Where to watch Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984)

Trivia & production notes

• George Lucas initially told Steven Spielberg he had three Indiana Jones stories in mind when pitching Raiders of the Lost Ark, but later admitted he actually didn't have them planned out.
• Lucas and Spielberg attributed Temple of Doom's darker tone to personal upheaval in their lives at the time, with Lucas comparing it to how The Empire Strikes Back served as the dark middle chapter of Star Wars.
• Lucas deliberately set Temple of Doom a year before Raiders of the Lost Ark to avoid reusing Nazis as villains.
• Lawrence Kasdan, who wrote Raiders of the Lost Ark, declined to work on Temple of Doom's script, later saying he found it horrible and mean-spirited.
• The character Willie Scott was named after Steven Spielberg's Cocker Spaniel, following the pattern of Indiana Jones being named after George Lucas's Alaskan Malamute.
• The opening musical number was originally written for an unrelated George Lucas project called Radioland Murders that had been in development since the early 1970s.
• The exotic food items shown in the Pankot Palace dinner scene were practical props: the insects were rubber filled with custard, and the monkey brains were made of raspberry-flavored custard.
• Spielberg noticed Kate Capshaw's genuine fear of snakes during filming and removed a planned scene showing a snake coiling around her character.
• Ke Huy Quan was cast as Short Round after the casting director noticed him coaching his younger brother behind the camera during the boy's audition.
• Indian authorities denied permission to film in North India and at Amer Fort, objecting to the script's depiction of voodoo and the Thuggee cult and requesting changes like removing the term Maharajah.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Rewritten for StreamShack; errors are ours — tell us about them.