You're not overthinking it -
it's ignorant and racist. I believe the screenwriters (who helped Lucas on Star Wars and American Graffiti and then went on to write the annoying bullshit you hear in this movie and then wrote/directed Howard the fucking Duck) have since tried to push some of that off on the fact the films they were homaging were
also colonialist and closed-minded, but there's really not too much of an excuse in 1984 to just...
keep doing that. Raiders didn't work because they just did the same ol' bullshit the serials did. It worked because they did it bigger, better, leaner, louder.
I think both Lucas and Spielberg, who apparently didn't even fucking
notice at the time, caught that backlash shortly after release and it
really fucked with them. A lot of people have since focused on how the violence and the "birth of the PG-13" shit really shook Spielberg, and caused him to publicly apologize for aspects of Temple, but they also both started changing worldviews after having their own ignorant bullshit woven into their film so neatly.
But that's
also part of the film's power and energy - almost
everything kinda
mean-spirited, gross, crazy and petulant-little-boy about those two came bubbling up in Temple of Doom because of the confluence of personal life bullshit, sequel pressure, just life in general... It's one of the more
weirdly personal films for Spielberg (which is probably why he was apologizing so much for it - not just for having let it get out the door like that, but for having shown so much of himself, and not the GOOD self), and because of that it's one of his more fascinating. I also think he's partially apologizing for basically
not giving a fuck while he was making it. The whole movie kinda feels like its' up on two wheels like a speeding, wobbly minecart, and that adds some excitement to it that otherwise wouldn't be there.
Plus it's one of the best directed things he's ever done, especially on the action front.
Which leads one to believe that it'd be well appreciated here considering it's juvenile, snotty, "fuck you I don't care if you're offended" tone
should play well in this setting, but it turns out there are a lot of people here who think the best Indiana Jones movie is the flat, sitcom-esque third one that drains almost all tension and danger out of the series (and the set-pieces, save for the opener), turns the supporting characters into total idiots, and seems generally pleased to just be a safe, toothless parody of itself.
Last Crusade is like an Indiana Jones movie for the universe in which ABC's TGIF lineup from the '90s is
real life.
Anyway, there's nothing in this post that's going to be more insightful than what Walter Chaw already wrote for Film Freak when the blu-ray set came out.
