A Villain Redeemed?

When Indy falls under the black sleep of the Kali Ma, Short Round releases him from the “nightmare” with the burning flames of a torch (and later does the same for the young Maharajah). But does this also happen to the villainous Mola Ram? Just before his mortal fall to the river below, Ram catches one of the glowing Sankara Stones, burning his hand. For an all-too-brief moment, he appears “as if he’d just awakened from a nightmare,” as the Temple of Doom novelization by James Kahn put it. But it is too late, and Mola Ram meets his own doom. A shooting script summary for the film noted the same effect on Indy’s antagonist, a curious insight that invites “a pang of sympathy,” as Kahn wrote.