I'm very little! You cheat very big! — Short Round

After the colossal success of Raiders of the Lost Ark, Steven Spielberg and George Lucas teamed up again in 1984 to create yet another Indiana Jones adventure. Maligned by fans and critics alike, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom is a much darker film than the first, designed to unearth the ugly side in man. Regardless, Temple of Doom still has something to offer and deserves repeated viewings by any Indy fan.

Since Temple of Doom takes place a year before Raiders of the Lost Ark, the second Indy film is actually a prequel to the first. It is a convenient way to explain the absence of Marion Ravenwood (Karen Allen) and the Nazis from the film without having to weave it into the storyline. As Temple of Doom opens, Jones is in a nightclub somewhere in Shanghai. Predictably, killers are on his tail but he escapes just in time with a lounge singer named Willie Scott (Kate Capshaw) and his young sidekick Short Round (Ke Huy Quan), an orphaned Chinese street kid. The threesome escape danger in Shanghai, jump out of a plane over India, and end up in an Indian village, where a Village leader asks Indy to return a precious and magic jewel — a stone which disappeared with all of the village's children. Touched, Indy agrees to the mission.

Indy and his traveling companions end up at a dinner party at the palace of the maharaja. The dinner scene is lifted straight from a James Bond flick and is one of the funniest scenes in Temple of Doom. All of these men are sitting around enjoying this meal of positively disgusting delicacies and Willie and Short Round are trying not to toss their cookies. While the film slows down with the obligatory seduction scene between Indy and Willie after dinner, Temple's second half picks up the pace when a series of mines and booby traps are found beneath the palace.

Countless young children work on chain gangs; the maharajah keeps them as slaves by using the negative powers of the jewel and its two mates. After Indy, Willie, and Short Round get a stunning look at the process, Indy tries to steal back the jewel. It's at this point that some really weird things start to happen. Humans are put into a steel cage and lowered into a subterranean volcano, and strange chants and rituals are practiced. At one point, Indiana Jones is taken over by the power of the jewel and slaps Short Round. (Things get very dark for awhile, but Indy does come to his senses.)