Friday, August 10, 2012

Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom

Another one of my favorite movies!!

Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom
Plot
-In 1935, professor, archeologist and explorer Indiana Jones in in Shanghai,  China. He is there to exchange a jewel to a Chinese gangster. But, then he finds that this man has poisoned him. He must find the antidote before he dies. In this movie, he is paired with a high-strung entertainer named Willie Scott. The 2 must escape the Shangahi nightclub and they do, out a window. When they land in the car, Willie discovers that it is a kid driving. He gets them out of the city and Indy tells her that he knows the kid, found him trying to pickpocket him.

-When they arrive at the airport, they get into a plane, thinking they are escaping from the Chinese gangsters, only to have the Chinese guys get the last laugh. While they are asleep on the plane, the pilots take the parachutes and jump out, leaving the plane to cruise on its own. When Willie wakes up and finds this out, she warns Indy and he now knows they must leave before crashing into a mountain.

-When they finally land on ground, it's in a yellow rubber boat, taking them down a part of the Ganges river in India. That's when they find they are in India. They come to an impoverished village where the villagers are crying that their children are missing and it's been hit by a famine. Nothing is growing, the children are gone and the local shaman says that the precious Sankara stones were missing, along with their children, that a dark, mysterious force took them both.
-The man tells them to go to Pankot Palace, because he will find answers there. And they are greeted warmly by the host, Chattar Lal. One night, while in his room, he is attacked by a stranger and discovers an underground passage. He takes Willie and Short Round with him and they find a temple, where the notorious Thuggee people are trying to rise to power once more. They are a cult with a murderous leader, Mola Ram, who performs voodoo rituals on people, then rips their beating hearts out of their body, before sacrificing them to the lava, as a sacrifice to Kali, the Indian goddess of death.








-Indy also sees that in the Kali statue are the 3 missing Sankara stones. He makes it his mission to recover them. And when they are discovered, Indy is forced into a trance to become a Thuggee, and Short Round is sent to work with the kids, while Willie is made to be a sacrifice.






-Later on, Indy finds the kids and sets them free, after recovering the missing Sankara stones. The free kids run amok in the palace in search of freedom. And he also must play life and death to save Willie, who is in the cage that will lower her to the molten rock below. After he saves her, the 3 escape from the Thuggees in a cat and mouse game in mine carts. They must also escape the temple after a rushing torrent of water is barreling their way.




-The final fight between the Thuggees and Indy is on a rickety rope bridge. When the Thuggees threaten to come on to the bridge, Indy threatens to cut the support rope with a machete. They fall to one side, the rope bridge leaning against the cliff. As Indy struggles to climb, the Thuggee leader, Mola Ram, tries to steal the stones from him. And Indy causes him to fall when he says the Thuggee chant to set the stones ablaze and Mola Ram falls to his death in the Ganges below, with black Asian crocodiles waiting for him.












-The final scenes depict Indy returning to the village, which is now abundant with green growth and the village elder tells him that he knew that Indy had gotten the stones when everything started growing. And also he was able to bring the kids back to the villagers, making them happy with the arrival of their kids






Cast
-Harrison Ford: Indiana Jones
-Kate Capshaw: Willie Scott
-Jonathan Ke Quan: Ke Huy Quan
-Amrish Puri: Mola Ram
-Roshan Seth: Chattar Lal
-Roy Chiao: Lao Che
-David Yip: Wu Han
-Ric Young: Kao Kan
-Chua Kah Joo: Chen
-Dan Aykroyd: Weber
-Michael Yama: Chinese co-pilot

Did You Know?
-The dress Kate Capshaw wears in the Shanghai nightclub was made of 1920s and 1930s beads.
-While riding on the elephants to the palace, Indy points out that the bats are giant vampire bats. In reality, they are fruit bats. Vampire bats are smaller
-When trying to find the right person to play Short Round, Jonathan Ke Quan arrived with his brother, to give him moral support and to tell him what to do and what not to do. So Jonathan Ke Quan won the role
-In the scene where Harrison Ford is fighting with the stranger in his room, and he pulls the stranger over his back, he pulled his back out and got a hernia from it. Production was halted while Ford was flown to Los Angeles to have surgery to repair it.



-When it came to filming, they did most of it in the town of Kandy in Sri Lanka. And luckily for them, nearby were some British engineers. So when it came time to do the bridge scene, the engineers built them a bridge
-When the shaman is talking about the Sankara stones, he refers to them as 'Shiva linga'. In the Hinduism religion, the linga is a tall, cylindrical item representing a male genital part inside of a circle, or yoni, representing the female sex organs. This image is said to represent the sexual energy of the god Shiva
-When the film was released, it came under fire for being racist
-In the scene with the chilled monkey brains, they were made with custard and raspberry sauce
-The actor who played the village shaman did not know any English. So Spielberg had to mimick the words for him so he could say them
-Amrish Puri, who plays Mola Ram, shaved his head for this movie and because of this film, he became one of India's most popular movie villains
-All of the villagers are not from India, but rather Sri Lanka. They speak Sinhalese, the language of the country, instead of Hindu, like in India

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