Nice Try, Lao Che: Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom

NICE TRY, LAO CHE!

PAUL COONEY

Was it the shame of trying to make that stupid ass earring look cool that drove Harrison Ford to attempt suicide? A failed attempt I must note- you're no John Denver dickface!

Instead of filling up the 8th hole with brain matter he's filled my senses with disgust at his ineptitude, and I haven't been so repulsed by Ford since he made the Temple of Doom.

(I refuse to acknowledge Calista Flockhart's existence.)

Temple of Poon you say? No, no, gentle reader. That's a fine work of art. I'm referring to a character named Indiana Jones. Have you ever heard of him? He was the hero in three movies...wait four movies...I never saw that last piece of shit.

In any case, the three flix contain some really dynamite stuff not limited to Allison Doody, but they are also responsible for some grade A atrocities, and no I'm not referring to Kate Capshaw (not entirely I mean).

Peeps from Chile to Calcutta have long decried the ridiculousness of the raft falling from a plane and bouncin' off a mountain and then rollin' down a river, but in their zest to shit all over that nonsense they overlook something equally as stupid and recockulous.

It's especially lamentable 'cause the opening of the movie is some dynamite shit, with Indy looking suave and decidedly not disfigured from a plane crash, sporting a sweet white dinner jacket and earring-free. (You think you're cooler than Han Solo and Dr. Jones, Harrison? They didn't wear earrings! You're no Jack Sparrow, ya twat!)

The swank nightclub looks rather awesome as well and when I invent my time machine I sure as shit will be heading back to 1930's Shanghai to get some sunshine on my shoulder and some dragon lady in my pants, if you know what I mean and I think you do 'cause that was some straight up sleaze for all you pervs reading at home.

I digress...there's a pretty slick switcheroo with jewels and poison drinks and antidotes etc and so forth and such as, but before Indy can slip free and educate the kids in South Africa and Iraq a shooutout breaks out and Jones has to bolt out the window.

His tween driver Short Round hustles him through the streets with gangster Lao Che and his hoodlum posse in pursuit, but Jones, the blonde and the kid manage to make it to the safety of a cargo plane and Indy bids Che a smug and cheeky adios!

Instead of being pissed however Lao Che laughs, and we find out why when the door on the plane is closed to reveal "Lao Che Transport!" or something...it's Lao Che's airline! Sweet sassy molassy - your earring won't save you now, you poseur!

Che gives a nod to the pilots and saunters off to get a massage or something equally decadent, the well-dressed rascal. It was a pretty sweet beginning, but the wheels are about to fall off...or the engine is about to stall I should say, 'cause:

A. Wtf? In regards to the nod - how the fuck do the pilots know what he wants? Che had the whole poison Indy's drink, dudes with guns etc at the nightclub. He's got Indy covered. Did he really have a backup plan where he tells his pilots: "Just in case Indy gets away from the nightclub, where I have guns and poison etc, and hops into a car driven by that kid from the Goonies, be ready with the engines running blah blah blah"?

(The Goonies sucked btw...stop screaming! Shut those fucking kids up! I digress...)

B. So Che gives the nod and the pilots are like, "We got this shit"...and they eventually parachute after dumping the fuel setting up the utterly ludicrous raft bouncy thing.

Pretty slick except for...

Why would Lao Che lose a plane plus all that cargo? I know he's a rich badass but surely he could have found a way to kill Indy (and a young boy? heartless! and Capshaw? does he really want her dead?) that wouldn't have cost him a plane and cargo...

Annnnnnnnnnnnnd...why the fuck do they fly from Shanghai to India!?!

One of my favorite things about the Jones films are those little map shots that show Indy's path from Tibet to Egypt or wherever. So they sucker the audience with one of those, but it makes no fucking sense!

Henchman Pilot number 1: "Ok, so remember, Lao Che wants these three dead. I've been reading his nods for years so I know that's what he meant...so we should just overpower the unsuspecting man and then deal with the woman and child later...maybe even let them go cause one's a woman and the other is a child."

Henchman Pilot number 2: "Orrrrrrrrrr we could fly a few thousand miles, which I'm not even sure a plane of this kind can do without landing to refuel, then dump the fuel and bail out while they're asleep."

Number 1: "Wait what? Bail out? That's pretty fucking risky. And why fly to India first? Why not just do it ten miles out of fucking town? And how the fuck are we gonna get home from the fucking Himalayas?"

Number 2: "Duuuuuuuuuude trust me!"

Ladi dadi free john gotti it doesn't make any sense at all! They must have been Rocky Mountain High when they came up with that shit!

JOHN CRIBBS

Some good points, Paul. But since you brought up the map, how about the much more glaring piece of logic that is the movie's geological placing of the Great Wall of China near Chungking, when it is obviously further northwest of Shanghai closer to Mongolia? Or the fact that, near the end, Indy recites a Hindi incantation to make the ancient Shankara stones glow even though he clearly should have been speaking Sanskrit, the ancient language of India, as opposed to Hindi, which didn't reach its modern form until the late 18th/early 19th century? And why if Short Round is from Shanghai does he speak Cantonese?

Jesus, were you even paying attention to the movie??

(Also if we're really nitpicking this scene to death, how come the plane explodes when there's no fuel left in it?)

I guess Spielberg just gets our minds so drunk on all the musical numbers and action and waitress-punching in the first 20 minutes, none of us ever think to question the very questionable plan of the infamous Lao Che. In fact, before you brought these discrepancies to light, the only problem I had with the scene at the airport is Lao Che gloating to himself, laughing heartily as he watches the plane soar away. Dude - you just lost one of your sons! Kao Kan, following suit by chortling next to his father, just lost a brother! You'd think they'd be so dang mad at Indy for skewering poor Chen with a flaming shish kebab that Lao'd signal for the pilot to merely let the plane sit there, take his men onboard and just kill Indy, who is literally a sitting duck, right then and there.

Or, if there was some concern over getting the bodies out of the airport, let the pilots do it. Either immediately or after take-off, when Indy (as we later see) inevitably falls into a deep sleep following a full evening of tough negoitating, getting poisoned, jumping out a window through several flights worth of awnings into a car. Kill him then! Either option would save money - not necessary to sacrifice an entire plane/compliment of live poultry - time and manpower.

Listen, I've got an explanation. Lao Che is clearly into some shady shit...my guess is, he has a regular scam going with his chicken-exporting business where he has guys purposely crash a crappy plane with minimal cargo to collect the insurance money. They fly it over the Himalayas because an aerial mishap is more believable (and harder to investigate) over the snowy mountains. And yes, that was always his back-up plan...that, in case Indy should murder one of his sons with a burning shish-ka-bob, find the anedote for the poison and jump out a five-story window to a waiting car below, he would bribe Dan Aykroyd to make sure he got on the plane that - conveniently - happened to be shipping off to be intentionally crashed over the Himalayas. Seems pretty obvious to me.

The nod to the pilot was probably just "go ahead with the plan." The passengers in the back were most likely complete surprises to the pilots, they just figured "ok guess these guys are going down with this shit...I mean what are they going to do, inflate this life raft, land safety right-ways-up on the ground below, sled down a mountain, go off a 500 foot cliff, land safely right-ways-up into raging rapids and coast down the river? I fucking doubt that, dude." So it seemed like a sound plan.

Either that, or the pilot had a fortune cookie with his lunch that explained the entire future incident on the plane to him in detail (although he wouldn't have called it a fortune cookie, rather a fortune tea cake - which is how they were commonly known pre-WWII - and it would be weird for him to be eating it in the first place since the fortune cookie is an American invention.)

Since you got the ball rolling, there are a few other inquries I had related to the same opening scene:

1. Bailing out over the Himalayas: where exactly are the pilots parachuting? Is someone going to pick them up? In the middle of the Himalayas at an undetermined drop zone? Is there a plucky American kid wearing a Golden Eagles cap sitting in a car waiting to drive them back home? Are they sherpas as well as pilots? I guess it's possible (Nepal's not far from China), but did they bring the proper equipment to navigate across the frozen tundra? They don't look like they're got anything with them when they jump out.

2. Where's the betrayal coming from?* The most likely suspect is Earl Webber, Dan Aykroyd's over-enthusiastic travel agent who meets Indy at the airport and tells him, "I spoke with your assistant and managed to secure three seats." But if Lao Che's got Webber in his pocket, how could he possibly have known Indy would end up at the airport? Perhaps he just owns all the planes? But then I guess the question is, why specify three seats? There aren't any actual "seats," it's a cargo plane. He could have just said "I've arranged passage for you on a plane." I mean, don't tell me those assholes charged individual tickets for each "seat." And what stake does Webber have in any of this? From his dialogue, it's clear that Webber has never met Indiana Jones yet he recognizes him on sight. Is Indy that famous? Or did his "assistant" simply tell Webber to be on the look out for a man in a Fedora? Well strike that, Indy's in a white tux with no hat at the time. Then again, Webber is starstruck by Willie Scott, maybe he just reads celebrity magazines. At any rate, it seems impossible that Webber could have possibly been involved in the sabotage.

So was it Indy's "assistant" who set them up? Who is Webber even referring to? It must be Wu Han, who's lying in a pool of his own blood back at the club. He seemed loyal enough, but when exactly did he arrange for these tickets, which Webber explains were requested "at short notice"? Did he call from the restaurant, in the middle of his shift? (Does he even really work there? Did he apply for the waiter job and go through the training just to back Indy up on this one occasion? If he's incognito, how come none of the staff demanded to know what he was doing there? Nice security, Lao.) He gets killed before the shit hits the fan, so he couldn't have possibly known Indy would require a quick escape to a waiting plane. Oh and how come Short Round never inquires, "Hey, where's Wu Han?"

(Speaking of Wu Han, here's an extremely off-topic aside; feel free to skip this paragraph. The next year, the same actor also got to play an ill-fated sidekick to James Bond as CIA agent Chuck Lee in A View to a Kill. His death in that one is written off even quicker: Bond, finding himself framed in San Francisco for murdering a geologist and burning down city hall, asks the arresting officer to contact Chuck Lee at the CIA to confirm his identity. The cop immediately responds, "We found his body in Chinatown." This is quickly glossed over as Bond pulls an impromptu escape via fire truck...however, let's think about this for moment. How does this cop who responds to a fire emergency know 'bout some random murder in Chinatown? Forget it Jake - that's a little too coincidental. Bond had just met with Lee the day before, which means he couldn't have been in the morgue more than 24 hours, his body identified, his affiliation with the CIA somehow exposed (unless this cop's just a racist who hears "Chinese guy with generic Chinese name" and assumes it's the guy they found dead in Chinatown), all in a relatively short amount of time. And this guy just knows about it? And is comfortable instantly disclosing the information to Bond, a suspect in a murder-arson, instead of saying something like, "Chuck Lee, huh? Oh yeah, he's waiting at the station, let's get you there right away." Also c'mon Bond, was your investigation into Zorin so secret that Chuck was the only person at the CIA who could have confirmed your identity/mission? The CIA's a pretty big company, so I doubt this was an Infernal Affairs affair where if one person dies then your undercover operation is fucked - there was probably somebody supervising his activity. How 'bout Felix Leiter? Have them call Felix. No need to go tearing down the streets of San Francisco in a fire engine, endangering countless pedestrians (granted, mostly vagrants and hippies, possibly one or two of the guys from Night Ranger) and becoming a fugative for real rather than spending a few hours at the police department to clear this shit up and then go after Zorin. Speaking of Zorin, how did he know Chuck Lee was working with Bond? I mean assuming Zorin had Chuck Lee killed and it wasn't some other unrelated case he was working on that got him deep-sixed. Zorin wouldn't have known Bond was in town until his cronies he beat up at Tanya Roberts' house earlier the same day told him, which again is a pretty small amount of time for Zorin to connect Bond to his CIA contact and set up a hit in or around Chinatown. Look, the bad guys already killed Patrick Macnee, a pretty high profile sidekick hit if you ask me, I'm just saying they got a little greedy dispatching another ally off-screen for the sole purpose of making things awkward for Bond.)

So did Short Round set up the tickets? From the car, while speeding between rickshaws and fruit stands and being shot at? Not bloody likely. I guess we just have to accept that Indy, in a premonition as astonishing as Lao's, had always planned to run alongside a giant gong, crash through a window, fall several stories and survive, land in Shorty's Boat-tail Speedster and have a plane ready to whisk him away from danger. (To be fair, he does typically seem to have a plan to have a plane waiting for him, a'la Jacques at the beginning of Raiders...the exception being the beginning of Last Crusade. Jesus, how long was he floating in the middle of the ocean before being picked up? Then again, the only way he could have survived hanging onto the submarine in Raiders would be if he had aquatic powers so...case closed.)

3. What's Indy even doing this mercenary work for? I guess it's established this is his pre-Raiders, love-and-leave-a-Marian-Ravenwood-in-every-country, threatened-with-castration-by-sultans Han Solo stage, where he's after "fortune and glory," might not even work at the university yet or have any interest in denoting his finds to a museum phase. If so, I wonder if there's going to be a remastered version of Temple of Doom that digitally puts Chen firing a shot at Indy before he skewers him with the pigeons flambee - Chen shot first! I admit to liking this version of Indy ("I spared his life" possibly being his most badass line) but it seems like quite a bit to set up/put on the line for some tiny fucking diamond. To first locate the remains of Nurhachi (and who knows the time and expense devoted to that), then almost get killed when the sons try to steal it from him, then to set Wu Han up as a waiter at Club Obi Wan, make sure Short Round is directly outside the club just in case he and Wu Han (or whatever ditsy shrieky broad ends up taking his place) have to jump out a window and race to the airport...after all that effort, you'd think he'd at least make sure he wasn't flying on fucking Lao Che Airlines...right??**

And finally, did you actually watch the movie, Cooney? Who wouldn't want Capshaw dead?

* Isn't it funny that Indy is always prepared for betrayal yet uncharacteristically errs to such poor judgement in Last Crusade? The very first time we see him in Raiders, he thwarts a backstabber's attempt to stab him in the back (with a gun). When Sallah drops the line at the top of the Well of Souls, Indy instantly assumes his most trusted companion has turned on him (either that or he's just annoyed that Sallah dropped the line? I could never read that for sure, although he seems pretty pissed). But in Crusade he trusts both Elsa and Donovan, who explicitly told him not to trust anyone! And he's got plenty of time to think about it, it's not like putting your faith in Sapito in the intensity of the moment in Raiders ("You throw me the idol, I throw you the whip!") While I understand falling for Allison Doody even if you were pretty sure she was a Nazi, you see Julian Glover coming you should just assume he's a bad guy.

** I should mention that in the original script, Lao Che does not own the airplane. Instead of sabotaging the flight, he sends two bi-planes after the escapees. The bi-planes effectively punch a bullet hole in the fuel tank and kill the pilots. I guess they ultimately decided that too much adrenalized action would make an audience far too weary to sit through the elephant rides and dinner parties of the next half hour.

CHRIS FUNDERBURG

Look, you guys should be focusing on the real problem with that movie: Kate Capshaw is being treated like an actual movie star and someone any theoretical audience member might be excited to see in a movie! Also, she accidentally attempts to use a bat as a bath towel and dry off with it. A fucking bat. Because any part of a bat even for one second feels like a towel. But she's a very talented physical comedian with a long and respected career as a yuckster, so I guess ol' Spielberg just had to let her do her thing. The audience coming to see the film would've been disappointed without a continuous barrage of Kate Capshaw-based physical comedy, like the aforementioned bat incident, but also several instance of bug-touching and at least one comic partfall. That's mainly what the audience was there for - to see her faint and scream and and pretend to hold vomit in her mouth after she sees something particularly disgusting. Shit like that. That's what you see a Kate Capshaw movie for and I'm sorry if didn't like it, Paul.

Plus, we can all agree Short Round's broken Engrish is hilarious. His language doesn't have the letter "L" so it's hard for him to pronounce!

Paul, I'm guessing you stopped watching the film after the exciting beginning and turned it off when they get to India and just spend a half an hour doing fucking nothing whatsoever. They're just standing around, a starving kid who shows up, then more stilted English. There's just nothing going on. Well, Kate Capshaw does have a bit of a comical time attempting to mount an elephant!

Anyhoo, this is why I hate all of the sentiment shitting all over Crystal Skull - did any of you people actually see the other movies? They use an inflatable raft as a goddamn parachute and Indy rides a submarine across the Mediterranean ocean! There's a magic immortal knight living in a cave in one of them! Nuke the fridge, my ballsack.

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