This version came out of wanting to have this film be more in-sync with the series by removing some of the gore, over the top horror and editing/consistency mistakes. This is not to say it escapes the Dark nature of the film (all there), just makes it more watchable for families, younger audiences or just in general for those that felt it may have gone too far in some spots and/or breaks the Indy mold on a few things. You can always edit in the horror type scenes in your own edit if you want, but this one makes the film work better for me personally. I have tried to bring it more up to date with some of the edit/FX fixes since it is nearly 40 years later. I understand there will always be those that think the original should not be touched and of course you always have that version, but this one presents an alternate experience that I think has its place. Some of the ideas and issues where made apparent by post from Infodroid and ADigitalman’s version (which I have not seen), and some of the descriptions on scenes they called out are also here supporting their analysis some of the questionable scenes. I also went to moviemistakes.com site to see what actually was there on this film from a consistency and editing mistake perspective. It is clear that they could not fix some of the issues in 1984 due to tech constraints.
This version’s format will be in MP4 320 bitrate, HD 1080P, AAC 5.1 audio with both 2D and SBS 3D versions. Edits are below:
46 edits
**Update: The editing is now complete and only have some of the FX and recomposites for mine car chase onward to go at this point.
Beginning
-Edited to show Willie’s dreaming away segment to show in her mind she is performing in a bigger place than she is when the dance number cuts to the large auditorium shot with now 27 non-Asian looking dancers (different clothes etc). This was explained in the novel as a look into her aspirations about where she wants her career to be, but on screen it did not translate with just a hard cut that to most just looks odd since one minute we are in a club and then next you are in a dark, grey lit huge hall somewhere. The enter and exit from the club dragon on stage, now have some FX to better show this transition.
-Some bad guys throw knives at Indy as the band is seated, then Indy throws a cymbal at one of the bad guys and the entire band is now gone as second later. Fixed two shots here, so the band is not there at all once the chaos starts. No disappearing and reappearing.
-Willie frantically searches for the diamond after the ice has been spilled on the floor, but has a red glove on her right hand that is not there in any other shots. Digitally removed glove for this shot to be consistent with next set of shots.
-Fixed the scene in the Obi Wan nightclub when Indiana runs out of the window with Willie. Indiana is running behind the gong and we see him collect Willie for a split second. However; Willie was really 20 feet away in the next shot as seen from behind the gong, where Indiana has yet to reach here before they jump out of the window. Removed her from the first shot in that sequence where she should not be there.
-When they jump out the window at Club Obi Wan, Willie has white shin guards on for the stunt and removed when they land. Guards digitally removed off her legs when she exits window.
-When they hit the second to last awning, there is a close up on the actors. Just before they hit the awning, with butt-shaped indentation in the fabric from a previous take. Digitally fixed, so they are hitting the awning for the first time and the material is smooth.
-Placed the missing shoe back in the rickshaw driver where it was missing (had fell off) in an action shot.
-Flipped a few shots of the rickshaw to correct continuity. Sailor and girlfriend kept swapping sides.
-After the pilots have jumped from the plane, they look at the empty cockpit, and in the shot of the front windshield after Indy repeats “fuel” a few times the windshield view is reversed. Corrected so it stays consistent in all shots.
-Reduced Willie’s screaming by a few screams as they fall out of the airplane on the raft. At a point it’s almost too much/to continuous. It almost didn’t need to be an edit, but tends to drown out the great music that is building at that point.
The village
-Shortened the village dinner scene with the shaman to about half as long, while still explaining everything that has happen. Also shortened when they go outside repeating the whole story basically again. Although he still talks about the rocks and the context of what they look like. Once the audience has the backstory, it cuts to later that evening when the boy comes which explains the children piece, so you don’t need to hear that 3 x (if you count short round and Indy at night on the ridge who talks about it - that is kept in).
-Also removed in the outside at the stone alter, in the scene where Willie is willing asking about the stones and the shaman all of a sudden switches to Hindi with Indy translating (which is almost a 3rd repeat of the stone story) It was odd he has to speak in a foreign language (his native) to answer questions that Willie ask, but is always speaking in English to Indy. The whole scene is done in 2.5 minutes to improve pacing for this long break in action.
The Trek
-After Indy says, “We’re not going to Delhi, Doll, we’re going to Pankot Palace.” Some of Willie’s over-the-top whining has been removed (about needing to call her agent etc.) Was hard to remove all without messing up music sync, so only this small part. Did remove the extra push-in shot of the village shaman praying watching them leave which slowed down the pace of the cuts that Instead now follows the music to the wide river scene shot.
-At the elephant fall-off, cut extra Willie line about having friends and expensive houses as it was over the top and just kept going on and on while she sits in the water. I think after about 30 sec of complaining, the audience gets it that she is not an outdoor person.
-For the warning statue, made a small edit at where we see closeups of fingers and blood bowls. Removed these closeups in this PG/alt version. You already know it is bad when he tells them not to come any further and we still see the fingers if watching on a big screen, just not detail.
First night at Palace
-When the three walk towards the palace the very first time, there are stones that are not composited well, but got fixed in the UHD, Cleaned the black matte lines for this shot.
-The dinner scene is reworked. Very little beetles, no eyeball soup. Only the chilled monkey brains and a snake minus the surprise remains. As Infodroid pointed out, a comparatively subtle reaction to the snake from Willie and Short Round is all that’s needed. The scene now has a much more narrative feeling to it while Indy insults his hosts by mentioning rumored re-emergence of the Thuggee cult and the plot is nicely moved forward without cutting back and forth to the gross dinner food every two seconds. The monkey brains remain as they because it is great nostalgia from the 80’s and one of the signature things people remember about this movie. I have not seen Infodroid’s cut, so this is my version on how to move this scene along, yet still maintain what it is.
-Cut Willie pushing on the “breasts” of the 2nd statue. There was no point here, they already have the actual hidden door open that she wouldn’t go into. Why try to open or find another one that your friends are not inside.
The Ceremony
-When Indiana, Short Round, and Willie are watching the ceremony at the Temple of Doom, just after Indy says “nobody has seen this for 100 years” you can also see Indy, shirtless, down near the alter on the top left of the screen and the skull is lit up. When Mola Ram walks out, it isn’t lit and will not be for a few minutes later in the movie. Fixed by removing Indy and the stones in the skull are gone since they are not to be placed there yet.
-Cut entire sequence with Thuggee victim getting his heart ripped out and being lowered into the pit. This “PG” version excludes the sustained images of organs being pulled out and guys screaming, helplessly as they’re engulfed in flames. Much of the violence is toned down. The Thuggees are evil enough being creepy cult worshippers and having stolen the shankara stones and all the village’s children. In an indirect way, this puts more focus on the cult being the evil is up against. There is still black magic, vodoo and all, but the focus on the evil actions of the cult and their leader.
-When Indy goes down near the snake statue, he tilts his hat to the fake snake, but when he walks away it moves to the left as if a crew member is just moving it (maybe as a joke?). Regardless, it does not make any sense for solid statue to move it’s upper area and head. fixed so snake statue does not move.
-Indy looks up at the skinned people in a closeup shot of them hanging and we hear there body’s skin flapping. Since this is a PG version, removed the closeup and adjusted the music to flow by without it, we do see these “human body skins up high and far off”, but just not as a closeup in this version.
-Indy is whipped a few times and on one hit, blood flies off his back. While this could have stayed in for a PG, I took it out to make it less violent especially with the stream of blood flying off. Instead it cuts to Short getting whipped which is already pretty crazy. After Indy calls them bastards, it cuts back to Indy. Some of hitting is off screen, so it is still happening and nothing is really removed from the scene as far as what is going on, just not as intensely violent.
-Cut Indy announcing an offering of “flesh and blood” to Kali. Indy’s mind is controlled by Mola Ram now and so this scene is extra in dragging things along. We are going to see and understand that he will be under mind control without going over the top with it.
-When Willie is put into the cage, she has many necklaces around her neck. However, a few seconds later when Mola R walks up to her, all of the necklaces have completely vanished with no sign of anyone actually removing them. I have digitally removed the extra necklaces in the two shots of the scene so it does not look weird and that they just vanish and reappear.
-Cut Willie’s line “I’m not going to have anything nice to say about this place when I get back.” which is just a silly line when she pleads for Indy to help her on the lowering into the pit scene. It feels more natural to cut this out because in all scenes she is more scared than sarcastic.
-Removed one of Willie’s screams as she’s lowered into the pit (5 was enough)
-Eliminated shot of huge fireball licking toward Willie from the pit. Took away just a few of the cutaways to her as She keeps dropping down until she is stopped what looks like a few feet above the 2000 F lava. In reality she would have been incinerated by the heat. This helps also to make it not look weird when she comes up with the cage that is not red hot that Indy touches. She does get close just not above the Lava.
-There are a few shots where she is not sweating and her flower neckless is not burned or dried in alternating shots, the flowers become vibrant and fresh again. Fixed by editing, so they are always burned and dried after lowering in the pit shots.
-Before Mola Ram hides through a trap door on the floor, his hat is off except for a very brief moment when it’s on. This scene is cut shorter and a small digital head fixed to remove the hat for that small second as it should stay off.
--------The movie could be left alone at this point, but might as well fix the other less major issues----
-----To be finished in 2 weeks hopefully-----
Fight in the mines and the chase
-Cut lackey getting konked on the head with sledgehammer as it never hits his head and he drops early. I could have made the hammer hit him digitally, but the shot was very Looney Tunes -ish anyway, plus the workers shift standing close and then wide and also the unconscious lacky is standing straight up again a frame later.
-In the middle of the mine cart scene, Indy hits a second lever with the shovel to change the course. The Thuggees in the cart behind him shoot the same lever and it flies forward just as Indy hits it, and changes the course again, but it should have already been forward. Digitally added a second lever that the Thuggees can shoot (they shoot the one with the sign/square on the shaft). This is so that there are two levers and it makes sense now.
-When the two enemy mine cars crash, there are series black matte lines on the rocks the first car hits. Re-composited to fix this issue that is very noticeable when the cars collide.
-When the water floods the mine, some shots of the 3 heroes are an obvious composite of their blue screened image over a set. Problem is, when Indy tells the two to run towards a tunnel on the right with a log blocking the way, Indy and Shorty run through the log as if they were ghosts. Fixed so a few seconds before the log scene happens, where there is bluescreen edge cleanup on Willie and also the log has been taken out of the next shots so they don’t run through it.
-Fixed some of Willies hair bad blue screen composite just before they run outside
outside but before the bridge
-In the wide shot of the mountain the character are CG and have no shadow (shadow fixed in UHD version). Have added shadows in and fixed the indy CG character to look a little better.
-When Indy is hanging on the rocks and tells them to run for the bridge, the composite with the rocks is really bad with very noticeable black matte lines. Have fixed these black matte lines.
The Bridge
-Before Shorty falls through the bridge, Willie is seen with either a bright red safety strap on she is sun burned to a point I have never seen…more red than a cooked lobster. Color corrected so returned to her normal skin color regardless.
-When Shorty falls through the bridge, a large hole is made. Later on, the hole disappears in all shots 16 shots coming up that do not have a hole. Have digitally added the hole in all 16 subsequent shots.
-After Willie saves Short from the hole in the bridge, the river is filled with water. When Indy is about to cut the bridge, there’s a wide angle where there’s barely any water and it almost looks like they are over a dry river bed. While it is possible to be dry and then a point with lots of water in a real river, here, it clearly changes to where it is obviously not as it should be with no water under them. Water digitally composited into the shot.
-Near the end when the trio are on the bridge, Indy cuts the bridge with a large sword. Several men fall into the water below. The bad guy grabs hold and hangs on to some of the henchmen. The number of henchmen changes between shots. Hit the edge of the cliff, no men, Close-up 3 men, wide shot 2 men, close-up none, then back to 2 and so on. They are all above Indy, but in a final shot there are 3 below him and they fall and have the worst black edge matte composite shot of the movie. These 3 have been removed as they are never below Indy until this shot anyway and it should be only two above him. In the shot with 3 above, I fixed it so it is only 2 bad guys.
-When Indy is fighting Mola R there is the last henchman above them quite a ways up the bridge later. In one shot, that henchman is inches above the two fighting and then in next shot a second later he is back to being farther up. Removed the henchman from the shot where he is inches above the two fighting.
-When climbing up near the top, Willie and shortie come back to the the 5th blank in the bridge from the top that had cracked when Mola R to falls earlier, the cracked step/floor beam of the bridge has been digitally added back in for this shot for consistency.
-When climbing up before the fight between the two, Indy is seen again against a really bad composite with black matte lines and very hard edge on his arm, recomposited and color corrected to better match.
-On the ladder, Mola would normally try to grab Indy’s heart. In this version, he does not, since there is no heart ripping out shots and shorty does not say cover your heart.
-Indy’s incantation that ignites the rocks does not make sense if he is no longer in a trance and there is no indication he knows to say or what will make them all burn as opposed to just glow (which they should be doing when together). This also makes “normal” Indy a confident user of magic which is also out of character for Indy and out of place for his role in the film, where Indy is more a victim or just experiences it around him. I could see if he was still drugged or mind controlled, but at this point he is pretty sane. Instead the rocks fall because the bags breaks during their fight. They still glow while the two are near each other falling because they would, but no burning because Indy knows the secret spell. The last one is still caught after smacked up out of Mola’s hand and Indy catches the non-hot rock and the continues up to safety. Film continues as original from this point on.
