've identified with him as a hero through the last film. And so, yeah, they are turning him against... against us. It's sort of like torturing the viewer. The viewer gets tortured through indie. The viewer gets turned against his friends through indie. And maybe that's one of the most disconcerting things about the film. I think Jeremy's right.

Yeah, yeah. I absolutely agree with you. So we have a lot of complaints about this movie. Okay, here's production trivia. I wrote this down. Ford since spent seven weeks recuperating from surgery to rectify a hernia. So that is why when he's moving around, sometimes you're like, is he okay?

He's not okay. So that is neither here nor there, but yeah, just call back to what I was talking about earlier. I wonder if they added in the whipping to kind of justify it. But that happens pretty late in the film, right? Yeah, it's near the end. They could have filmed that earlier on. I mean, it's before the mind cart sat pieces. That's true.

Most of the action scenes are performed by his stunt double, who has the best name ever, Vic Armstrong. I mean, he was born to be a Hollywood stuntman. If only he would have been like, oh, jumping out of that plane on that life wrap, really hurt my back. It doubles as a parachute.

So one of the things that I think is interesting about this movie is there were actually only, there was only ever one video game based actually directly on this movie aside from a segment in the super Niest game that we all hate. But this movie has been so influential. There's so much of this movie that appears in other things. Like, Benji talked about how the mind cart scene was trite, but had there been a mind cart scene like this in a movie before? Not that I know. This was like, yeah, it was a very... Maybe in like a 30s serial or something weird.

Yeah, but it was like super primitive and bad. Whereas this is like fast-paced, intense. There's great staging. Like you can see where the threats are, where the heroes are in relation to the threats. It feels like a video game sequence. Well, this video, you know, like this, yeah, it seems trite now. in the same way that the Beatles seem trite because everyone has looked at this

and been like, hell yes, we're doing this. I think it's interesting that there is one jump in the mind card sequence that they don't have any control over. It's like, oh, God, there's a gap in the traps. A gap in the tracks. We got to jump. And no, they don't even jump.

They're just like, you know, duck and hope we don't die. But when you see mind card sequences in video games, it's always about like jumping. But the mechanic here to keep them safe is breaking so they don't go around to bend too fast and fly off into the lava, or the magma, sorry. So, I don't know, like, this has been, it's one of the most widely imitated movie scenes

ever, even more so than the giant rolling boulder at the beginning of Raiders the Lost Arc. Yeah. But no one does it the same way it's done actually here. I actually got the same feeling. I got the same feeling with a lot of the action set pieces in this as from Goonies that we talked about last year in that there were a bunch. Which also starred Jonathan Kwan.

Yes, which also started Jonathan. grand unifying theory here. There's a bunch of little set pieces that just seem like they're designed either to be a video game level or to be an amusement park ride level. And they're just done. So they work as a movie, but they also work when adapted

to do these other things. I feel like this predates the idea of doing that for video games. Well, listen, Stephen Spielberg loved video games. He had arcade machines in his office. You didn't really see video games done like this at the time. Yeah, I guess you're right. Yeah.

But I think it was intentionally set up to be a video game, but sort of to be an encapsulated action sequence that you could make into something else like an amusement park ride. And then those same qualities lent themselves to making into an individual video game or game level. Yeah, maybe I think Ben's onto something here about the amusement part as a as a sort of idiom for a whole concept. complete action experience beginning and the middle and then yeah I never thought about that before video games

you're learning this fascinating Ben I think you should write a book about this it's great and it's you know the amusing part ride it hits all of the most obvious tones of an experience it's not subtle in any way it's just the most extreme

things coming at you and a summary of something because it doesn't last very long and that's like a video game you got high points that you hit and then it's over kind of you know yeah but I yeah I don't know what I'm saying I'm just I'm making this up as I go on I feel like there's something there but yeah like as a result of that you definitely see little fragments of this movie in video games like the the crushing room with the bugs and everything like I feel like I've seen that in a lot of games the bridge fight at the end like when I whenever I watch that now like that takes me to

Melger Solid 3 with the big long bridge that you have to go across and it's like a key part of sort of the opening chapter of that game because you go across it and then you come back on the other side and like there's pretty big plot things that happen and don't forget Doggy Kong country well I mean everything has a mind cart we've already talked about like I mean Mega Man has a mind cart level

yeah it does? I like the skit the like in like Megaman's or is that seven the like no video game after Donkey Kong country should have used mind cards because no one's done anything new with it. I hate them. I hate them so much. And of course,

the mind card sequence appears in one of the video games based on this movie. That is Indiana Jones' greatest adventure, which has four stages based on Temple of Doom. Yeah, we're jumping straight to the video games now so we can wind this podcast down. It's a very condensed sort of take on

Temple of Doom. A quarter of the segment consists of just Club Obi-Wan, the place in Shanghai. Club Obi-Wan, are you joking? You didn't know that? No, I didn't know that. Yeah, at the very end, when they're driving away,

it says Club Obi-Wan. Man, that's trite. It's a blink and you miss it reference. You didn't even notice, so how trite is that? I'm glad I didn't notice. It would have made me hate this film even more than I do. And what platform is this greatest adventure thing? It's the same one that Raiders and Lost Dark is in.

And it hates you. It's by Factor 5. Oh, yeah. Okay. They want you to die. We were playing this last year. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

So the first stage is Club Obi-Wan, and you start out in the interior, and you're basically like, it's just a running, jumping kind of thing. Like a beat-em-up more, but... Sort of, but the sort of main gimmick there is that people's Tommy Gun targeting reticles are tracking you, so you can't stay in one place too long. And then the second. second half of it, you're outside Club Obi-Wan trying to, like, jump around on awnings because, you know, they fall through like three awnings. So that translates into an

entire level based around awnings. It's very, it's very much like Aladdin on Super Nes. Yeah. Also, you're wearing your regular Indiana Jones outfit instead of the tuxedo. As one does. I mean, that would have been another spike. They only had so much realm space. The second stage is a mode seven life raft first person slide where you're avoiding trees and leaving pits and then that just goes directly into the palace I made some notes here

I don't remember the palace part but it says there's a teleportation maze Yeah well so I watched a little bit of this I haven't actually played it but it looks It looks like a real pain Because it's the You're pushing around these statues and urns And sometimes

You press them by their chest I don't even know But like sometimes you have to push urns So that you can jump over a statue so that it doesn't teleport you, but it seems like you have to get the statues in the right place in order to walk behind them to teleport somewhere else. And it seems like incredibly obtuse.

Yeah. So stage three is the Molaram Kali Shrine, and you have to avoid magma. And then you're fighting through the mines, but have to rescue the kids as you do so. And they are worth 500 points in case you are wondering what a human life is worth. So that's what it is.

Yeah. And then the final stage is, of course, the mind cart sequence, which is a rail shooter. You don't have to jump around. So it's the one mind cart sequence in video games that is true to the Temple of Doom experience, which is appropriate. And then there is kind of like a final showdown. I have never played this part and never want to, just watching videos of it. You have to fight a guard who is blocking the end of the bridge. and any plank that you step on falls away.

So you have to fight this guy while constantly jumping around and gradually having less and less surface the land on. And the whole thing like wobbles too. It's terrible. It sounds like a nightmare. It looks like it's kind of like a literal nightmare. Yeah. It's kind of like a clever conceit the way they did,

but it looks like just complete BS to actually try to play. So that is one video game, so that is one video game interpretation of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, but the more notable one is, in fact, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom by Atari, which came out in like 1985, 86. I didn't seem to have written it down. But this one got a few conversions, home ports, including to NES through Tengen, because it was an Atari game and therefore was published by Tengen.

And this one is based entirely around the sequence in which Indy rescues the kids from the minds. That is the entirety of the game. I feel like you must have played this one. I've played it, yeah, but I don't. I didn't like it. Did you play the arcade version or the NES version? Probably a home port of some kind or another. I know I've played the NES one.

I may have played the arcade one, you know, on an emulator. But I don't have much to say about it. I think I didn't like it, so I stopped playing it. What about you, Ben? I haven't actually played it. I watched some of it. It has some of the worst speech synthesis I have ever heard. Like the, like, not that it's technically bad, but, like, the lines were, you know, delivered by an intern who didn't care.

Yeah. Well, they're just like his little bike just like, oh. Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, it's the kind of, the kind of game that was, I mean, it was actually a pretty big genre for a while, which is just kind of wander around these large interconnected spaces without much direction, trying to collect all the things you need to collect to get out of the level, which can be done well, but I don't know, didn't look like a very inspiring implementation of it. I feel like this game is very much of its time, the mid-80s, where, you know, I guess it was 80, it was one of Atari's first games once they split off into Atari games.

So, um, arcade division. Yes, the Atari, the arcade division. Um, so along with like Paperboy and Marvel Madness, um, I don't think it's as good as those games, but it, like those games, it is also kind of an isometric perspective, sort of fake 3D. So you have these sort of like platforms.

you can run around on and lots of slides and ladders and so forth. Yeah, it's got a very chutes and ladders kind of layout to it. But it also looked like that would just be really annoying because you get on these these shoots and you'll have to like, I assume you're holding left or right to the side which way you go when there's splits and the shoots. But so you can end up sliding right past something you wanted to get and then like, oh, whoops, I was holding the right direction. I missed that now.

I've got to walk halfway around the level to get back to the top of the slide and come do it again so I can actually rescue the kid. It looked kind of tedious. honestly. I think this game is unremarkable. It's like one of those things where you don't need to know about it or ever play it. It's one of the 1001 games you don't need to play before you die. Nope.

You have no thoughts on this whatsoever? No. It's weird. Like, with as much as they go from set piece to set piece, you'd think the United Jones games would be really easy to adapt to video games. Turns out they are not. well i think i think um next episode next indiana jones episode we'll figure out how they cracked the code eventually oh i know and the the trick is not to make an action game surprisingly enough yep

we're not going to spoil it for you now no no you'll have to wonder like you can't possibly read about the history of video games you have to wait until our next up retronauts episode print is dead uh but yeah i i feel like they with the arcade game they just took a single moment of the movie, which, you know, in fairness, that happened a lot. Like, the Star Wars arcade game took a moment of the movie, but God damn, that was amazing. It was such a fun game. It took the best part of the movie, the attack on the Death Star. It's so good.

Did you know, though, those X-Wing fighter pilots trained their whole lives to do that? So that was a whole thing, you know? It was. I mean, nobody sat around and trained how to rescue little orphans from a mine. I mean, Luke Skywalker didn't train. He could bullseye some long break. That's what I mean. C-16 back home, but...

It's a paradigm or whatever. This wasn't Beggars Canyon, man. Yeah, it's just, it's a, that was a setting that could lend itself to a whole game because you could fly, playing anywhere and shoot anything as much you want, because it's a whole thing. Rescuing little kids from a mine is not a thing like that. Okay. You know what I mean?

I guess so. Press, back me up on... No, I get what you're saying. There's an entire genre of video game that's flying around and shooting things. Yeah. So basically what we needed to do was give Pac-Man like a little hat and a whip and have him go around in the maze. What they should have done is licensed pitfall. I feel like that was an episode of the Pac-Man cartoon where Pac-Man had a hat.

He already had a hat. But a jacket and a whip, I bet it did. They should have licensed a pitfall sequel or clone or something and stuck Indiana Jones. And that would have been more appropriate if they just made like a new pitfall hairy, but with Indiana Jones. That was an Activision game and they hated Atari. Yeah, plus they were, this is like 1984 or something when they were going bankrupt and stuff. So, this was 86, I'm pretty sure. Well, I mean, when the movie came out, you know, it wasn't, right.

Didn't you say what, Euras Temple of Doom, 84? 84, yeah. Yeah, so that was the worst possible time for Activision to make anything after the crash and everything. Anyway, there you go. Right. And then Bobby Codick was like, no, I don't want to license this game out. He was but a wee babe back then. So I feel like we should say some more about the arcade game because...

Is it all we have to talk about these two games? Yeah, there weren't a lot of games. Like I said, the legacy of Temple of Doom is really much more about how it's been digested and repurposed for other games, as opposed to the games that are based directly on it. What's your favorite mind card sequence? I don't have one. Well, okay, I like the one. I like the ones in Klonoa, where basically there's no danger to it. It's just a bonus stage.

And if you jump just right, then you'll get all the gyms. and that's nice. But if you don't, okay. You know, there was a mind cart sequence in that new, the Lebo, Nintendo Labo ToyCon house thing. There's some kind of like, when you build the house, there's a little creature and you can push these buttons on the side of the cardboard house.

And he goes into a mine card or something and jumps in crazy. So the most recent mind cart sequence I've seen in a video game. Is there a Mario game with a mind card sequence? It's like a Paper Mario? I don't know. sequence or someone? I can't think of anything. There is a Final Fantasy 6 micro sequence.

Why? Why would you do that? It just doesn't make sense. To like do some weird abstract mode set in background. There's no, there's no, there's no danger to that one either. It's just a bunch of random encounters, or not random encounters. It's a bunch of set encounters as you do some mode seven stuff in the background. For some reason, when I think of Temple of Doom, I think of there was like a ZDX spectrum.

I'm going to say it the right way, ZX spectrum game. Well done. Absolutely cracking. Here you go, a little chap. And so there was some kind of port on the X-X spectrum, Z-X spectrum, that was notable for people in the UK. So if anyone out there is listening to this, just tell us if I'm right or not. Wait, a Temple of Doom game? Yeah, I feel like it was. Like, was it a conversion of the...

Not the mind cards, the rescuing kids. I think it was like a conversion of the arcade game, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it was ported to a bunch of systems. I feel like, I don't know why about that version of this. this sticks out in my brain. So there must be something remarkable about it, and I don't know what it is.

Just like, you love that color clash. I love the, yeah, yellow and whatever, red magenta. Yeah. It's like, it's like going to a print shop. Awesome. It's like CGA all over again. So for crediting this movie for like all the mind cart levels, do we

also get it to credit? No, no, it's blaming. Blaming for all the mind card. Do we also get to blame it for like all the snowboarding levels because of the raft sequence? Maybe. Maybe. I don't know. I don't know. I feel like that exist in a larger concept, whereas mind carts, really like the idea of mind card as an action vehicle, that was pretty much this movie. I think, yeah, it's safe to say that it came from this. All right, well, I don't know that we've necessarily done justice to this topic, but maybe

we've done too much justice. I don't know. I'm tired of talking about it. I'm, we had to get through this one so we could talk about Last Crusade. I'm looking forward to that. That'll be a hoot. In the meantime, though, this has been retronauts talking about Indiana Jones in the Temple of Doom and how problematic it is with a capital P. So anyway, thanks for listening. Yes, that's correct. You have been listening. I have been Jeremy Parrish, to whom you have been listening.

This has been Retronauts. Retronauts can be found on the internet at Retronauts.com and on iTunes and on other services and so on and so forth. if for some reason you thought this was an amazing episode, God bless you. You can support Retronauts by going to Patreon, patreon.com slash Retronauts, and subscribing to us. You get to hear these amazing episodes three weeks, or no, sorry, one week early with better bitrate quality and no advertisements. Boy, I think this is 30% more farting noises. No, absolutely not. I guess that's what the higher bit rate gets you.

I don't know. This episode took a lot out of me. I can't remember even what's happening. Someone else talked. I think we did a very good job on this episode, Jeremy. I think we were all very entertaining. I think so, too. I just, uh, I think it's just this topic itself.

It's a depressing topic. Yeah, it's really tough. It's a little too dark. We should do a podcast that's less dark next time to apologize. I wanted to do a little bit of dark, but then I saw this episode all together and I was like, oh, we went too dark. Yeah. I feel you, George Lucas. Thanks a lot, George.

so I'm Benj Edwards you can find me anywhere you look because I'm all around you at all times now BX foundry.com I've been building joysticks for old video game systems and you can find me at Benj Edwards on Twitter and Ben I'm Ben Elgin I'm just lurking in the darkness right now but also on Twitter at Kieran K-I-R-I-N-N on Twitter I'm Chris Sims you can find me on bad website as at the ISB. You can also go to T-H-E-I-B.com and find me, because that is a website where anything goes. You write it back to the good part.

Whatever happens at the ISB stays at the ISB. Well, hopefully not, because it is mostly links to other places where you can find my work. Oh, damn. Welcome home a little bit way. That's why your traffic is so bad. All right, everyone. Just so you're clear.

When I make deprecating comments about this podcast, It's about my performance as a host. I feel like I could have brought this into brighter, happier spaces, but I failed. And I apologize for that. We'll save that up for the second. But, you know, at least this podcast didn't literally rip your heart out, only figuratively. Anyway, thanks everyone for listening. Next time we talk about Indiana Jones, it'll be so good and so happy.

Just look forward to it. You're going to love it. I promise. Remember everyone, in the Latin alphabet, Jeremy Parrish begins with an eye. You know, I'm going to be able to be. You know,