Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom

"Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom" disappointed a number of Indy fans, perhaps surprised at the darker tone of the second film, and is generally regarded as the weakest film of what is currently a trilogy. Not so the novelisation.Whereas the first book was a turgid and often plodding slog this second volume gets the tone absolutely spot-on. The joy of the Indiana Jones films is that they are are B-movies, big budget and carefully crafted, but essentially homages to the Saturday serials and action adventures of the thirties, and the novelisation of "Raiders" seemed to entirely miss that point, and thus failed to capture the thrills and flavour of the cinema version. It cannot be easy writing a novel based on a screenplay anyway, since there is a severe time constraint and the very real possibility that the finished movie may veer dramatically (ahem... no pun intended) from the early written version. This is certainly one reason for a few of the more disappointing scene changes in the "Raiders" novel."Temple," however, is much closer to the finished film, adding to it by way of thoughts and motivations for the characters but thankfully avoiding the trap of getting mired down in efforts to produce a "serious" work. James Kahn's book is slim and has rather large type when compared to the first and third novelisations, but in this case I regard that as a plus.The pace is furious, the action as ripsnorting as you could wish and even - goodness, I can't believe I'm saying it - Short Round actually comes over as rather a good character, which is more than you can say for the film. Indeed, going back to the movie after reading this book I found that my disappointment with the second film had abated somewhat. It is still a less exciting ride than "Raiders" and not such a glorious romp as "Crusade," yet there is much to enjoy on screen and especially in this book. A pity that Mr Kahn did not pen the later original Indy novels, as they would have been vastly improved by a writer with a keen sense of what a damn good B-movie should be all about. Hats off, indeed.