Indiana Jones and The Temple of Doom - Willie Scott edition

If adventure has a name, it must be Indiana Jones! Join Indy, his young sidekick Short Round, and famous American vocalist Willie Scott, on a quest for fortune and glory.

Indiana Jones and The Temple of Doom is our hero’s darkest adventure. After finding the remains of an ancient Chinese Emperor, Indy travels from China to India. There he risks his life, and soul, to recover a holy relic from the deadly cult of Kali worshippers.

The Willie Scott edition is a fanedit with a stronger female lead (removing excessive screaming and whining) and fewer distractions that pull the viewer out of the story (removing badly-dated special effects). Care was taken to cut as little as possible to achieve these goals (originally 118 minutes, edited down to 112 minutes).

Tagline: less whining and fewer dated special effects
Video: 1080p MKV
Audio: AC3 5.1 (640kbps)
Subtitles: Yes (English, not hard-coded)

CHANGES:
-Retained full Cole Porter song. I tried cutting the glittering dream sequence, but didn't like the opening's pacing with that gone.
-Cut Willie's unfunny line about Nurhachi being a "real small guy".
-Reduced Willie's screaming as they fall through the canopies outside the Obi-Wan Club.
-Cut Short Round's line "This is fun". It felt wrong while they're being chased and shot at.
-Willie does not lose Indy's gun during the car chase, nor complains about a cracked nail.
-Removed the pilot's snickering as he leaves the plane.
-Reduced Willie's screaming as they get ready to jump out of the airplane.
-Faded Willie's scream after they jump out of the plane.
-Cut 3 brief poorly-done green-screen shots as the raft goes down the mountain.
-‎The raft falls into the river from a short cliff. One gravity-defying leap is enough.
-‎Smoother transition onto the shaman.
-Reduced Willie's whining when they mount the elephants.
-Short Round calls his elephant "best friend" once, not twice.
-Willie does not scream at the jungle nightlife, letting us focus on Indy and Short Round's poker game. This scene helps establish the strength of their bond, making Indy's momentary betrayal and subsequent redemption in the temple all the more heart-wrenching.
-‎Cut comments about the flying foxes. They are not vampire bats.
-The dinner scene is reduced. No eyeball soup, and fewer shocked responses from Willie and Short Round. The monkey brains are retained because they're too iconic to remove (viewers would miss them).
-Small trim to Indy getting strangled in his room.
-‎Small trim to Willie offering herself to Indy.
-No distracting dead bodies pop out in the secret passage. Perhaps use it for a Goonies edit, not here.
-Cut Willie pushing on the statue's breasts. There was no point, she already had a door open.
-Trimmed Willie's panic over the bugs. No more whining over her nails.
-‎Cut the obviously fake cave between the trap-room and the temple.
-Cut the brief shot of Mola Ram's hand entering the Thuggee victim chest. What a lousy "special" effect! Now the heart-ripping scene plays the same as UK censors required it.
-‎Reduced the weakest effect shots in and of the lava pit.
-‎Slight trim to Indy being forced to drink Kali's blood.
-Reduced some of Willie's screaming as she's lowered into the pit. Again remove the least successful effects shots in and of the lava pit. Including fireball licking toward Willie.
-Cut lackey getting konked on the head with sledgehammer ala Looney Tunes.
-‎Cut worst stop-motion shots from mine-car chase. Cut worst fake-lava too.
-‎Trimmed bad guys falling to the crocodiles, to remove worst special effects.
-Lots of audio transitions were reworked to keep the flow of the beat of John Williams' wonderful score. (The sacrifice scene in the temple was frustrating because the tempo kept accelerating, making it harder to hide cuts!).
-‎Added FE logos at start and end.
-‎Updated the English subtitles (not hard-coded).

Updated cover:


Old cover:

Temple of Doom was the first Indiana Jones I saw in the cinema, and it's always kept a special place. Years later I understood the flaws and excessive darkness compared to Raiders and Last Crusade. I hoped that someone would find a way to improve it.

Fast forward to the present, and lo and behold: there's software which enables fans to edit movies, and a lively community of experienced faneditors who share their expertise and show what's possible with their own edits.

Here then is my attempt to make ToD a better Indiana Jones movie. Making Willie Scott less annoying and minimizing the most grating dated special effects is all that's needed. Six minutes are cut. Where possible, excessive screams were silenced without cutting frames. No scenes are shifted around, no deleted scenes are added ('cause there ain't any), the colors are unchanged.

The jungle poker game is a wonderful moment between Indy and Short Round, which is no longer ruined by Willie's screaming and running around. Password: fanedit.org

Is this complete? Been absolutely years since I last saw this and have been meaning to check out an edit. Can't remember anything about it really, just the rough plot. 

Clip looks good. I can't tell what you've cut.

The Scribbling Man said:

I can't tell what you've cut.

Click to expand...

Thanks! Here's the uncut clip for comparison. Password: fanedit.org

This scene is the pinnacle of Willie's screaming, but certainly not the only one. Added together it's just too distracting. I didn't remove all screaming (if you were standing in a room full of bugs you'd be right to scream too), just most of it.

The edit is nearly complete. Audio clean-up is taking time. Where possible I'm removing screams without cutting frames, i.e. cleaning up the audio channels.

Nicely done! I don't mind the original though.  Maybe her character is a bit too much  in the context of the whole film - I don't know,  I'd have to watch it again - but just from watching this clip, it's clear that by cutting it out you're eliminating the comic nature of the scene (I.e. Scream all you want, we don't care).

Both versions work, but in different ways. The original is more comical, but your version is more endearing. Maybe I'd see it differently if I was more familiar with the film.

On another note, this scene must have been pretty tricky to edit given what you've been saying about your editing process. Did you have a clean centre channel to work with?

The Scribbling Man said:

Did you have a clean centre channel to work with?

Click to expand...

Surrounding audio bleeds into the center channel. Fortunately the dialog does not bleed into the other channels. So separation is only a small headache. In the scene above Willie runs from left to right. Her screaming goes cleanly from left to center to right.

With John Williams' rousing score, it's so not terrible to listen through the scenes over and over again.   And thankfully the score is not as ever-present as Silvestri's great music in Back to the Future. That one was a much bigger headache to get the audio transitions smooth.

sorry but i felt the cover needed some help a little
this is just a rough draft

version 2- tweaked

I prefer the OP cover with the text properly laid out on the back cover. A dropped black shadow on the yellow text would improve it IMO.

@"jswert123456" , Nice! Thanks! I didn't know the image you put on the front cover. I like it!

Here's a funny scene that definitely went over my head when I was a kid. :angel:
Password: fanedit.org

Lol. Didn't get it too until much later.

This seems like a cool edit. I knew that removing Willie's screaming would be helpful, but now seeing what the Poker game could be, it's really helpful. Great work.

professorwho said:

Lol. Didn't get it too until much later.

This seems like a cool edit. I knew that removing Willie's screaming would be helpful, but now seeing what the Poker game could be, it's really helpful. Great work.

Click to expand...

Thank you. And welcome to the forum!

Here's a clip of Kate Capshaw talking about her role as Willie Scott. It sounds like the character wasn't entirely fleshed out before they started shooting. She also finds that too much screaming made it into the movie. Password: fanedit.org

TM2YC said:

I prefer the OP cover with the text properly laid out on the back cover. A dropped black shadow on the yellow text would improve it IMO.

Click to expand...

with the covers i create , i try to have some cohesive nature to it.
the OP cover had the white front, just next to thhis brown back cover.
just wanted to help a little.

jswert123456 said:

the OP cover had the white front, just next to thhis brown back cover.

Click to expand...

Yeah, that transition grates a bit on my eyes too. I like the poster image I used for the front AND the reddish-brown background. I tried putting that around the poster and it looked ugly. So I tried the hard transition.

With the title for my edit, Willie obviously has to be the front cover. And not just looking like a damsel in distress. And the whole thing ought to look credible as Indiana Jones material. Within those parameters, I'm certainly open to ideas.

Tagline: In the Temple of Doom no one can hear you scream

Why oh why did Lucasfilm sign off on all the effects and models used in ToD? This was after the amazing visuals of Star Wars, Empire and ROTJ!

Here an example of a fake-looking, and superfluous, shot as our heroes reach the Temple cave. The first clip shows the Willie Scott edition, the second clip is the original. The cut bit could have been acceptable for a 1960s Ray Harryhausen movie, but it has no place in a 1980s Indy adventure. Password: fanedit.org

jswert123456 said:

with the covers i create , i try to have some cohesive nature to it.

Click to expand...

I prefer a nice wraparound cover style too.

I concur on that shot you removed. As you say, it doesn't look terrible by older standards, but it feels out of place in this film, and tbh is completely superfluous. It doesn't even look visually consistent with the scenes that sandwich it.

I'd like an English LPCM 2.0 sourced from the Laserdiscs to be included

CourtlyHades296 said:

I'd like an English LPCM 2.0 sourced from the Laserdiscs to be included

Click to expand...

Is that a request?