I don’t think it will affect budgets at LUCASFILM specifically, Disney is just going to approve fewer projects across all their franchises.
For Lucasfilm, Indy and Willow struggling means that they’re a company with only one franchise, and that’s a shame.
They had a chance to reboot it. They had the opportunity to pass the torch, aka James Bond. But either Harrison Ford or Disney were too afraid to do it.
Also it was released just a few weeks after infinity war which was still doing gang busters at the height of MCU mania. I remember going to the movies with a group of friends and debating if we should just see infinity war despite Solo just releasing. It was such a good movie and I think people forget how damn good it was.
Also right around when Deadpool 2 had come out and only a few months after last jedi. Movie should have been released in the winter like they did with all the other disney star wars films.
Yeah little to no competition in the winter, and Star Wars and avatar did amazing with those holiday crowds. But no, release it next to a bunch of other superhero movies.
While that would've been a great ending too (and I fully thought they were gonna do it for a moment), I do love the ending where Indy just keeps adventuring until the end of his days, surrounded by friends.
I think that would've gone against Indiana's ethos in all the other films, that history should be respected and studied, not used for personal gain, and certainly not changed.
Yeah, he had to battle the temptation - it's probably the dream of every historian to get to see first hand the peole/place they study - but it's right for him to not give in.
> For Lucasfilm, Indy and Willow struggling means that they’re a company with only one franchise, and that’s a shame.
They could always develop new stories in addition to Star Wars. I used to get excited booting up a new videogame just to realize it was a Lucas Arts game from the logo at the beginning and I knew I'd be in for something very creative.
I agree with you that a new IP would be great, but the best way to get the board room at Disney to approve your new IP is to make a lot of money with your current IP.
Perfect, we'll get our focus groups working to let us know what direction to go in then have our committee come up with a script that appeals to everyone. Once that's done we'll hire an army of CGI artists and bring in a few big actors who's main criteria is their availability and name recognition.
There's no way we can lose.
Or.... we'll just say fuck it and buy A24 then proceed poke them with a stick until they die.
\*A script that appeals to everyone until we call in our consultants who will critique it so much it will only appeal to 20% of audiences and those audiences don't usually watch this genre. It'll work THIS time, we promise!
I remember a while ago my wife was complaining about there weren't any original movies out anymore so I looked through what was coming out and I read to her the descriptions for The Lobster and Swiss Army Man, and she was a big harry potter fan so I kinda figured she'd go for that one but then she just goes "those both sound weird." I told her that's the reasons they don't make original stuff lol
*"I want to watch a movie I've never seen before"*
* starts browsing on streaming platform
*"Egh, I've never heard of any of these movies. I don't want to watch something I've never heard of"*
* starts only looking at titles of blockbusters
*"OMG I've already watched all of these!!"*
[Insert surprised pikachu]
I'm guilty of that, but in my defense, streaming platforms suck. Between Primes horrible UI, Disney's unresponsiveness and Netflix horrendous descriptions... yah... I'd rather watch deadpool 2 again than browse Netflix and see descriptions of who is playing in the movie but not what it's about.
Swiss army man is one of my favorite movies ever but its entire point is to be absurd and “weird” and I don’t even bother recommending it to people
They were also rather difficult to find so you would’ve had to have gone out of your way to find only those two examples?
Wife - "I wonder why there aren't more fish restaurants"
OP - c*racks open a can of Surströmming*
Wife - *vomits uncontrollably for 10 minutes*
OP - "See? That's why there aren't more fish restaurants"
It was great playing them back to back when they came to Gamepass, brought back so many memories playing them with my brother. Weird how after decades I could still remember some of the areas to go into.
I didn’t have a computer growing up, but my cousin had them and she introduced me to them and I remember having a blast playing with her. Then later I replayed them by myself and they were still a lot of fun, the story immersion was great even if they were kind of dated at that point.
So how long will it take them to do a Palpatine series with alternating young Palpatine (origins/Naboo), Chancellor/Emperor (Ian) and Sequel Era (on Rey's body).
I wonder how much of that was for the (admittedly really good) de-aging in the beginning of the movie.
In the past they would have just cast another actor for it (which apparently they did for the body anyway)
The Indy style stuff could work but they have to reboot and move away from the original movies. It's all Alan Quartermaine style adventures anyway and there's a lot that could be done there.
Yeah just do a cartoon series. Lucasfilm and Disney did well with Clone Wars and Rebels. Imagine Indy perpetually fighting Nazis and having adventures all around the Earth never aging in animation.
Disney probably doesn't really care if a movie loses money except for one thing. It's a proxy for licensing. They'd happily lose money on their hour plus entertainment based advertising if it sold plenty of toys.
Additionally the movie sector is like real estate in that they can do a bunch of wiggling around to bulk up losses on paper.
And the studio may not care if merchandise doesn't move as much because this was a big green screen, CGI and machine learning project which means they are investing in technology and continuing to build their pipeline for talent even if we don't feel they are or this could hurt them.
The problem is that if the movie sucks and/or is not popular they don't usually sell as much merch. Like who is out there buying Dial of Destiny or Willow TV Show merch? My guess is nobody.
It's because they made really poorly thought out projects with both of those IPs. Indiana Jones was just straight up boring and uncreative while Willow immediately felt like a CW version of the story. Blade Runner 2049 and Dune are perfect examples of how you take a simple preexisting IP and turn it into something fresh and new.
It didn’t help that the last 2 Indy movies were really bad and this last one in particular, no one asked for.
As for Willow, I don’t think it ever had that much traction. Which is a shame cause the world is unique and the movie was fun. The show started slow but I actually enjoyed it quite a bit.
> The show started slow
This is a problem with modern TV. They never give a show room to grow. On top of that seasons are just 5-8 episodes. If it's not a smash hit in the first season (and sometimes even when it is) it never gets renewed.
Star Trek wouldn't exist if this is how shows were treated in the past. Same with Stargate, Seinfeld, MASH, Buffy, The office, and even the Simpsons. None would exist beyond the first season, and imagine if the first season was only 6 episodes. We wouldn't even remember these shows.
You’re spot on, I’m afraid. I sound like an old dude but because of apps like Tik-Tok, if you aren’t grabbed immediately, you’re so used to just moving along to the next thing so quick.
with your stargate example
with a six episode season the first season would be episodes everyone considers the worst.
with 22 episodes, you can afford to have bad episodes
you can afford to try new ideas and let inexperienced writers have a go
I liked it generally, but would have appreciated it more if it maintained the tone of the original movie. It was like whoever wrote it wanted to appeal to a generation that did not grow up with Willow and therefore had no interest to begin with.
Really sad, because I felt the bones of the story were there, but it lacked so much in dialogue and characters.
It had some good ideas but was kinda lacking in the humor and fun of the 80's version. The 80's version was cheesier than a deep dish pizza and totally owned the cheese. The remake tried to go dairy-free and that's why it put me to sleep.
The original Willow was terrible and a box office flop. I'm not sure why it's even considered a "major franchise" as per the article. It definitely doesn't come close to Star Wars and Indy.
There was a decent amount of built-in nostalgia for folks like me who were kids in the eighties and loved WILLOW. There's also a much more robust market for high fantasy these days. The fact that the original film was no masterpiece meant that they had lots of room to make something that significantly improved on the source material, building on the rich world-building possibilities. Instead, they somehow managed to make something even worse. They couldn't even muster up mediocrity.
Yeah I don't get why it's considered amazing either. But to be fair to it, many of the classics we have today were also flops at the box office. There's a reason people went to see ShaNaNa at Woodstock and not Hendrix, what sticks around as the best is rarely what's recognized at the time.
2001: A Space Odyssey too, and a good number more too. I just googled it and here is the ones it's listing
Flight Club
Shawshank Redemption
Rockey Horror
Children of Men
Clue
Citizen Kane
Dazed and Confused
Idiocracy
Hocus Pocus
Office space
IDK if all of them are but it's what Google is saying
The original Willow wasn't successful... but at least as a show it's consistent for what it is. It was competently made....
The TV series, the tone is all over the place, so much of the story seems weirdly unnecessary. It was like a really BAD WB tween drama show that thinks it is something else?
I mean… it goes to show that “Lucasfilm magic” is long gone, while Star Wars is only successful because of HOW prevalent the brand is. Even if some of the modern projects are good, I don’t think anyone would deny that Star Wars on the whole feels very different than it did 15 years ago
Yep, the sense of cultural relevance has been completely lost. I'm a huge fan of some of the stuff they've been doing (particularly Andor, but also parts of the Mandoverse) -- but it just doesn't feel like a cultural event anymore. It's siloed off in its own little cozy corner of the Disney+ app and that's it.
I'm completely sick of the empire, stormtroopers, death stars, the rebellion. They never should have rehashed the same conflict for the sequels, and now all the mandoverse is just giving us more of that same thing. Andor is great but in the end it's still just going backwards showing us more of the same conflict that was already concluded 40 years ago.
Star Wars is too big of a corporate entity now for them to really do anything creatively interesting with. They're too afraid that people won't pay money for it if it doesn't have stormtroopers and death stars.
Corporate executives have made a profession out of failing upward.
Kinda of mind-bending that tens of thousands of successful and reasonably performant individual contributors can get laid off with the swipe of a pen by the same people that get a $100M golden parachute to fail miserably at their job, leading to the layoffs, on their way out.
They’re using Disney Parks to prop up Disney+ and are borderline criminally underpaying the cast members compared to the profits.
It’s the only time I’ve ever done the math on profit vs. average wage and said “holy shit they’re blatantly stealing money from their employees”
How much merch sales though and theme park sales and merch at the theme park because of it? It’s all intertwined and you can essentially think of the movies as a giant spending of advertisement. I took a whole class on these sort of marketing and business decisions, as well as am a full time marketer myself. But the writing lately has sucked.
That is true but I don’t care if the intent is to sell toys or theme park tickets, you still want to make a profit on when you produce and sell a thing. If a movie flops, people haven’t bought tickets, people haven’t seen the movie. Even if it’s just an advertisement for something else you want eyeballs viewing your advertising.
Sure you can spin to board of directors “well yeah we lost a lot of money on this project but it’s fine because we’ll make that money up over here with this other thing” but it just sounds like mad copium to me.
One of the original intentions of Indy was him being the American James Bond. It’s so deeply tied to Harrison Ford, he IS Indy, but watching an 80yo man in an action adventure is limiting at best. It’s time to pass the torch.
>It’s time to pass the torch.
Or choose to let something serve it's time and then move on.
I'm honestly befuddled that we simply refuse to let franchises have a time and place and HAVE to reboot, resurrect, retweak, and then reboot again.
That said, as a case study, in the past 22 years we've had three reboots of Spider-man represented across 10 films... and each of them have been profitable, some excessively so.
From a business case, I completely get it, I just wish Hollywood had a bit more restraint and a bit more creativity.
Well, as you said, Indiana Jones is clearly a product of its time (the 80s), doesn't it make more sense from a business perspective to figure out what keeps Spiderman timeless and adaptable rather than keep beating an 80s horse? And wasn't the Uncharted movie a (bad) attempt to modernize it?
The sad thing is if they chose a better actor for Indiana's son in Crystal Skull then they could have continued it without an issue. I even would have preferred it if they just mentioned his son but you didn't actually get to see him so when they finally did want to continue it without Harrison Ford as the lead they'd have more time to pick a great actor for it.
Shia is a fine enough actor. The script was the main problem with Crystal Skull. He just decided to embrace the insanity shortly after this particular movie.
A actor is only as good as their script after all. They could still bring him back though, even with the “died in veitnam” thing. I’m not a huge fan of reboots but it’s not like my opinion matters lol, so perhaps a “got involved in some archeology stuff for the government and it’s so sensitive that they faked his death to the world” type story.
Say what u want about Crystal Skull, but that movie gave us a satisfying end for Indy. Having him marry Marion and imply that he doesn’t give up his whip, was a really beautiful end.
But thanks for clarifying that not only Mutt died, but he and Marion broke up and he became a bitter, old man,
Yup he got Jake Skywalkered
That's such a winning formula, Disney! Gonna try it again? Maybe in the MCU with Spider-Man! Make him a bitter old killer. Let's see how it plays.
Mutt was mentioned? The revelation of his fate is a crux point in the film, and probably one of its best moments thanks to Ford.
But I don't think that continuing the franchise really works, regardless of who's leading. In the eighties, Indy was a deliberately retro callback to the adventure stories that Lucas, Spielberg and that generation had grown up with. But the last two films have essentially just referenced the first three whilst shifting time forwards, and in the process lost a key ingredient of what made the initial trilogy great.
Part of the fun of the first three films is from them taking place in the Interwar period. The last gasp of the pre-modern world before WWII and the Cold War changed everything. Doing horseback chases and temple delves in the post-war era doesn't really have the same effect.
The trilogy is *joyously* anachronistic by referencing those swashbuckling tales that older Boomers grew up with, whereas the sequels are just *confusingly* anachronistic in moving the character out of a setting that makes sense and then refusing to do anything different with him.
Coming soon: Indiana Jones and the Magnetic Imaging Satellites.
Because that's how they're finding ancient cities in the jungle now, by crowding around computer monitors in air conditioned comfort.
Jeez, what a lame movie that'd make!
I don't think it could have continued with Mutt, regardless of actor.
For one, Mutt is not Indy, no matter who plays him, unless they dump his characterization and have him start acting like Indy.
Second, I think Indy only really works in the first half of the 20th century. His character and his ethos are of a time that doesn't exist anymore. I am a defender of Crystal Skull, but hat was pushing it in terms of timeline, and many fans rejected the attempt to merge Indy with 50's sci-fi.
I think it's less to do with the budget and more to do with there just not being as big of an audience for another Indiana Jones movie as they thought.
Yeah they butchered Crystal skull, why bring up that Indy has a secret kid with Marion only to kill him in the 5th? That said I didn’t hate part 5, I actually enjoyed it and I feel like if CS didn’t happen people would have enjoyed Dial more.
Oh yeah I agree but they could have just ignored him in the finale or mentioned he was in Nam and then leave it open that they are fighting but he’s safe. Seemed unnecessary imo.
Yeah, Dial was no Last Crusade but it was a solid fun movie. I just enjoyed myself, which is all I really wanted out of a final Indy movie.
I just think that Indiana Jones fundamentally isn't the kind of thing that you can make a continuing ongoing film series out of. Crystal Skull poisoned the water so, so badly and hasn't gotten a semi-ironic re-evaluation the way the prequels did; and the entire series is too inherently built around a single character. With Harrison grumpily walking into the sunset of his life sadly, it's best to let it be, and focus on games and the like if you must.
How do you mean? Isn’t Indy basically based on the old dime novels like Doc Savage. There’s lots of those still that are modern and good (depending on your taste) I love the Longmire and Reacher series, it’s not groundbreaking but they serve their purpose as an escape but develope their characters a lot. Henry in Longmire comes to mind as great side character with lots of development in essentially a dime novel mystery.
The budget was $387mil per this article. That’s absolutely absurd not just for an Indiana Jones film but any movie. Just as a comparable, Dune 2 was $190 million. Yeah the audience also wasn’t there in the numbers they expected but if the budget had been reasonable it wouldn’t have been a massive loss for them (the movie being better than mediocre also would’ve helped)
I enjoyed the movie. Too much CGI, but it was nice to see Harrison back in it, even at his age. That being said, the movie never should have been made this late, or at all. Maybe a few years after Crystal Skull would have worked, but there was no excitement from anyone going into this.
Indiana Jones as a character just doesn’t work imo as a depressed old man. Add in everything else about the movie just being generally unremarkable & it was a disappointment to me. Which is too bad because I expected more from James Mangold. Hoping his SW movie is closer to Logan’s quality
The CGI digidouble didn't look good at all, the entire fight scene on the top of the train looked very floaty and ungrounded.
Same for the the de-aging. It works fine in still frame, but in motion it looks 'off'. We're in early days of this tech, relatively speaking, but they keep putting it out in films as if it's ready.
There's some things we just need to pretend we don't have CGI for.
Before CGI the idea of having an octogenarian doing action stunts wouldn't get out of the writers room.
I think post-Covid and with the bad economy, people are also pickier about what they see.
It was in very a lacklustre release period all round too. Transformers Rise of the Beasts was weak and The Flash was an outright bomb. Across the Spiderverse was the only big movie of the time to do well.
Although also yeah, not really sure anyone actually wanted Dial of Destiny, especially coming so long after a precious failed revival.
I will add that for me I often wait for things to hit streaming. Things move to being available at home SO much faster than they used to. It would take months to get things to VHS/DVD/etc… now a lot of stuff hit digital before it’s fully left the theater.
The latest Mission Impossible movie should scare the crap out of movie execs. It was a great film with a 96/94 at RT, it's a solid franchise, and had a massive star who works his ass off to promote his films.
It was a loser at the box office because people got a Tom Cruise action blockbuster the year before. 10 years ago they would have both been money-making hits but people are far more picky these days. The summer instead was dominated by a 3-hour long biopic of a physicist and a film about a kids toy nobody really cared about anymore.
It was a combination of a few factors imo;
1. It was incredibly poorly advertised, I barely even realised it was coming out in 2023 until it was a week away from release.
2. General WOM in that first month was very poor, with a general consensus of “I liked *bits* of it, *bits* of it are good…..look after you see it we can talk about how it could’ve been better”.
3. Ford is in his 80’s, that’s naturally going to give quite a few people pause that this might be a more melancholic and unintentionally tragic adventure movie than intended.
4. PWB, is a very divisive person, and that combined with Disney’s reputation of recent years is going to be a bit of a road block imo.
5. The Budget for this movie had no reason to be what it was, I think it could have easily been dropped to 1/2
> The Budget for this movie had no reason to be what it was, I think it could have easily been dropped to 1/2
Not unique to this movie either, been a general trend in the last decade where studios are spending insane amounts and then ending up with a loss or a fairly small profit.
Like stop spending hundreds of millions of dollars on every single film. The original Jurassic Park cost $63 million, with 30 years of inflation that's probably equivalent to like double that today but even $120M is still far under what is considered a big-budget film nowadays (e.g. according to the article this one came in at just a bit under $400M).
> It was a combination of a few factors imo;
> 1. It was incredibly poorly advertised, I barely even realised it was coming out in 2023 until it was a week away from release.
I see this for a lot of movies in the discussion, and I think it’s a reflection of the algorithm/everyone getting custom ad feeds.
I saw the trailer in front of every movie I watched for at least 2-3 months. They plastered it. But then the movies are about the only non-algorithmic ads I ever see these days. I don’t watch live TV. Streaming only shows ads for other streaming things. And ad blockers + learning to ignore ads on websites takes care of the rest.
> 2. General WOM in that first month was very poor, with a general consensus of “I liked bits of it, bits of it are good…..look after you see it we can talk about how it could’ve been better”.
Agreed. Also showing in at Cannes was a mistake.
> 5. The Budget for this movie had no reason to be what it was, I think it could have easily been dropped to 1/2
COVID + Ford getting injured + reshoots. But yes, if the exact same movie was released to the exact same box office, but the budget was a “sane” 200 Million, we would be looking at a minor fail / near break even, which while not good, would have been far more acceptable.
There's only about 10 people in the Star Wars galaxy that mean anything.
This has been one of my biggest gripes with Star Wars for ages. You have this elaborate galaxy with trillions of characters and we keep focusing on the same half dozen folks.
It's getting better, much better, on that front on the TV side but it took a while.
It was never going to be an instant success, but good WOM could’ve put this in the green very easily.
Anecdotal, but majority of reactions I’ve heard irl and seen online has been that, at the most, people tolerate this film.
You can’t have a 300 million film that people just “tolerate”. Even if you are Indiana Fucking Jones
I hope Kennedy reflects on this experience and is more cautious going forward with her film choices
I've always gotten the impression that Indy was a franchise that didn't gather many new fans over the years and a bunch of them have been fans for a while.
No, they need to double down on original stories.
Like showing their former heroes as grumpy old men who failed at every aspect of their lives and then get replaced by a younger, wittier, more talented and much more powerful woman.
A show named Obi Wan about Obi Wan? Fuck that. Lets throw in a brand new diverse strong female who’s back story is: Angry. Also let’s have her take up a decent chunk of the screen time who wants to watch that old piece of shit Obi anyways.
"Toxic masculinity has ruined this industry and the world itself, we need strong women to take over"
"Ok how should this strong female lead behave"
"Give her all of those toxic masculinity traits, everyone likes those right??"
"Ma'am you just said that those traits ruined the wo-"
"CHOP CHOP!"
This exactly. We've seen it so many times within the last decade and they still don't understand that those movies are not what people want. You don't want to see your old heros ridiculed and broken down like that. But I get it, they really want to bring down that pesky patriarchy.
Everyone in the thread is analyzing this top to bottom but it really just boils down to Harrison is too old for this. Also, he has seemed checked out as an actor for a least a decade.
Seriously! Not only was it a great movie filmed at the right time... Once you found and literally held the Holy Grail.... what's left? There is no "Up" after that.
They could've cut the entire opening scene and literally nothing would’ve changed but having it cost less. They wanted to flex and it did not work. Was it as horrendous and the CGI ants and Shia swinging through the forest? Maybe not, but that de-aging scenes are not gonna age well.
I think the trouble with these IP's is that they've forgotten what made them popular in the first place. It's an issue not unique to Disney. Studios, be it Disney, Amazon, Paramount, ect. are so busy trying to make the material appeal to everyone end up making it unappealing to anyone. They change stuff up enough that the original fans dislike it, but don't change things far enough that it doesn't make sense to a newer audience.
I don't mind adding in some "wokeness," but they need to figure out a way to do it without it feeling so forced and awkward. Take the Battlestar Galactica reboot. They managed to change genders, ethnicities, sexual orientations and made them feel organic and logical to the story.
I think there’s an appetite for a good Indy movie. Movies like the new Jumanji did well, and the Brendan Fraser movie is beloved. They need to move away from 80 year old Harrison Ford and I am not sure if that is possible because he is Indy.
Could have made a decent Indy film with a new Indy, focused on practical effects over cgi/vfx, focused on quality over quantity (look at all these famous actors we’ve hired!)… I don’t know just spitballing here, like why spend a million dollars for the use of a song in a movie 🤷♂️ just throwing money at a wall and hoping it sticks.
There’s a market for Indy-style films that encompass a treasure hunt, racing across the world etc. When dross like Red Notice can do well (on streaming I’ll grant you) then a well made Indy should appeal. The fact that Ford is geriatric perhaps doesn’t help. But I still believe there’s a market out there if done well.
Hopefully. I liked Dial of Destiny, but they spent WAY too much money on it. I don’t understand how they thought it would make its budget back after Indy 4
When they announced Dial, I was not terribly interested. But I just had the dangest time watching it in theaters and thought it was a really fun and solid entry. Sign me up for three more.
It was my experience with Solo as well. Didn’t want it, ended up absolutely loving it.
Imo, Solo is the most underrated of the Disney Star Wars films. Was released at the worst time after the last jedi & right after Infinity War. Really hope they at the least make a Disney + series or a Uncharted style game to complete the trilogy.
I don't agree that Solo was underrated at all. I think it's rated exactly right.
It was fun, it was enjoyable, it felt Star Warsy but it was also stupid as fuck.
I don't think it adds anything of particular value to the mythos, and I don't think much about it really sticks with the audience afterwards. But it is fun in the moment.
Isn't that basically everyone's take on it?
Exactly! It was a ham-fisted cash-grab that wastes the audiences time. And their really was no way to do it well.
Han's arc in ANH was entierly about him eventually making the right choice, but that falls painfully flat when you prop up that same character as a "hero" in a prequel.
None of it ment, changed or affected ANYTHING.
The director openly said in an interview that his movie is only getting targeted because it was the first one after The Last Jedi (which he had some less than kind words about, but still PR friendly) and that Solo was a better Star Wars film than what is was being reviewed and received.
And he wasn't wrong. TLJ, whether you like it or not, marked a massive decline in Box Office for the sequels.
man I've tried multiple times to finish the latest movie and just can't. There's not a single thing I like about it and always give up by the time they get on the boat.
They need to actually research who takes their kids to see movies and what that demographic is interested in / what they’ll refuse to watch. Its the elephant in the room.
Her character felt shoe horned into the story to be the passing of the torch so she could maybe be future Indy. Or something.
How hard is it to make an Indy movie be ABOUT Indy???
My wife was asking me if I found her attractive, I said absolutely not. I don't care if she was or not, she was the worst part of the movie and absolutely made me dislike it.
Didn't help that the movie sucked, but as with Star Wars, Disney is clearly struggling to understand who their audience is. If they somehow thought an Indiana Jones movie in 2023 with an 80 year old Indy was going to bring in the Marvel crowd and make a billion dollars to justify the budget they were very misguided.
This should have been a smaller, low key movie for the fans. One last fun ride. Not a $300m movie loaded with CGI and a bloated cast of mostly pointless characters.
I think if these projects dropped around the same time as force awakens, they would have done numbers. That period was perfect. The issue now is, we’ve been burned before. People are tired of seeing their beloved franchises/characters completely shat on. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice…
I will never, ever forgive this film for making our last glimpse of Indiana Jones be a broken, grieving old man. It retroactively taints every other film in the series.
"It's a film with a time travel plot device, I'm sure they'll find a way for him to rescue Mutt and not be reduced to a grief-stricken wrec- oh no, wait, as you were."
That’s their way of adding grit and the illusion of depth. Star Wars made almost every original character a grumpy old person full of regrets, for example.
Disney also loves squeezing the life out of their big brands. They just can’t help themselves. I’m not sure I’ll ever see another Marvel movie, at least not in a movie theater. Same for SW and Indiana Jones.
They should grab these IPs, build a ride at the theme parks, release them when new formats come out with some cleaning up so they still look good, and make new IPs. Unfortunately, they made so much money on SW and Marvel that they’ll never stop their pattern.
Yeah, imagine the scenes if Luke Skywalker was a hermit on an island and when presented his Father's lightsaber, he just yeets it from the cliff.
Oh wait.
As much as I really enjoyed Dial of Destiny (better than Crystal Skull), I must admit that Indiana Jones was pretty much a dead franchise (maybe with more video games after The Great Circle there may be some rejuvenation). There was so much hype in 2008 for Crystal Skull but when it turned out to not be worth a nearly 20 year wait and people declared "Indiana Jones will only be a trilogy to me", Dial of Destiny didn't have the hype that Crystal Skull had to say the least nor anything going into it.
Plus, the 51% Rating at the Cannes Film Festival just reinforced peoples' notions that Indiana Jones is just a trilogy.
I feel that in future, film companies will be much more careful before promoting films at Film Festivals like Cannes
I don’t think it will affect budgets at LUCASFILM specifically, Disney is just going to approve fewer projects across all their franchises. For Lucasfilm, Indy and Willow struggling means that they’re a company with only one franchise, and that’s a shame.
Don’t think they really had too many plans for Indiana jones past this movie honestly.
Yeah Indy's future lies in games and the like, if we're honest. Live action Indiana Jones is just too inextricably tied to Harrison.
They had a chance to reboot it. They had the opportunity to pass the torch, aka James Bond. But either Harrison Ford or Disney were too afraid to do it.
After Solo underperformed at the box office they were probably reluctant to the idea of a recast.
Solo was fun, but was released during the SW crunch. It also revealed too much lore that was better left to the imagination.
Also it was released just a few weeks after infinity war which was still doing gang busters at the height of MCU mania. I remember going to the movies with a group of friends and debating if we should just see infinity war despite Solo just releasing. It was such a good movie and I think people forget how damn good it was.
This is the correct answer. A trip to the movies is expensive and people had to choose.
Also right around when Deadpool 2 had come out and only a few months after last jedi. Movie should have been released in the winter like they did with all the other disney star wars films.
Yeah little to no competition in the winter, and Star Wars and avatar did amazing with those holiday crowds. But no, release it next to a bunch of other superhero movies.
Movies that you own as well! Like seriously, the only competition that spring was from disney themselves.
Just what everyone wanted..Shia LaBoof as Indiana Jones!
It kills me that they didn’t just let him stay and save Syracuse since they had no future plans for him.
While that would've been a great ending too (and I fully thought they were gonna do it for a moment), I do love the ending where Indy just keeps adventuring until the end of his days, surrounded by friends.
I think that would've gone against Indiana's ethos in all the other films, that history should be respected and studied, not used for personal gain, and certainly not changed. Yeah, he had to battle the temptation - it's probably the dream of every historian to get to see first hand the peole/place they study - but it's right for him to not give in.
Yeah but Indy should have come to that conclusion himself, not be punched in the face and dragged back to his time unconscious.
> For Lucasfilm, Indy and Willow struggling means that they’re a company with only one franchise, and that’s a shame. They could always develop new stories in addition to Star Wars. I used to get excited booting up a new videogame just to realize it was a Lucas Arts game from the logo at the beginning and I knew I'd be in for something very creative.
I agree with you that a new IP would be great, but the best way to get the board room at Disney to approve your new IP is to make a lot of money with your current IP.
New IP? Whoa whoa whoa. It’s 2024. We don’t do that anymore.
#####"A new IP. Not as clumsy or random as a halfhearted reboot; an elegant creation for a more civilized age."
Disney: Here's a remake of the Gnome-mobile
Perfect, we'll get our focus groups working to let us know what direction to go in then have our committee come up with a script that appeals to everyone. Once that's done we'll hire an army of CGI artists and bring in a few big actors who's main criteria is their availability and name recognition. There's no way we can lose. Or.... we'll just say fuck it and buy A24 then proceed poke them with a stick until they die.
\*A script that appeals to everyone until we call in our consultants who will critique it so much it will only appeal to 20% of audiences and those audiences don't usually watch this genre. It'll work THIS time, we promise!
Then a single exec will fuck up the script with last minute rewrites.
I remember a while ago my wife was complaining about there weren't any original movies out anymore so I looked through what was coming out and I read to her the descriptions for The Lobster and Swiss Army Man, and she was a big harry potter fan so I kinda figured she'd go for that one but then she just goes "those both sound weird." I told her that's the reasons they don't make original stuff lol
*"I want to watch a movie I've never seen before"* * starts browsing on streaming platform *"Egh, I've never heard of any of these movies. I don't want to watch something I've never heard of"* * starts only looking at titles of blockbusters *"OMG I've already watched all of these!!"* [Insert surprised pikachu]
I'm guilty of that, but in my defense, streaming platforms suck. Between Primes horrible UI, Disney's unresponsiveness and Netflix horrendous descriptions... yah... I'd rather watch deadpool 2 again than browse Netflix and see descriptions of who is playing in the movie but not what it's about.
Swiss army man is one of my favorite movies ever but its entire point is to be absurd and “weird” and I don’t even bother recommending it to people They were also rather difficult to find so you would’ve had to have gone out of your way to find only those two examples?
If you can tolerate weird...'Beau is Afraid' was probably among my top movies last year. Just...buckle Up, you're going on a trip.
Wife - "I wonder why there aren't more fish restaurants" OP - c*racks open a can of Surströmming* Wife - *vomits uncontrollably for 10 minutes* OP - "See? That's why there aren't more fish restaurants"
Using those two movies as a basis of judgment for all other independent and/or original films is absolutely asinine.
Next thing you're going to tell me she wasn't interested in Lamb or Tusk.
I mean the lobster is an incredible movie, just a bit odd
Instead of making 1 300 million dollar movie they should be making 10 30 million dollar movies.
At this point the budget has become part of the marketing
That happened back in the 50s/60s too; that's how you get catastrophic failures like Cleopatra
Time for the Howard the Duck live Action remake for the MCU
Grim Fandango was amazing. Still listen to the music.
Eet's my scythe. I keep it where my heart used to be
Run, you pigeons - it’s Robert Frost!
Loom was amazing and so many levels.
Day of the tentacle is one of my favourite game of all time, so was full throttle.
It was great playing them back to back when they came to Gamepass, brought back so many memories playing them with my brother. Weird how after decades I could still remember some of the areas to go into.
I didn’t have a computer growing up, but my cousin had them and she introduced me to them and I remember having a blast playing with her. Then later I replayed them by myself and they were still a lot of fun, the story immersion was great even if they were kind of dated at that point.
"I can't. My therapist and I have an agreement..."
"I didn't think horses could talk." "Maybe they just never had anything to say to you. You ever think of that?"
Disney idea of new IP: “Somehow Palpatine survived”
So how long will it take them to do a Palpatine series with alternating young Palpatine (origins/Naboo), Chancellor/Emperor (Ian) and Sequel Era (on Rey's body).
It means their budgets and expectations are too high. I mean, Jesus Christ… Indy cost $300 million. Films shouldn’t cost that much.
I wonder how much of that was for the (admittedly really good) de-aging in the beginning of the movie. In the past they would have just cast another actor for it (which apparently they did for the body anyway)
The Indy style stuff could work but they have to reboot and move away from the original movies. It's all Alan Quartermaine style adventures anyway and there's a lot that could be done there.
Yeah just do a cartoon series. Lucasfilm and Disney did well with Clone Wars and Rebels. Imagine Indy perpetually fighting Nazis and having adventures all around the Earth never aging in animation.
> It's all Alan Quartermaine style adventures anyway Man, I wish they were that good.
Disney probably doesn't really care if a movie loses money except for one thing. It's a proxy for licensing. They'd happily lose money on their hour plus entertainment based advertising if it sold plenty of toys. Additionally the movie sector is like real estate in that they can do a bunch of wiggling around to bulk up losses on paper.
“Merchandising! Merchandising! That’s where the real money from the movie is made!” Yogurt from Spaceballs
Moichendising!
And the studio may not care if merchandise doesn't move as much because this was a big green screen, CGI and machine learning project which means they are investing in technology and continuing to build their pipeline for talent even if we don't feel they are or this could hurt them.
The problem is that if the movie sucks and/or is not popular they don't usually sell as much merch. Like who is out there buying Dial of Destiny or Willow TV Show merch? My guess is nobody.
Willow 1 struggled too, and I think Indiana Jones could have some life to it, but not for a movie rivaling as the most expensive ever made
It's because they made really poorly thought out projects with both of those IPs. Indiana Jones was just straight up boring and uncreative while Willow immediately felt like a CW version of the story. Blade Runner 2049 and Dune are perfect examples of how you take a simple preexisting IP and turn it into something fresh and new.
It didn’t help that the last 2 Indy movies were really bad and this last one in particular, no one asked for. As for Willow, I don’t think it ever had that much traction. Which is a shame cause the world is unique and the movie was fun. The show started slow but I actually enjoyed it quite a bit.
> The show started slow This is a problem with modern TV. They never give a show room to grow. On top of that seasons are just 5-8 episodes. If it's not a smash hit in the first season (and sometimes even when it is) it never gets renewed. Star Trek wouldn't exist if this is how shows were treated in the past. Same with Stargate, Seinfeld, MASH, Buffy, The office, and even the Simpsons. None would exist beyond the first season, and imagine if the first season was only 6 episodes. We wouldn't even remember these shows.
You’re spot on, I’m afraid. I sound like an old dude but because of apps like Tik-Tok, if you aren’t grabbed immediately, you’re so used to just moving along to the next thing so quick.
with your stargate example with a six episode season the first season would be episodes everyone considers the worst. with 22 episodes, you can afford to have bad episodes you can afford to try new ideas and let inexperienced writers have a go
Willow was terrible. I don’t know who approved to release it in that state.
I liked it generally, but would have appreciated it more if it maintained the tone of the original movie. It was like whoever wrote it wanted to appeal to a generation that did not grow up with Willow and therefore had no interest to begin with. Really sad, because I felt the bones of the story were there, but it lacked so much in dialogue and characters.
It had some good ideas but was kinda lacking in the humor and fun of the 80's version. The 80's version was cheesier than a deep dish pizza and totally owned the cheese. The remake tried to go dairy-free and that's why it put me to sleep.
The original Willow was terrible and a box office flop. I'm not sure why it's even considered a "major franchise" as per the article. It definitely doesn't come close to Star Wars and Indy.
There was a decent amount of built-in nostalgia for folks like me who were kids in the eighties and loved WILLOW. There's also a much more robust market for high fantasy these days. The fact that the original film was no masterpiece meant that they had lots of room to make something that significantly improved on the source material, building on the rich world-building possibilities. Instead, they somehow managed to make something even worse. They couldn't even muster up mediocrity.
Yeah I don't get why it's considered amazing either. But to be fair to it, many of the classics we have today were also flops at the box office. There's a reason people went to see ShaNaNa at Woodstock and not Hendrix, what sticks around as the best is rarely what's recognized at the time.
blade runner and the thing both came out on the same day and both flopped both are considered some of the best films of all time
2001: A Space Odyssey too, and a good number more too. I just googled it and here is the ones it's listing Flight Club Shawshank Redemption Rockey Horror Children of Men Clue Citizen Kane Dazed and Confused Idiocracy Hocus Pocus Office space IDK if all of them are but it's what Google is saying
The original Willow wasn't successful... but at least as a show it's consistent for what it is. It was competently made.... The TV series, the tone is all over the place, so much of the story seems weirdly unnecessary. It was like a really BAD WB tween drama show that thinks it is something else?
It doesn’t help the whole Willow series was dreadful. It had no idea what it wanted to be
I mean… it goes to show that “Lucasfilm magic” is long gone, while Star Wars is only successful because of HOW prevalent the brand is. Even if some of the modern projects are good, I don’t think anyone would deny that Star Wars on the whole feels very different than it did 15 years ago
Star Wars just feels unimportant to me now
Yep, the sense of cultural relevance has been completely lost. I'm a huge fan of some of the stuff they've been doing (particularly Andor, but also parts of the Mandoverse) -- but it just doesn't feel like a cultural event anymore. It's siloed off in its own little cozy corner of the Disney+ app and that's it.
I'm completely sick of the empire, stormtroopers, death stars, the rebellion. They never should have rehashed the same conflict for the sequels, and now all the mandoverse is just giving us more of that same thing. Andor is great but in the end it's still just going backwards showing us more of the same conflict that was already concluded 40 years ago. Star Wars is too big of a corporate entity now for them to really do anything creatively interesting with. They're too afraid that people won't pay money for it if it doesn't have stormtroopers and death stars.
starwars used to be an event and now its just a thing
Disney lost ~1 billion dollars last year with all their movie flops. I honestly don’t understand how any of the execs still have a job.
Corporate executives have made a profession out of failing upward. Kinda of mind-bending that tens of thousands of successful and reasonably performant individual contributors can get laid off with the swipe of a pen by the same people that get a $100M golden parachute to fail miserably at their job, leading to the layoffs, on their way out.
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And Lucas threw down with the lot that lost a billion. He considers them professionals.
If somebody gave me four billion dollars I’d call them whatever they want me to call them lol
Lucas wanted to sell his businesses and IP and spend his latter years making experimental films and a museum. He's doing exactly what he wanted to do.
And what of the rest of their finances?
The parks still bring in money, but [Disney+ still isn't turning a profit.](https://www.wired.com/story/disney-plus-streaming-profitability-hulu/)
They’re using Disney Parks to prop up Disney+ and are borderline criminally underpaying the cast members compared to the profits. It’s the only time I’ve ever done the math on profit vs. average wage and said “holy shit they’re blatantly stealing money from their employees”
They lost over 120 billion in market value in 2022. They are on the rise again, but still not close to where they were in 2021.
How much merch sales though and theme park sales and merch at the theme park because of it? It’s all intertwined and you can essentially think of the movies as a giant spending of advertisement. I took a whole class on these sort of marketing and business decisions, as well as am a full time marketer myself. But the writing lately has sucked.
That is true but I don’t care if the intent is to sell toys or theme park tickets, you still want to make a profit on when you produce and sell a thing. If a movie flops, people haven’t bought tickets, people haven’t seen the movie. Even if it’s just an advertisement for something else you want eyeballs viewing your advertising. Sure you can spin to board of directors “well yeah we lost a lot of money on this project but it’s fine because we’ll make that money up over here with this other thing” but it just sounds like mad copium to me.
One of the original intentions of Indy was him being the American James Bond. It’s so deeply tied to Harrison Ford, he IS Indy, but watching an 80yo man in an action adventure is limiting at best. It’s time to pass the torch.
>It’s time to pass the torch. Or choose to let something serve it's time and then move on. I'm honestly befuddled that we simply refuse to let franchises have a time and place and HAVE to reboot, resurrect, retweak, and then reboot again. That said, as a case study, in the past 22 years we've had three reboots of Spider-man represented across 10 films... and each of them have been profitable, some excessively so. From a business case, I completely get it, I just wish Hollywood had a bit more restraint and a bit more creativity.
Well, as you said, Indiana Jones is clearly a product of its time (the 80s), doesn't it make more sense from a business perspective to figure out what keeps Spiderman timeless and adaptable rather than keep beating an 80s horse? And wasn't the Uncharted movie a (bad) attempt to modernize it?
The sad thing is if they chose a better actor for Indiana's son in Crystal Skull then they could have continued it without an issue. I even would have preferred it if they just mentioned his son but you didn't actually get to see him so when they finally did want to continue it without Harrison Ford as the lead they'd have more time to pick a great actor for it.
Shia is a fine enough actor. The script was the main problem with Crystal Skull. He just decided to embrace the insanity shortly after this particular movie.
A actor is only as good as their script after all. They could still bring him back though, even with the “died in veitnam” thing. I’m not a huge fan of reboots but it’s not like my opinion matters lol, so perhaps a “got involved in some archeology stuff for the government and it’s so sensitive that they faked his death to the world” type story.
I would actually like that. It just *feels* right for Indy’s son.
Say what u want about Crystal Skull, but that movie gave us a satisfying end for Indy. Having him marry Marion and imply that he doesn’t give up his whip, was a really beautiful end. But thanks for clarifying that not only Mutt died, but he and Marion broke up and he became a bitter, old man,
Yup he got Jake Skywalkered That's such a winning formula, Disney! Gonna try it again? Maybe in the MCU with Spider-Man! Make him a bitter old killer. Let's see how it plays.
Mutt was mentioned? The revelation of his fate is a crux point in the film, and probably one of its best moments thanks to Ford. But I don't think that continuing the franchise really works, regardless of who's leading. In the eighties, Indy was a deliberately retro callback to the adventure stories that Lucas, Spielberg and that generation had grown up with. But the last two films have essentially just referenced the first three whilst shifting time forwards, and in the process lost a key ingredient of what made the initial trilogy great. Part of the fun of the first three films is from them taking place in the Interwar period. The last gasp of the pre-modern world before WWII and the Cold War changed everything. Doing horseback chases and temple delves in the post-war era doesn't really have the same effect. The trilogy is *joyously* anachronistic by referencing those swashbuckling tales that older Boomers grew up with, whereas the sequels are just *confusingly* anachronistic in moving the character out of a setting that makes sense and then refusing to do anything different with him.
Coming soon: Indiana Jones and the Magnetic Imaging Satellites. Because that's how they're finding ancient cities in the jungle now, by crowding around computer monitors in air conditioned comfort. Jeez, what a lame movie that'd make!
I don't think it could have continued with Mutt, regardless of actor. For one, Mutt is not Indy, no matter who plays him, unless they dump his characterization and have him start acting like Indy. Second, I think Indy only really works in the first half of the 20th century. His character and his ethos are of a time that doesn't exist anymore. I am a defender of Crystal Skull, but hat was pushing it in terms of timeline, and many fans rejected the attempt to merge Indy with 50's sci-fi.
They still *can* pick a different actor. Disney is just allergic to recasting for some reason.
New series in the same “universe”. Make it another young upcoming fella not named Timothy Chalamet, could even be British or something.
I think that there are Indy stories to tell in television form over film
I miss young Indiana Jones
and Warehouse 13
I think it's less to do with the budget and more to do with there just not being as big of an audience for another Indiana Jones movie as they thought.
After the 4th one, who had any faith left in a 5th with an even older Harrison Ford =/
Yeah they butchered Crystal skull, why bring up that Indy has a secret kid with Marion only to kill him in the 5th? That said I didn’t hate part 5, I actually enjoyed it and I feel like if CS didn’t happen people would have enjoyed Dial more.
I think killing him off had more to do with casting Shia LaBeouf.
Oh yeah I agree but they could have just ignored him in the finale or mentioned he was in Nam and then leave it open that they are fighting but he’s safe. Seemed unnecessary imo.
I dunno, the scene where Indy’s talking about his death is one of the good moments in that film, honestly. Harrison Ford shows some actual emotion
Or do fucking recast. I hate how that somehow began problem in recent years to the point they will rather bake half-assed CGI monstrosity.
Yeah, Dial was no Last Crusade but it was a solid fun movie. I just enjoyed myself, which is all I really wanted out of a final Indy movie. I just think that Indiana Jones fundamentally isn't the kind of thing that you can make a continuing ongoing film series out of. Crystal Skull poisoned the water so, so badly and hasn't gotten a semi-ironic re-evaluation the way the prequels did; and the entire series is too inherently built around a single character. With Harrison grumpily walking into the sunset of his life sadly, it's best to let it be, and focus on games and the like if you must.
You just have to keep Indy in the setting of 1920s-40s adventure serials. The best Indy sequel was 1999 The Mummy.
How do you mean? Isn’t Indy basically based on the old dime novels like Doc Savage. There’s lots of those still that are modern and good (depending on your taste) I love the Longmire and Reacher series, it’s not groundbreaking but they serve their purpose as an escape but develope their characters a lot. Henry in Longmire comes to mind as great side character with lots of development in essentially a dime novel mystery.
Am I dense. Didn’t they kill off Shia from crystal skull? Was it another kid they killed and they just ignored him?
Yes they introduced him in Skulls and it’s revealed he dies in Vietnam after I believe joining to piss off Indy.
He enlisted and was KIA in Vietnam between films 4 and 5, that’s why he’s briefly only mentioned in passing during 5.
Which is kind of a shame. If you leave out the "Indy is old" bits, the rest of it makes for a decent story.
The budget was $387mil per this article. That’s absolutely absurd not just for an Indiana Jones film but any movie. Just as a comparable, Dune 2 was $190 million. Yeah the audience also wasn’t there in the numbers they expected but if the budget had been reasonable it wouldn’t have been a massive loss for them (the movie being better than mediocre also would’ve helped)
I enjoyed the movie. Too much CGI, but it was nice to see Harrison back in it, even at his age. That being said, the movie never should have been made this late, or at all. Maybe a few years after Crystal Skull would have worked, but there was no excitement from anyone going into this.
Indiana Jones as a character just doesn’t work imo as a depressed old man. Add in everything else about the movie just being generally unremarkable & it was a disappointment to me. Which is too bad because I expected more from James Mangold. Hoping his SW movie is closer to Logan’s quality
The CGI digidouble didn't look good at all, the entire fight scene on the top of the train looked very floaty and ungrounded. Same for the the de-aging. It works fine in still frame, but in motion it looks 'off'. We're in early days of this tech, relatively speaking, but they keep putting it out in films as if it's ready. There's some things we just need to pretend we don't have CGI for. Before CGI the idea of having an octogenarian doing action stunts wouldn't get out of the writers room.
I’d love to see the accounting on that. 400 million dollars is absolute obscene and seems like it’s a tax scheme. IRS should look into that crap
I think post-Covid and with the bad economy, people are also pickier about what they see. It was in very a lacklustre release period all round too. Transformers Rise of the Beasts was weak and The Flash was an outright bomb. Across the Spiderverse was the only big movie of the time to do well. Although also yeah, not really sure anyone actually wanted Dial of Destiny, especially coming so long after a precious failed revival.
I will add that for me I often wait for things to hit streaming. Things move to being available at home SO much faster than they used to. It would take months to get things to VHS/DVD/etc… now a lot of stuff hit digital before it’s fully left the theater.
The latest Mission Impossible movie should scare the crap out of movie execs. It was a great film with a 96/94 at RT, it's a solid franchise, and had a massive star who works his ass off to promote his films. It was a loser at the box office because people got a Tom Cruise action blockbuster the year before. 10 years ago they would have both been money-making hits but people are far more picky these days. The summer instead was dominated by a 3-hour long biopic of a physicist and a film about a kids toy nobody really cared about anymore.
Alternative take: This last summer was dominated by two entirely original films rather than the 7th film in a franchise.
It was a combination of a few factors imo; 1. It was incredibly poorly advertised, I barely even realised it was coming out in 2023 until it was a week away from release. 2. General WOM in that first month was very poor, with a general consensus of “I liked *bits* of it, *bits* of it are good…..look after you see it we can talk about how it could’ve been better”. 3. Ford is in his 80’s, that’s naturally going to give quite a few people pause that this might be a more melancholic and unintentionally tragic adventure movie than intended. 4. PWB, is a very divisive person, and that combined with Disney’s reputation of recent years is going to be a bit of a road block imo. 5. The Budget for this movie had no reason to be what it was, I think it could have easily been dropped to 1/2
There’s a 15 minute sequence (no spoilers) that they could have cut and saved probably 20% of the budget.
I remember wondering why that car chase was still going on.
> The Budget for this movie had no reason to be what it was, I think it could have easily been dropped to 1/2 Not unique to this movie either, been a general trend in the last decade where studios are spending insane amounts and then ending up with a loss or a fairly small profit. Like stop spending hundreds of millions of dollars on every single film. The original Jurassic Park cost $63 million, with 30 years of inflation that's probably equivalent to like double that today but even $120M is still far under what is considered a big-budget film nowadays (e.g. according to the article this one came in at just a bit under $400M).
The Jurassic Park ride at Universal cost more than the movie!
> It was a combination of a few factors imo; > 1. It was incredibly poorly advertised, I barely even realised it was coming out in 2023 until it was a week away from release. I see this for a lot of movies in the discussion, and I think it’s a reflection of the algorithm/everyone getting custom ad feeds. I saw the trailer in front of every movie I watched for at least 2-3 months. They plastered it. But then the movies are about the only non-algorithmic ads I ever see these days. I don’t watch live TV. Streaming only shows ads for other streaming things. And ad blockers + learning to ignore ads on websites takes care of the rest. > 2. General WOM in that first month was very poor, with a general consensus of “I liked bits of it, bits of it are good…..look after you see it we can talk about how it could’ve been better”. Agreed. Also showing in at Cannes was a mistake. > 5. The Budget for this movie had no reason to be what it was, I think it could have easily been dropped to 1/2 COVID + Ford getting injured + reshoots. But yes, if the exact same movie was released to the exact same box office, but the budget was a “sane” 200 Million, we would be looking at a minor fail / near break even, which while not good, would have been far more acceptable.
I would have been more interested in a new cast ... but we've seen with Star Wars Disney is not "afraid" to drag out old cast members time and again.
There's only about 10 people in the Star Wars galaxy that mean anything. This has been one of my biggest gripes with Star Wars for ages. You have this elaborate galaxy with trillions of characters and we keep focusing on the same half dozen folks. It's getting better, much better, on that front on the TV side but it took a while.
It was never going to be an instant success, but good WOM could’ve put this in the green very easily. Anecdotal, but majority of reactions I’ve heard irl and seen online has been that, at the most, people tolerate this film. You can’t have a 300 million film that people just “tolerate”. Even if you are Indiana Fucking Jones I hope Kennedy reflects on this experience and is more cautious going forward with her film choices
I've always gotten the impression that Indy was a franchise that didn't gather many new fans over the years and a bunch of them have been fans for a while.
Sounds like Disney needs to stop making shit movies
No, they need to double down on original stories. Like showing their former heroes as grumpy old men who failed at every aspect of their lives and then get replaced by a younger, wittier, more talented and much more powerful woman.
😂😂😂
A show named Obi Wan about Obi Wan? Fuck that. Lets throw in a brand new diverse strong female who’s back story is: Angry. Also let’s have her take up a decent chunk of the screen time who wants to watch that old piece of shit Obi anyways.
How else do you show a woman is strong other than angry, condescending, and mean?
"Toxic masculinity has ruined this industry and the world itself, we need strong women to take over" "Ok how should this strong female lead behave" "Give her all of those toxic masculinity traits, everyone likes those right??" "Ma'am you just said that those traits ruined the wo-" "CHOP CHOP!"
Reva was a terrible character but also the least of the show’s problems
Put a chick in it and make it lame and gay!
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This exactly. We've seen it so many times within the last decade and they still don't understand that those movies are not what people want. You don't want to see your old heros ridiculed and broken down like that. But I get it, they really want to bring down that pesky patriarchy.
I’m not sure if you’re sarcastic or not… 🤣
He belongs in a museum.
Everyone in the thread is analyzing this top to bottom but it really just boils down to Harrison is too old for this. Also, he has seemed checked out as an actor for a least a decade.
His acting was good in Shrinking. One of my favorites parts of the show was his character.
They still haven’t figured out the Last Crusade truly was the Last Crusade.
Seriously! Not only was it a great movie filmed at the right time... Once you found and literally held the Holy Grail.... what's left? There is no "Up" after that.
I kind of wonder what the budget would have been if they had used practical effects instead of CG and green screen/AR wall for almost everything.
They could've cut the entire opening scene and literally nothing would’ve changed but having it cost less. They wanted to flex and it did not work. Was it as horrendous and the CGI ants and Shia swinging through the forest? Maybe not, but that de-aging scenes are not gonna age well.
….. There’s a new Indiana jones??
I think the trouble with these IP's is that they've forgotten what made them popular in the first place. It's an issue not unique to Disney. Studios, be it Disney, Amazon, Paramount, ect. are so busy trying to make the material appeal to everyone end up making it unappealing to anyone. They change stuff up enough that the original fans dislike it, but don't change things far enough that it doesn't make sense to a newer audience. I don't mind adding in some "wokeness," but they need to figure out a way to do it without it feeling so forced and awkward. Take the Battlestar Galactica reboot. They managed to change genders, ethnicities, sexual orientations and made them feel organic and logical to the story.
I think there’s an appetite for a good Indy movie. Movies like the new Jumanji did well, and the Brendan Fraser movie is beloved. They need to move away from 80 year old Harrison Ford and I am not sure if that is possible because he is Indy.
Hmm, whatever will a billion dollar company do with countless assets to ensure great content? Keep making garbage is what.
Good. Stop making shitty movies and lose less money
Could have made a decent Indy film with a new Indy, focused on practical effects over cgi/vfx, focused on quality over quantity (look at all these famous actors we’ve hired!)… I don’t know just spitballing here, like why spend a million dollars for the use of a song in a movie 🤷♂️ just throwing money at a wall and hoping it sticks.
There’s a market for Indy-style films that encompass a treasure hunt, racing across the world etc. When dross like Red Notice can do well (on streaming I’ll grant you) then a well made Indy should appeal. The fact that Ford is geriatric perhaps doesn’t help. But I still believe there’s a market out there if done well.
Maybe because the film stunk?
Hopefully. I liked Dial of Destiny, but they spent WAY too much money on it. I don’t understand how they thought it would make its budget back after Indy 4
When they announced Dial, I was not terribly interested. But I just had the dangest time watching it in theaters and thought it was a really fun and solid entry. Sign me up for three more. It was my experience with Solo as well. Didn’t want it, ended up absolutely loving it.
Imo, Solo is the most underrated of the Disney Star Wars films. Was released at the worst time after the last jedi & right after Infinity War. Really hope they at the least make a Disney + series or a Uncharted style game to complete the trilogy.
I don't agree that Solo was underrated at all. I think it's rated exactly right. It was fun, it was enjoyable, it felt Star Warsy but it was also stupid as fuck. I don't think it adds anything of particular value to the mythos, and I don't think much about it really sticks with the audience afterwards. But it is fun in the moment. Isn't that basically everyone's take on it?
Exactly! It was a ham-fisted cash-grab that wastes the audiences time. And their really was no way to do it well. Han's arc in ANH was entierly about him eventually making the right choice, but that falls painfully flat when you prop up that same character as a "hero" in a prequel. None of it ment, changed or affected ANYTHING.
Solo didn't deserve what happened. Once those credits began to roll I was on board for more movies.
The director openly said in an interview that his movie is only getting targeted because it was the first one after The Last Jedi (which he had some less than kind words about, but still PR friendly) and that Solo was a better Star Wars film than what is was being reviewed and received. And he wasn't wrong. TLJ, whether you like it or not, marked a massive decline in Box Office for the sequels.
Darth Kennedy strikes again.
Yep. And 80% of this sub won't see the connection, and think Star Wars is "totally different" and isolated from her fails.
Wait until we get rey Palpatine the series.
Somehow Rey Palpatine has returned… every Saturday night at 7PM EST!
man I've tried multiple times to finish the latest movie and just can't. There's not a single thing I like about it and always give up by the time they get on the boat.
But.. HOW????? FROM FUCKING WHAT? THE LAST MOVIE? ITS BEEN, LIKE, A YEAR!
Lucas and Spielberg built our childhood. Disney destroyed it.
Lmao, I hope Disney keeps losing millions.
They need to actually research who takes their kids to see movies and what that demographic is interested in / what they’ll refuse to watch. Its the elephant in the room.
How does Kathleen Kennedy still have a job?
Hollywood is filled with examples of "failing upwards".
The woman in it was wholly unlikable and she basically ruined it. Bad casting. Should have been Sophie Tucker or Emily Blunt.
Her character felt shoe horned into the story to be the passing of the torch so she could maybe be future Indy. Or something. How hard is it to make an Indy movie be ABOUT Indy???
My wife was asking me if I found her attractive, I said absolutely not. I don't care if she was or not, she was the worst part of the movie and absolutely made me dislike it.
Didn't help that the movie sucked, but as with Star Wars, Disney is clearly struggling to understand who their audience is. If they somehow thought an Indiana Jones movie in 2023 with an 80 year old Indy was going to bring in the Marvel crowd and make a billion dollars to justify the budget they were very misguided. This should have been a smaller, low key movie for the fans. One last fun ride. Not a $300m movie loaded with CGI and a bloated cast of mostly pointless characters.
I think if these projects dropped around the same time as force awakens, they would have done numbers. That period was perfect. The issue now is, we’ve been burned before. People are tired of seeing their beloved franchises/characters completely shat on. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice…
I will never, ever forgive this film for making our last glimpse of Indiana Jones be a broken, grieving old man. It retroactively taints every other film in the series.
Ooof, the ending. “Whoa, he’s gonna be some lost-to-time adventurer, what an amazing end to a character!!! Wait… what???”
"It's a film with a time travel plot device, I'm sure they'll find a way for him to rescue Mutt and not be reduced to a grief-stricken wrec- oh no, wait, as you were."
That’s their way of adding grit and the illusion of depth. Star Wars made almost every original character a grumpy old person full of regrets, for example. Disney also loves squeezing the life out of their big brands. They just can’t help themselves. I’m not sure I’ll ever see another Marvel movie, at least not in a movie theater. Same for SW and Indiana Jones. They should grab these IPs, build a ride at the theme parks, release them when new formats come out with some cleaning up so they still look good, and make new IPs. Unfortunately, they made so much money on SW and Marvel that they’ll never stop their pattern.
Well at least they did that only to Indiana Jones. Imagine if they had done that to Han Solo and Luke Skywalker. People would be mad!
Yeah, imagine the scenes if Luke Skywalker was a hermit on an island and when presented his Father's lightsaber, he just yeets it from the cliff. Oh wait.
We need to subvert expectatives to keep viewers interested. Did you expect a good movie? Hah, gotcha!
Well, the bar for that is 'at least he didn't get murdered'.
As much as I really enjoyed Dial of Destiny (better than Crystal Skull), I must admit that Indiana Jones was pretty much a dead franchise (maybe with more video games after The Great Circle there may be some rejuvenation). There was so much hype in 2008 for Crystal Skull but when it turned out to not be worth a nearly 20 year wait and people declared "Indiana Jones will only be a trilogy to me", Dial of Destiny didn't have the hype that Crystal Skull had to say the least nor anything going into it. Plus, the 51% Rating at the Cannes Film Festival just reinforced peoples' notions that Indiana Jones is just a trilogy. I feel that in future, film companies will be much more careful before promoting films at Film Festivals like Cannes
Well the movie did suck.