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When We Were Young - an 80s and 90s pop culture podcast · When We Were Young podcast

“I Had Bugs For Lunch” - Indiana Jones Sequels

·1 hr 53 min·5 clips
Temple of Doom is placed in 1935, opens May 23, 1984, and helped create the PG-13 rating.
When We Were Young opens by warning that these childhood movies are not nearly as family-friendly as people liked to pretend. Chris introduces himself with a joke about Missouri and snakes. Becky answers with a dry line about hating water. Seth frames the run as a continued hunt through the Indiana Jones canon. The show has just finished talking about Raiders of the Lost Ark, and now the group moves on to the sequels. Temple of Doom gets the first and biggest stretch of attention. The hosts point out how strange it is to begin a sequel with a musical number in Chinese. They also note Harrison Ford in a tuxedo, which pushes Indiana toward a more James Bond-like presence. The Shanghai setting makes the movie feel more like a spy adventure than the first film. The panel likes the way the opening sequence is staged. They single out the diamond chase, the ice confusion, and Indiana hiding behind giant gauze as especially well handled. For them, Spielberg's attention is strongest in that opening stretch. After that, the movie feels more stitched together. They describe it as a little slapdash in both writing and direction. The film still looks good, but the momentum wobbles. The conversation also drifts into acting choices that do not always land, including a plane sequence and a strangely irritated reaction to danger.

As heard by us

A funny, wary look at Indiana Jones sequel chaos and the rough seams underneath.

When We Were Young treats the Indiana Jones sequel run as a useful way to sit with how much stranger the franchise gets after the first hit. It does its best work when childhood memory, joke cracking, and a real sense of unease all stay in the same frame.

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Why you'd press play

You want a funny, wary look at Indiana Jones sequels through a nostalgia-soaked, anything-goes podcast.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →
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