Temple Of Doom DVD cover
Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom was released in 1984 as a prequel to Raiders of the Lost Ark. This means that Temple of Doom comes in twenty-third chronologically.
Plot Summary
The film begins with a musical number and a fight in a nightclub, "Club Obi-Wan". Indy escapes with Willie Scott, a singer, and Short Round, Indy's small friend. Their plane crashes in a village in India, which enlists Indy's help in retrieving the Sankara stone and the community's children from the forces of an evil palace nearby.
Indiana travels to a palace and discovers the village rock and two more under Thuggee capture. The cult are digging for the remaing rocks within the mines of the palace, in hope that with all of them they can rule the world. Indy ends their dark plans and escapes the palace, only to lose two of the rocks in the process. He does however return the remaining rock to the shaman, and in doing so restores peace to the village.
The film is much darker in tone than its predecessor (a fact which Lucas attributes to the messy divorce he was going through during the film's production), and has been criticised for being overly violent and scary, as well as for its gross misrepresentations of Indian culture. When making the sequel, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Spielberg was reported to have apologized for the lesser quality of Temple of Doom.