Line #44 Headscratchers/IndianaJonesAndTheTempleOfDoom


1	* Why, during the mine cart chase, does Indy knock down a hanging lantern and the camera even cuts away from the action to show a shot of the lantern falling to the ground and breaking while the flame from it flickers? This lantern is never shown again, nor is its presence and/or the focus on it explained. The best I can figure is it's some vague allusion to the impending danger of WATER -- i.e., a fake-out of sorts, as the shot gives the impression that the fire might spread.
2	** I think the shot was intended to reference the knife that the Thuggee attacking him with was dropped: it's a quick shot, but you can see it under the lantern.
3	* Speaking of the mine cart chase, who builds their mine cart tracks like a roller coaster ride?
4	** Villains in a Steven Spielberg movie, apparently.
5	* So, why didn't Mola Ram pull Willie's heart out of her chest anyway? Is it an every-fifth-person-we-pull-the-heart-out-of thing? Do they not do that to female sacrifices? (Of course, it's simply too easy to joke that it's because she doesn't have a heart, but ''seriously''.)
6	** My interpretation is that Mola Ram never actually pulled anybody's heart out of anybody's body --It was all mass suggestion. Mass hypnosis, if you want to call it that. During the first sacrifice, we are shown what those present think they are seeing. During the second (attempted) sacrifice, we see what really happens (Mola Ram doing as if he is holding aloft a beating heart, when in fact he isn't). At the end of the movie, I interpret what Mola Ram tries to do to Indy on the remains of the rope bridge as an attempt at suggestion, perhaps inducing a heart attack or something.
7	*** I think that theory's pretty strongly tested by the fact that Mola Ram thinks he can tear Indy's heart out on the bridge scene at the end and Indy's legitimately worried about it to the point where he's taking Short Round's advice to cover up his heart. How do you explain that?
8	*** I don't know. A mass hallucination makes sense, considering the cultists are drugged and brainwashed and the whole sequence is nonsensical... except Indy and co. also witness it, are appropriately horrified by the heart-ripping, and they're not brainwashed. There's really no reason to believe Indy would see a beating heart unless there really was one.
9	*** And no reason for Mola Ram to try the same trick ''on'' Indy when they were hanging over the river, if it was just an illusion. Trying to physically pull him off the bridge would've been more effective that using a scare-tactic on a man who'd just had the balls to cut the bridge he, himself, was standing on.
10	*** Perhaps to induce a heart attack to make him fall?
11	*** Indy ''has'' just come out of a prolonged period of drug-induced brainwashing at that point. He might be more susceptible to suggestion and inclined to believe the illusion at that point.
12	*** He's also recently experienced what it's like to be on the wrong end of a ''fucking voodoo doll''. At this point, he was taking no chances.
13	** James Kahn's ''excellent'' {{novelization}} of ''Temple Of Doom'' says that Mola Ram was just messing with Willie's head in that scene (I guess just to torture her further before the actual sacrifice).
14	** Possibly they only removed the hearts of people who were believers in the Hindu faith? A non-believer's heart might not be considered worthy to be offered up separately, and the man that Mola Ram ''did'' play BeatStillMyHeart with was praying to Shiva during the sacrifice.
15	** Also worth considering is that the followers (and possibly the victim) were all drugged with opiates and hallucinagenics, so if we're seeing it from their perspective, they may think Mola Ram ripped out his heart.
16	*** The way I see it, the reason Team Indy saw the heart ripping, there were drugs in the air makng them see it. And besides, the whole heart ripping things makes no sense, Mola Ram would have to break through the victim's ribcage, ribs aren't exactly easy to break through.
17	*** I think you are forgetting that the films have all sorts of supernatural things going on.
18	** I always thought it was because Willie wasn't a sacrifice; she was being killed for expediency. Chattar Lal says to Indy, "Your friend has seen, and she has heard. Now she will not talk." So, they're putting her in the pit to keep her from telling anyone about what she saw - and they won't even need to hide the body, the lava gets rid of all the evidence.
19	** Well, the real reason is because if Mola Ram ripped her heart out, there'd be no last-minute rescuing her, unless Indy gets the heart back from Mola Ram then takes a crash course in PsychicSurgery to put it back ([[NippleAndDimed also probably because it would be a lot trickier to show a female getting her heart pulled out of her chest than a male]]). As for an in-universe reason. . . they hadn't done up the last shackle on their cute little sacrificial rig yet, and Willie did have her hand over her chest, though I find it hard to believe that would be an insurmountable obstacle. It was probably a sort of [[IfYoureSoEvilEatThisKitten ultimate test]] for Indy. . . if he not only goes along with the sacrifice, but actively participates, then they know they've got him. And making him most directly responsible for Willie's death by doing the last locks holding her in the rig accomplishes that.
20	** There may be a bit of RealitySubtext as to why Willie’s sacrificial ceremony was so different. The real life Thugee cult forbade the killing of women and children for their sacrifices; only men could be sacrificed. So Mola Ram could not do the full ceremony for Willie because their beliefs forbade it, and also why he passed responsibility of securing Willie to the cage to Indy. By having a true nonbeliever like Indy shackle Willie to the cage and lock her in the cage, the cult can claim LoopholeAbuse for her ceremony as ''they'' aren’t the ones who technically sacrificed her.
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22	* Why didn't Indy have a panic attack when "snake surprise" was being served?
23	** I got the impression that he was so busy chatting with the others at the table that he didn't notice ''any'' of the ForeignQueasine.
24	*** Another possibility is his fear of snakes is prevalent only in his "action" mode. During the ''Temple of Doom'' dinner scene, Indy was in full "academic/teacher" mode. In ''Last Crusade'', when young Indy was being chased, he fell into a crate full of snakes, and he was freaking out, as opposed to brushing off a snake before being chased.
25	*** I thought the whole point of the snake-crate was to show the origin of Indy's phobia. He brushed off the snake (and even said "it's just a snake") because it preceded the traumatic, phobia-inducing event.
26	** The python that was served as "snake surprise" was quite obviously dead, hence wouldn't intimidate Indy, who isn't even freaked out by ''human'' corpses. The squirmy live critters inside it were eels, not snakes.
27	*** Which proves the writers Did Not Do The Research, as uncooked eel blood is poisonous to humans and other mammals.
28	** What are Indy and Blumburt supposed to be eating at the dinner scene anyway? We never see them eating.
29	*** When Blumburt flicks an eel away, there's some kind of food on his plate, but I can't tell what it is. Nothing like bugs and monkey brains, though - it looks like regular food.
30	** He's afraid of live snakes that can bite and poison and squeeze him to death, not obviously dead snakes that have been cooked.
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32	* The man Indiana is talking with about the airplane arrangements in the beginning of the film. What is it with him sounding like c3po and enunciating every word in a deliberately obnoxious manner and nasal voice? "as You Will Be Riding On A Car-go-plane-full-of-live Poultry". Really now? If it's supposed to be an accent I am at a complete loss as to which one, and why such an irritating one was chosen.
33	** Um, it's obviously supposed to be a humorously exaggerated British accent. What's not to get?
34	** Plus he's played by Creator/DanAykroyd, so it RuleOfFun applies...
35	*** Or bad acting.
36	** Whenever British people appeared in the 1930s American pulp films that the ''Indiana Jones'' movies homage, they tended to talk in that exaggeratedly posh "Terry-Thomas" style. It's probably a homage to that.
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38	* At the beginning of the film, Indy spends a good portion of the club scene desperately looking for the antidote to his poisoned drink. Willie, spotting the antidote, does the most helpful thing by sliding it down the front of her dress, and is angry when he reaches in and grabs it in the car. Did she mistake it for the diamond from the club scene, or was she actively trying to kill him?
39	** I think her being angry was just on the principle of a guy she barely knows--and who had threatened her earlier--reaching into her dress. She was probably planning to just give him the antidote--possibly in return for something, who knows--but wasn't expecting him to basically molest her to get it.
40	*** She sings at a club frequented by gangsters. Many of the men she's met there probably ''would'' have copped a feel along with the antidote, and possibly done worse than that after they'd chugged it. Of ''course'' it freaked her out!
41	** She was probably planning to use it as a bargaining chip. "Give me the diamond, I give you the antidote." And she just forgot that she had it when things really went to Hell.
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43	* Why did Willie get on the plane with Indy and Short Round?
44	** It never exactly came up in dialogue, but she was really just dragged along without resistance once things turned bad at the club. Note that she's not in any way an ActionGirl like Marion; she's a total diva, and would need someone streetwise and tough like Indy to protect her from the gangsters. If they weren't intending to kill Willie, she probably thought they were, and in any event they were so reckless and trigger-happy she probably figured running away with Jones was the safest option. The whole group made things up as they went once the deal went sour; no time to think or plan ahead, just roll.
45	** Because Indy had ordered three airline tickets: for himself, Short Round, and Wu Han. Even though Wu Han died, Indy's not going to waste that third seat, dammit!
46	** Indy may not have wanted to leave her behind, knowing she'd blab to their pursuers about where he was going.
47	*** He might also be afraid of what Lao Che would do to her if she was left behind. He might kill her just to work out his frustrations.
48	*** Or to punish her for having chased after the diamond, which Lao certainly considered his property.
49	** Considering she complains about everything else, why doesn't Willie accuse Dr. Jones of kidnapping her? She isn't exactly the most situationally aware woman, especially at the beginning of the movie, and she WAS just pulled out of a car and basically dumped onto a plane by two people she doesn't know for reasons ''they'' probably aren't even sure of. How is she not more upset about this?
50	** Her job is obviously gone. She has no place else to go. She goes with the flow until she can find another opportunity for something.
51	*** Except that she explicitly says that she has a house, rich friends and invitations to parties in Shangai, and insists in phoning her manager. So yes, she has a place to go, possibly several. If she's lost her job at Lao Che's club, it's not that she becomes instantly homeless and has no other choice that stick to Indiana.
52	*** Considering that we never actually ''see'' this house, these rich friends, these invitations to cool parties and this manager, the possibility that either (a) she's simply lying about all this in an attempt to big herself up to Indy and / or (b) all of these things are predicated on her basically being Lao Che's mistress and are no longer meaningful options for her after she basically burns her bridges with him cannot be discounted.
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54	* Why did Indy scoff at the suggestion of magic at the start of ''Raiders of the Lost Ark'' when he has clear evidence of its existence in this movie?
55	** I've always thought that Indy's skepticism of magic and the occult is a facade, something he adopts so that people won't think him a flake. (He does the same thing early in Last Crusade, which takes place after both Raiders and Temple.) Secretly he knows better, but he thinks it safer to pretend otherwise. Besides, just because one supernatural thing turns out to be true doesn't mean every such claim is valid.
56	** Alternatively, Indy was force-fed a mind-altering substance, which is a ready-made excuse to dismiss a traumatic experience; it doesn't matter what he ''thought'' was happening at the time, because clearly he wasn't in his right mind.
57	** He's still a scientist. He sees things that don't correspond exactly with his and the world's current understanding of science, but that doesn't necessarily mean that he's willing to buy into the occult; it just means that as far as he's concerned, science hasn't reached a point where it can explain how the things he has seen actually work.
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59	* Why did Willie go with Indy and Short Round to the palace? I understand how they all ended up in the river on that raft but I don't think they ever made it clear to her that they were her ticket back to Delhi.
60	** Vanity and greed. Willie was overjoyed with the idea of visiting a maharajah's palace and it only went up when she was told that the maharajah was single.
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62	* Where exactly did the archers come from and is there any possible explanation for them missing so many shots. Archery's not that hard.
63	** They were there the whole time, and yes, archery is hard, especially at the range they were firing. Given the range and rate, they're lucky they even got that close.
64	* Soon after the kids are released, we see them streaming out of the palace. How did they bypass the lava moat as well as the death traps that nearly snared Willie, Indy, and Short Round?
65	** The novelization and deleted scenes explain how the kids get by the lava pit; Indy sets up a couple of long wooden planks as a makeshift bridge that the slave children use to cross the chasm, but before Indy, Willie and Shorty can cross, heat from the pit causes the planks to catch fire and fall apart. It's not too unreasonable to assume that the children were able to find another route out of the palace, avoiding the traps.
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67	* How exactly do the Sankara Stones work? Do they need to be "activated" by a mortal before they can function? Indy tells Mola Ram that he's betrayed Shiva after claiming the Stones for himself, and then the Stones promptly burn his flesh. Why then and there? Why not previously? What with him being the leader of a brutal cult that's twisted the valid worship of a God into something monstrous, it kind of seems like Mola Ram betrayed Shiva ''way'' before that.
68	** A lot of the magic in the film works on the voodoo principle of belief, and mind over matter. The belief that it works makes it work. Some say he never pulled out the guys heart and people only believed he did (the drugs helped with that). Others think the guy believing he could magically pull his heart out allowed it to magically happen. Then later Indy was able to resist that belief which is why it didn't work. Indy uses that against Mola Ram. By convincing him he betrayed Shiva made the punishment real. Reversing his own methods against him.
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70	* What exactly is the Thugee plan in sending an assassin to Indy's room? Were they going to MakeItLookLikeAnAccident to fool Colonel Blubmert? Why only one assassin, with no back up? And did no one check up to see if he had done the job? Indy and co. seem to have plenty of time to wander off exploring secret passages without being missed.
71	** It's also convenient that the assassin used strangulation as his method. He caught Indy completely by surprise. A simple stab with a knife would've done the trick. There's a lot of potential for failure in trying to strangle a big muscular man.
72	*** That's not really "convenient"; strangulation was a typical method of assassination among the Thugee. And it often worked, and came pretty close to working in this case as well. So it's not really fair to sneer at them for going with what they know.
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74	* What puzzles me is this Black Blood stuff. How does drinking a substance convert someone to a religion?
75	** It doesn't. It's some kind of magical brainwashing drug.
76	** It's less like converting and more like DemonicPossession. In the original shooting script, evil Indy [[BreathWeapon breathes fire]](!) at Willie when he reveals that he's turned evil. It's completely supernatural.
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78	* Wow, nice dance number there, but if it took place in a massive auditorium behind the club's stage, and there was no way to televise it back in 1935, who in the club was even able to ''watch'' the performance?
79	** It might be Willie's ImagineSpot. This is actually suggested in James Kahn's novelization.
80	** Or just a joke (at the fourth wall's expense) about how they used to shoot extra material (or use recycled material from earlier films) and splice it into movies to make them longer. The obvious break and different quality in video would play into that sort of meta-humor. Remember that these films are send-ups of old pulp serials.
81	** Or a more mundane explanation, there's a movie screen in there and they basically cut to a much bigger pre-filmed dance number that was being projected on the screen.
82	*** In colour in 1935?
83	*** Kinemacolor was invented in 1908 and Technicolor was invented in 1916. So yeah, maybe.
84	*** That Willie interacts with?
85	** RuleOfCool, essentially. The musical number is a homage to the kind of Busby Berkeley / Ginger and Fred style musical numbers of the '30s and '40s that were incredibly large scale, incredibly impractical, and incredibly cool to watch on the big screen. The whole point is that it's ridiculously elaborate and over-the-top, because that was the style that was popular in the films the makers were inspired by. You're supposed to just go with it and enjoy the choreography, not nitpick about where the in-film audience is.
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87	* Lao-Che, Lao-Che... after you brilliantly got Indy to drink poison, why tell him? If you'd just kept him talking for a few minutes you could have simply taken the diamond off his corpse.
88	** He would have, but he caught the VillainBall offscreen and decided that simply letting the poison do its thing wouldn't be diabolical enough.
89	** Also, Indy embarrassed the family by injuring and nearly killing Kao Kan the previous night, which probably left them furious. Lao doesn't just want keep the diamond, he wants to pay back Indy by beating him, making sure he knows he beat him, and gloating about it to his face. Doesn't end well for him, of course.
90	** Because that would be murder? Indy's death would be a pain - he'd have to cover up the fact that a reasonably notable foreigner vanished when meeting with him. Lao-Che probably ''can'' do that, but it would cost money for bribes and introduce risks. Trading the antidote for the diamond lets him avoid that while also getting to gloat a bit.
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92	* If Mola Ram is strong enough to rip a person's heart out, shouldn't he be able to kill Indy with one punch? Ok, maybe the chant he says before ripping the guy's heart out is a spell to give him SuperStrength. Still doesn't explain why he can't cast said spell before going into combat.
93	** I think it's more that the spell enables him to get to people's hearts with his bare hands, not that he's super-strong. The spell seems to work through giving his hands a kind of power that lets him burn / burrow his fingers into the victim's chest, not that he's naturally strong enough to punch his way in there.
94	* How come the Maharajah is able to torture Indy with a voodoo doll? Isn't that a ''West Indian'' (specifically, Haitian) thing, as opposed to an Indian thing?
95	** It is, but either the people responsible for the research goofed up and overlooked the 'West' part, or the filmmakers just decided that it was cool enough to throw into the screenplay anyway. RuleOfCool, basically.
96	** The Indian Jones universe seems to have AllMythsAreTrue in effect. As such, the Thugees may have obtained the doll from an actual Voodoo priest at some point, [[WildMassGuessing perhaps a previous sacrifice victim?]]
97	*** Using effigies of a person to target them by way of SympatheticMagic is a pretty frequent part of folklore across the world. Not to mention the classic voodoo doll is very much a case of HollywoodVoodoo.
98	* Why does Mola Ram say that the stones will be found when Indy threatens to drop them into the river? They aren't very big, and a river is constantly flowing, so it seems about as likely as someone finding some drugs someone flushed into a sewer.
99	** Somewhat parallels the scene from ''Raiders'' where Belloq dares Indy to blow up the ark, knowing he won't. The difference is that I don't think Indy cares about the stones like he cared about the ark. But Indy does care about his own life (and the life of Willie and Short Round), and he knows dropping the stones will be suicidal for them. So it's basically a game of chicken, with Mola Rom realizing Indy's not crazy enough to follow through on his threat (but not realizing he ''is'' crazy enough to cut the bridge--but I digress).
100	** Drugs are powder; they dissolve and disappear into the water. Conversely, the stones are, well, relatively large stones. If Indy drops them, they'll sink to the bottom of the river, and they'll only be carried along by the current so far before they settle at the bottom. So they'll be there to be found somewhere. It might not be easy, and it might take a long time, and it might cost people's lives, and he might not ''want'' to spent a lot of time and effort and resources and lives to find them, but Mola Ram is willing to do so. He's just trying to call Indy's bluff by pointing out that he's still in a better position, albeit far from an ideal one; if Indy drops them, he and his friends will die almost immediately afterwards, but while Mola Ram might not have the stones immediately he's still got the chance of finding them again. He just underestimates Indy's resolve in being willing to risk ''everyone's'' life rather than letting Mola Ram have them.
101	* In the novelization, Mola Ram was apparently BrainwashedAndCrazy like some of the other cultists, and snaps out of it when he gets burned by the stone (which was going to be in the movie originally). This raises the obvious question: who made him drink the Blood of Kali in the first place?
102	** Probably whoever was his predecessor, who has likely since died.
103	* What is that... thing that shows up during the bug tunnel scene (it's at about [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WQXqhk-8h7o 0:39 in this clip]])? It almost looks like a [[Franchise/{{Aliens}} facehugger.]]
104	* Why are there intact skulls in the crusher room? Should the DescendingCeiling have crushed them all?
105	** Perhaps the spikes prevent the ceiling of the crusher room from going all the way to the floor when triggered, with it going just far enough to impale anyone in the room on the spikes?
106	* So, Wu Han...uh...what was the point of him? He shows up to spectacularly fail at helping Indy at all only to die and not influence the story at all. We get just enough exposition to know he's Indy's partner and they've been on many adventures together...only for Indy to really not give a single flying fuck about the guy's death five seconds after it happens. He doesn't even tell Short Round about it, I mean, those two characters must have known each other. Aside from explaining how Indy has booked passage for three people on a flight...with no actual seats, it feels entirely pointless an addition. Was it just some kind of actor cameo or something?
107	** Every movie introduces characters that have been on unseen prior adventures with Indy. It's part of the "30s action serials" idea. Indy does tell Short Round about his death in the novelization.
108	** Indy's a guy in the 1930s. It wasn't exactly an age where men were expected to be in touch with their emotions and openly express them in order to process and share their grief. He's putting on a stiff upper lip about it, basically.
109	* Indy says he saved Short Round from the Japanese bombings in Shanghai. However Japan only went to war with China in 1937.
110	** As pointed out on the AluminumChristmasTrees entry, there was a Japanese bombing of Shanghai in 1932.
111	* Why would Indy drink the beverage that Lao-Che included with the reluctantly-surrendered daimond? Lao is the same man who sent one of his goons after Indy to try and steal the daimond and who Indy had to threaten Willie with a knife to force Che to go with their agreement. Lao-Che is by that point obviously a crooked cheating bastard, so why assume the drink included is harmless?
112	** Failure of imagination. It was the glass of Lao-Che's son, who had just withdrawn his gun. Ater foiling that blunt threat, Indy thought we has out of the woods again, regarding his foe as one who only knows brute-force direct approaches. Indy was not expecting that kind of underhandedness.
113	* Why is fire specifically needed to make people snap out of the Black Sleep, instead of just anything really painful? Is it due to the FirePurifies trope?
114	** It might not be just fire - we don't really see a lot of people we know were brainwashed receive a lot of pain through other methods without also getting killed.
115	** Per the Trivia page, there was a deleted scene where Short Round witnessed a Thugee guard snap out of the Black Sleep when a lava fissure hit his leg. This is why Short Round thought fire broke the Black Sleep.

Context Headscratchers / IndianaJonesAndTheTempleOfDoom