INDIANA JONES AND THE TEMPLE OF DOOM
Directed by Steven Spielberg; Screenplay by Willard Huyck and Gloria Katz
May 25, 1990. George Lucas and Steven Spielberg today announced plans to build a giant theme park called Star World, with attractions based on scenes from their films. Between them, Spielberg and Lucas have directed or produced the dozen top-grossing movies of all time: Jaws (1975), Star Wars (1977), The Empire Strikes Back (1980), Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial (1982), Return of the Jedi 0983), Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984), Gremlins (1984), Close Encounters: The Final Edition (1985), Indiana Jones Phones Home (1987), 1942 (1988) and The Gremlins Eat Princess Leia (1989).
A spokesman for the film makers' corporation, Luke Spielberger Ltd., said that the attractions will include a Poltergeist funhouse, a scuba dive through shark-infested waters, an American Graffiti drag strip, a Millennium Falcon journey through the Twilight Zone, an E. T. flying-bike ride and an Indiana Jones snake pit. The restaurants, or cantinas, will feature gremlins serving popcorn and candy bars. Each afternoon the Ewoks Marching Band will parade through the park playing the works of John Williams.
The spokesman would not confirm reports that Lucas and Spielberg intended to buy all six major Hollywood studios, and then raze the back lot as sites for Star World. But he struck fear into moguls' hearts when he asked, "Why settle for the Force when you can have the Empire too?"
For now they are content to make movies—movies that career from thrill to giggle and back to thrill again at 24 frames per second. Nobody does it better; no one has ever done it with quite so much relentless ingenuity. They broke out by going back. Lucas proved with the Star Wars trilogy that the Old Hollywood formula of moviemaking, cagily updated, could work wonders at the box office and in the toy store. His movies are Hardy Boys tales for the space age: they shine like Plexiglas, are as durable as Teflon and have the aftertaste of Tang. Spielberg has tapped into the moviegoer's childlike imagination with Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Poltergeist, E.T. and his upcoming production of Gremlins—fables of the sort that touch every eight-year-old just before he falls asleep. Or just after.
Put it this way: the boys have credentials. So of course Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (glorious, goofy title) will be a summer smash. Of course this new adventure, second in the series that Executive Producer Lucas and Director Spielberg began with Raiders of the Lost Ark, will provide sophisticated, if largely familiar pleasures to a few hundred million moviegoers. Of course Temple of Doom, a crackerjack swash of voodoo and derring-do, will create demand for another sequel.
Some things are just written.