Another look at the

SPOILER ALERT! Warning: If you have not seen Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, first of all, welcome back & secondly, there may be some plot elements revealed here…

In preparation for yesterday's release of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skulls I’ve been re-watching the Indy films and am coming around to the idea that I’ve never really given Temple of Doom enough credit.

During our quixotic endeavor to catalog and rank every film in my VHS collection in college, joel miron & I had a discussion regarding which Indy movie was the best of the (then) trilogy. We debated the relative merits of Raiders of the Lost Ark & The Last Crusade and pretty much assumed that Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom wasn’t a part of that discussion. I remember miron even watching both ends of the trilogy & making a list of pros & cons for each to settle the issue (miron, if you can produce it, i would love to see that list... otherwise, get to work on another one).

While often read as the weakest, perhaps primarily because of it’s non-Christian centric story, in re-watching the film it stands up pretty well among the four. One of the differences that make the film stand out, i think, is that Indy isn’t ‘driven’ by dreams of fortune and glory as he is in the other films, rather he’s called. The film explores questions of fate even though its framed most explicitly as a story about seeking fortune & glory, but really its the least so. Take, for instance, the shot after revealing the children were stolen from the village, Indy is presented as ‘hero’, low angle shot, panning in. While this 'hero' shot is present in all the films, the narrative moment that this shot presents Indy as 'an only hope' rather than 'a hero'.


The film is, clearly, darker than the other Indy films, allowing Harrison Ford to play 'bad Indy' & exploring a variety of sadistic scenes, but it isn't this darkness that inherently makes the film superior (and i'm not ready to say that it's the best of the Indy films, though i'm no longer ready to say anymore that it's not the best of them, either)... The exploration of darkness & 'light' in the structuring of this film as one about fate & calling, rather than about treasure hunting and personal gain makes it more intriguing than at first glance. I think the film's setting & it's non Christian-centric center also make it interesting in the sense of questioning convention. Officially, Temple of Doom is a prequel, because the events happen 2 years before Raiders of the Lost Ark, and with the success of that first film, going to a previous time & to an unknown setting (India was at least an 'unconsidered locale in the mid 80's) was a huge gamble that actually didn't pay off... Relatively hated by critics & at the box office this makes the film, in some circles, even more worth a closer look...

how d'you like them apples...

It occurred to me today as i was leaving work and polishing an apple on my shoulder that i look pretty damn good eating an apple. I came up with a theory when i was living in Münster that if nothing else, i look good eating apples, so i ate apples all the time. There's something to the way i bite with a bit of reckless abandon, but without the Roman-esque excesses of juices dripping down my chin...

When i'm not biting, i hold the apple well, slightly daintily at the ends of the core, but without seeming overly concerned with getting my hands a bit sticky... My arms swing freely, if a bit away from my body (think Brody Peed walking down the halls of Clinton High School, but without the muscles). I've gotten pretty good at walking while eating an apple, i can usually time finishing the apple pretty well with my arrival at a garbage can...

I can even, truly, finish an apple... not in the Teutonic sense, perhaps, where you eat ALL of the apple, stem, core & seeds, but all the way around, then to the top & bottom, getting almost of meat off of it...

So what i really want to know is, what is it that you look really good doing? Dancing in the club ( deine Bewegungen gefählen mir), doing shots, or smoking (i look a lot like John McClane when i smoke, taking entire cigarettes in in just a couple inhalations)... So tell me, in an effort of supporting and promoting self-confidence & positive self image (not in the blow smoke up their ass sense, but for real, quality things that don't generally get noticed).