Yes, it really does look like Indiana Jones 5 is still happening with Harrison Ford... Seriously... And that's a good thing if the filmmakers can come up with something special. Indiana Jones is considered to be one of the best action heroes of all time thanks to Raiders of the Lost Ark and The Last Crusade. Without a doubt, these two Steven Spielberg/George Lucas classics are nothing short of cinematic gold. But the other two Indiana Jones movies... eh... not so much...
While Shia LaBeouf blames himself for how bad Kingdom of the Crystal Skull was, who is to blame for The Temple of Doom? The film was a drastic change from the 1981 film that introduced the world to the archeology professor who moonlights as an adventurer who recovers important artifacts for various museums. For various reasons the 1984 prequel, The Temple of Doom, has been deemed racist and offensive. At the very least, it's sloppy, uncomfortably violent, and annoying. Even director Steven Spielberg has called his own movie out in recent years. But he wasn't always so negative about it...
Thanks to Medium we've learned a lot about the making of this movie... and it was as dark and messy as the film itself...
It Was Born Out Of Darkness And This Scared Away The Screenwriter
When promoting Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade in 1989, Steven Spielberg claimed that "Temple of Doom contains not an ounce of my personal feeling." Perhaps this is because Steven finally understood the rationale for the copious negative reviews and criticisms of cultural insensitivity? Or, maybe Steven just wasn't going along with what his creative partner felt about the story anymore? After all, it was George Lucas who really pushed for a darker second act in the Indiana Jones franchise. And a lot of that had to do with the darkness he was experiencing personally...
"The story ended up being a lot darker than we intended it to be," George Lucas said of The Temple of Doom which he and Steven Spielberg thought up. "Part of it is that I was going through a divorce at the time and I wasn’t in a good mood; and part of it was that we wanted to do something a little bit more edgy.”
But the 'edginess' turned off the screenwriter responsible for the first Indiana Jones movie, Lawrence Kasdan. Ultimately, he passed on working on the film. Lawrence was used to darker sequels. After all, he wrote George Lucas' Empire Strikes Back... But Temple of Doom was just too much for him.
"I just thought it was horrible," Lawrence Kasdan admitted. "It’s so mean. There’s nothing pleasant about it. I think Temple of Doom represents a chaotic period in both [Lucas and Spielberg's] lives, and the movie is very ugly and mean-spirited."
How Did This Dark Story Develop?
Steven and George eventually hired screenwriters Willard Hyuck and Gloria Katz to pen the second Indiana Jones movie which ended up being a prequel.
"The original story was about a haunted castle in Scotland," George explained. "But Steven said, 'Aww, I just made Poltergeist, I don’t want to do that again.' And that’s when we started working with Bill [Willard] Huyck and Gloria Katz."
"George told us that he and Steven wanted to set the next Indy film in India," Willard Hyuck said. "And he knew of our interest in India. We had traveled there, we were collecting Indian art and so forth, and I think that’s why he came to us."
Together, George and the screenwriters came up with the story we're all familiar with.
"George said that it was going to be a very dark film," Steven explained. "The way Empire Strikes Back was the dark second act of the Star Wars trilogy. So George came up with this idea, along with Gloria Katz and Willard Huyck, that it was going to be about the Kali cult, with black magic and things that I personally find very spooky. In many ways the visual style of the film was conceived when George first told me the story which was a very rough sketch of the movie he wanted us to help him construct. I heard a couple of things — Thugees, temple of death, vooodoo and human sacrifices — so what came to mind immediately was torchlight, long shadows, and red lava light. I wanted to paint a dark picture of an inner sanctum."
On top of this, Steven wanted to imbue the film with a sense of adventure and a comedic tone to help balance out all of the dark choices George Lucas had made. Perhaps it was this clash of genres that gave more credence to the accusations of offensive material found in the film... The monkey brains scene being a prime example.
Regardless, the whole thing was undoubtedly a bit of a mess. Let's hope the fifth and final Indiana Jones film will avoid these pitfalls.