All 5 Indiana Jones movies ranked from worst to best

3. Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom

The second and arguably the weakest of the original three movies, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom was released in 1984 and is actually a prequel to Raiders of the Lost Ark. That was so because writer and co-creator George Lucas did not want Nazis to be the villains again. He opted instead to set this film in India and pit Jones against a cult of worshipers of the Hindu goddess Kali. The main objective for Indy in this movie is to recover a sacred rock and free children who were stolen from a nearby village by the cult.

The first half of this movie is fairly weak, with much of the adventure consisting of buildup while Jones and his companions Willie Scott (Kate Capshaw) and Short Round (Ke Huy Quan) survive a plane crash and trek through the Indian jungle. Kate Capshaw’s character has been heavily criticized, but similar to Mutt, the poor reception probably had more to do with the lines and situations written for her than Capshaw’s performance.

The rubber really hits the road when the group finds the Pankot Palace, where they are initially greeted and later almost murdered by the cultists. Eventually they make their way underground to find the titular Temple of Doom, where the cultist leader Mola Ram rips people’s hearts out of their chest and runs a forced labor mining camp. If dark arts and voodoo magic are the sort of thing you like in a villain, then Mola Ram is your guy. The sequences in the last half of this movie are fairly gruesome compared to your typical Indiana Jones action.

The best part of the film is when Jones is mind controlled with voodoo magic but broken free by Short Round, prompting an action-packed escape from the temple where all the child laborers are set free and the big mine cart chase happens. Mola Ram also has one of the best death scenes of any movie villain ever, where he gets torn apart by crocodiles after falling into a giant crevice.

Although the supporting characters are not as strong as in Raiders and the first half of the movie has pacing issues, Temple of Doom is still a great action flick and its flaws are heavily outweighed by the movie’s strengths. Today it is remembered as a solid piece of one of the best movie trilogies of all time.