Indiana Jones and The Temple of Doom: Willie Scott Edition

I loved this edit very much. It reminded me what I love most about this website - fanfixes that redeem the original film and actually improve it.
Temple of Doom was always my least favourite Indiana Jones film, perhaps competing with Crystal Skull. It had a few iconic scenes, true, but I never liked Kate Capshaw's incessant screaming and whining, and Short Round always felt redundant. But Lapis Molari's edit somehow redeemed the film for me. By toning down both characters, especially in scenes where they really should have fewer antics and shenanigans, Lapis strengthened them and also allowed the bond between SR and Indy to shine.
The visual and audio editing, as you can expect from Fanedit.org, are top notch.
Well done, Lapis Molari. This fan edit will definitely replace the original cut for me.

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As far as I could tell, the audio and videos edits were seamless. If I hadn't already known, I probably wouldn't realize that anything had been cut.

I think that this edit excellently achieves its goal of trimming Willie Scott's comic-relief shenanigans and turning her into a more competent character. I never particularly minded Willie in the first place, but this is probably a big improvement for those who did.

While this edit didn't fix the main issues that I have with the movie, I'm not sure whether any edit can. For what it sets out to achieve, I think that it is a success.

My only complaint is the removal of the heart-ripping shot. The scene just seems odd without it to me, and I never had any problems with the special effects in that shot.

I remember watching the original and my only complaint about it was Willie Scott herself who I really couldn't but this edit doesn't literally change her character but makes her more tolerable and kinda see her in a softer light but she is still annoying and useless but in her defense, she is a damsel-in-distress archetype since this movie is obviously an homage to classic adventure movies like King Kong and she isn't the first female that Indy bicker and argue so I could forgive her character but not her personality nor the actress performance (and nepotism too lol). Because Willie Scott is in the entire movie, this toned-down version of her makes this movie experience less of a chore/endurance test and more fun and campy on her part. Surprisingly my only complaint is the edited-out parts of outdated SFXS scenes which are like as I said about the movies is part of the fun and campy theme of the movie which might upset some purists who expected a more conservative fan edit (and who hates Willie Scott too) and feels like the movie is censored especially at the Kali Ma scene but nevertheless, it does not affect the flow of the movie.

As someone who didn't see any Indiana Jones movie before adulthood (and even then, only saw Temple of Doom once), I can safely say this is a great edit. Nothing felt like it was missing, & whenever I did notice something was cut ("We're not sinking, we're craaashinnnnnnnng!"), I didn't mind because the cut was so seamless.

My only real complaint is that some of the cartoonish portrayal of Indian culture is still in tact. I understand you can only do so much trimming away, but the "chilled monkey brains" bit didn't need to be there, as we already know that the Maharaja & his advisor are in cahoots with the Thuggee Cult. Honestly, any edit of ToD should come with one of those content warnings like the Banned 13 Looney Tunes cartoons, since this movie can be a bit yikes for some people.

Still, I do think Temple of Doom is a great movie & this is another solid edit from Lapis. I didn't even realize it was their first edit for the site, so extra kudos in that regard.