How Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom's Heart Pull Scene Changed Hollywood and Created the PG-13 Rating

One scene in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom changed Hollywood forever: the heart pull led directly to the creation of the PG-13 rating. Ke Huy Quan said he wasn't allowed to see that scene, and what's craziest is that I think most of us never actually saw the full heart pull the first time we saw this movie. The true beating heart of the film is Short Round, a beacon in the darkest Indiana Jones movie.

This was the first Indy movie I saw as a kid, from a copy my family taped off a cable TV airing. That, along with my dad getting picked from the crowd for the Indiana Jones Epic Stunt Spectacular at Disney's MGM Studios, made me love Indiana Jones so much that I wore a jacket I thought made me look like him. Steven Spielberg and George Lucas have disavowed Temple of Doom, but I believe there is still love to find here.

Club Obi Wan's opening lays out the elements of Spielberg's mousetrap

The first four Indiana Jones movies cross dissolve from the Paramount logo to a mountain peak, and here it is the metal gong in the Shanghai nightclub Club Obi Wan, one of many Lucasfilm references. That rolling disc is what Indy later uses to shield himself from gunfire. Spielberg often shows the audience every element of the mousetrap first so he can light the fuse and pay it off later. That even applies to the opening number, Cole Porter's Anything Goes, which Indy calls back to. The dancers pull red scarves from each other's chests, foreshadowing Mola Ram's Kali move, and Willie emerges from an onstage hellmouth just as she later emerges from a real volcanic one.

Kate Capshaw learned the lyrics in Mandarin and learned to tap dance, though she hardly dances because of an insane dress Barbara Matera designed from original beads of the 1920s and 30s. The dress appears later drying on a branch, and when they shot that scene, which came before the Shanghai scene, the elephant kept eating it. Matera had to do rushed repairs, and the insurance form read dress eaten by elephants. Spielberg frames Willie in front of the Indiana Jones text as if this diva is trying to steal Indy's spotlight. Capshaw's uncertain whoa came at the end of a take, and Spielberg chose to keep it as a character beat showing Willie's flaws.

Why I think Kate Capshaw's Willie deserves a fairer hearing

A lot of people over the years have been tough on Willie, and some accuse Spielberg of casting Capshaw just so he could marry her a few years later. But come on: Spielberg and Capshaw have been married for 32 years now, a rare successful Hollywood marriage. James Cameron and Martin Scorsese have each had five wives, while Capshaw and Spielberg are on their second. I think Capshaw does her best to play a character written to be the polar opposite of Marion Ravenwood.

The number transitions into a Busby Berkeley style dance break, the first time Spielberg shot a musical sequence, something he later proved a master at with 2021's West Side Story. There's no way Club Obi Wan had a back room that big or that the audience could see this, so it's really a fantasy, and the shot of dancers popping up from the splits is actually reversed footage.

Lao Che, a 1935 setting and a Goldfinger homage

Willie locks eyes with crime boss Lao Che. One of his sons is missing a finger from a fight with Indy the night before, which later throws off his aim with the tommy gun. The film is set in Shanghai in 1935, a year before Raiders of the Lost Ark, which Spielberg did to avoid Nazis being the villains again so Raiders would be the first time Indy crossed them. Indy's friend Wu Han dies in this scene, possibly explaining why Indy had to make new friends to trust in Peru in 1936.

Indy wears the same white tux with a red flower that Sean Connery wore in Goldfinger. Spielberg said his dream starting out was to make a 007 movie, but he couldn't get MGM and Cubby Broccoli to hire him, so he put this homage in, and it later inspired casting Connery as Indy's father. The nightclub scramble is so much fun: there are two Wilhelm screams, and the band keeps playing Anything Goes even after Indy crashes into it, which suggests bar fights are common at a club named after Obi Wan Kenobi.

Short Round and Ke Huy Quan's long road back

Ke Huy Quan was one of 6,000 kids who auditioned, and he only showed up to help his brother. The producer saw him rehearsing and loved his personality. After The Goonies he was typecast in stereotypical roles, worked on stunt crews including the 2000 X-Men film, and almost gave up acting until Everything Everywhere All at Once renewed his career. Short Round wears a 1928 New York Giants hat, while Indy's pilot Jock in Raiders wore a Yankees hat, and blocks are strapped to his feet to reach the pedals.

Dan Aykroyd cameos as Weber, who arranges the flight; he later cofounded Crystal Head vodka, interested in the same crystal skull legend Spielberg and Lucas used in the fourth film. Spielberg, Lucas, Frank Marshall and Kathleen Kennedy appear as the missionaries in the background. Raiders opened with Indy escaping by air, and Spielberg subverts that here, with John Williams ending the Raiders march on a discordant minor note right on Lao Che's name. This flight and the mountain slide were originally meant for Raiders, ending at Marion's bar in Nepal, but were considered too ridiculous for that film. A motorcycle chase on the Great Wall was also pitched, but China refused, and the wall is much further north than Shanghai anyway.

The raft jump, India's refusal and a darker film than intended

MythBusters proved the only way to survive an inflatable raft jump from a plane is to use it as a parachute. For the shot, they threw a real inflating raft with three dummies out of a plane above Mammoth, California, and it inflated fully and bounced on the first take, which is the one in the movie. Production moved to Twin Falls, Idaho, for the cliff and the American River in California for the rapids. None of this was in India, because India would not allow filming, having rightfully found the script a bit offensive: devil worshipping cults, child slavery, brainwashed officials. India banned the film on release but has since rescinded the ban.

I'm not going to pretend white saviorism isn't a thing in Temple of Doom, and I think we can all agree that Indy movies are just better when they're fighting Nazis. Spielberg himself called it too dark, too subterranean and much too horrific, saying the best part was meeting his future wife. Lucas attributed the darkness to his divorce and said his and Spielberg's bad moods made a darker movie than intended. After complaints about the violence, Spielberg suggested the MPAA add a middle ground rating between PG and R, which is how we got PG-13. Still, Amrish Puri kept his bald look because it elevated his career, Ke Huy Quan continues to defend the film, and I think it's okay to love it.

The village shaman, a shooting star and fortune and glory

The village shaman tells Indy about the darkness spreading from the palace, and the actor wipes his eyes on the word darkness, showing the worst tragedy is the tears shed over their stolen children. Indy folds his hands and Short Round copies him, a gesture Spielberg also used in Jaws. The stone's three lines represent the three levels of Hindu cosmology: heaven, earth and the netherworld.

A shooting star passes above Indy and Short Round, as one did above Brody in Jaws. Joseph McBride's biography tells of Spielberg's dad waking him to see a meteor shower that amazed and terrified him, so I think Spielberg uses the shooting star as a symbol of fathers plunging into darkness to save their kids. When Indy says fortune and glory, he seems weary rather than excited. He knows faith gives these stones meaning, so it's not his fortune and glory; it's theirs.

Pankot Palace, gross out dinners and the spike chamber

The poker argument came from an improvised bit Quan and Harrison Ford did for his audition. Willie's story about her magician grandfather, I think, came from Spielberg's great uncle Boris, a circus performer explored in The Fabelmans. At Pankot Palace, Captain Blumburtt is played by Philip Stone, Delbert Grady in The Shining. The dinner serves animals Willie ran into the night before, which drives me crazy because Indian cuisine is the best. Roshan Seth, who plays the prime minister, says Spielberg intended it as a joke on westerners' assumptions, but it was too subtle. I just think Spielberg wanted to gross us out in a sophomoric phase.

The assassin blends into a mural, shown twice before he moves on the third. In the bug chamber, Indy could have escaped but turns back so Short Round wouldn't be alone, which is really sweet. Capshaw said she took a Valium to get through 2,000 real bugs. I think Indy's growl through the crevice is a nod to The Shining, and Spielberg said this was his favorite scene to shoot, mostly for the coda of Willie bumping the trigger again.

The Thuggee cult, Kali and Amrish Puri's Mola Ram

Thuggees were bands of thieves and murderers in India from the 14th to 19th centuries, and the English word thug traces back to the Hindi word for swindler. But the cult here is fiction, mixing Aztec cardiectomies, Hawaiian volcanic sacrifice, West African and Haitian voodoo and European devil worship, so over the top it isn't meant to look like any real group. Kali is a real Hindu deity, though more complex than a goddess of death. She appears around 600 CE in the Devi Mahatmya as a battlefield goddess personifying Durga's wrath, and today represents duality, a destroyer of evil, a kind of Mother Nature.

Amrish Puri, one of the most important figures in Indian cinema, plays Mola Ram, whom Spielberg called "his favorite villain the best the world has produced and ever will." The headpiece uses cow horns so it would be seen as sacrilegious. India has only six volcanoes and one is active, and no one would build a mine into one, so the more over the top it gets, the less we should see it as a realistic depiction of India.

Did Mola Ram really pull out that heart?

If you only saw it on cable, you probably missed the full effect; TV censors cut most of it, and some American edits punch in so you don't see the heart. I'm 100 percent certain I never saw it until the Blu-ray in my 20s, yet I have vivid Mandela effect memories of it. Maybe a friend described it and my memory framed itself around that.

One interpretation is that Mola Ram is a con man illusionist using a fake heart and a timed flame burst, which could explain why he doesn't do it to Willie or Indy. I prefer these movies where divine powers are real, so my final verdict: "he actually pulled that heart out." When Indy takes the stones, the snake statue above them moves slightly, another creepy detail. The chief guard is Pat Roach, returning from Raiders, and yes, they darkened his skin, which is not great.

Short Round pulls Indy back from hell

During the whipping, Indy's breath blows out the candles but one flame stays lit, a spark of hope Short Round will reignite with fire. Mola Ram threatens the Hebrew and Christian gods, and all Indy movies do kind of acknowledge a higher power: the Hebrew God, Shiva, the Christian God and interdimensional aliens. Lit from below like Mola Ram, Indy looks like he's wearing a creepy mask. Short Round's ladder move is the coolest of the film and inspires the kids to revolt. The hero who pulls Indy back from hell is this little guy, and every act of kindness Indy showed him pays off. It may be cliche, but "love truly does conquer all."

As in the spike room, Indy refuses to leave without everyone. Eighty percent was shot on sound stages at Elstree Studios, and while Douglas Slocombe made it look good, the mousetrap mechanics feel a bit artificial. As a kid, though, I was amazed by Quan's stunts, like ducking so a guard trips and climbing into the moving cart.

The mine cart chase and Indy's appeal to Shiva

The mine cart chase was mostly shot by ILM with miniatures on a track, stop motion and cave walls of painted aluminum foil. Movies aren't meant to be paused, and with blue screen shots, screams and Ben Burtt's sound design, we feel on the roller coaster. Elliot Scott built a multilevel circular track lit differently each take, and Spielberg and editor Michael Kahn spliced brief miniature shots between medium shots, the way ILM shot the Star Wars trench run. The water gushing shot is reused with the trio fleeing, then the rock breaks, then the bridge, a great example of heightening. Frank Marshall filmed the reptiles in Florida with a second unit, and in Florida we got gators, which you can tell by the rounded snouts.

Indy flees dozens of Thuggees, a nod to Han Solo chasing stormtroopers. On the bridge, Indy appeals to Shiva, mixing Hindi and English, and the stones burn. All other forms of magic here could possibly be explained away, but this is one undeniable form of divine power. Indy has climbed through all three levels to see the light. Willie ends in Indy's Shanghai clothes, and she's right that the stone would just collect dust in a museum; these treasures belong to the cultures that gave them meaning. Spielberg said "I came out of the darkness of Temple of Doom" into the light of his future wife, Quan's light was rediscovered, and for me the light is my first Indy thrill as a kid. What light did Temple of Doom bring into your life?