Board 8 > Am I the only one who was surprised the new Indiana Jones movie flopped?

(+) Yeah! (+)

I assumed after movies like Red Notice, The Lost City, and Uncharted were all varying degrees of hit that a new Indy movie would be practically a license to print money. Thinking about it I'm not too surprised but still.

The last good Indiana jones movie was 34 years ago

The target audience is dead

Budget was too high. Debuting it at Cannes seemed a stupid idea too.

they also really needed a good movie after crystal skull was so terrible

they did not do that

Chaeix posted...

they also really needed a good movie after crystal skull was so terrible

they did not do that

Most people seemed to like it, but not love it. Was definitely viewed as a good step up.

Anyway this movies box office fate was a result of basically everything that could work against it working against it EXCEPT for general reception though that was still not enough to save it. Poorly received previous film, massively inflated budget due to delays and COVID issues, poor marketing, bad release date in the most packed month of a very busy summer, the decision to premiere at Cannes backfiring and so on. Had this movie released in a different time in the parallel universe where the pandemic never happens and avoids Cannes it probably does fine.

It actually did fairly well, particularly for a film whose target audience was people who require machinery to go up and down stairs in their house. The problem is that it was one of the most expensive movies ever made. It needed to make $800 million to be considered a success. It was doomed to fail.

Could be a case of people rooting against Kathleen Kennedy loudly celebrating the movie's failure.

I'm not losing sleep over the possibility of her getting fired (lord knows Lucasfilm could use fresh new leadership), but the kind of hate she gets online is disgusting even though she is the individual most responsible for the state of Lucasfilm. I'll also admit I got into Star Wars through Indy and so I detest when people bring up the sequel trilogy in coverage of Dial of Destiny as if just the sheer association with Lucasfilm means they have to bring up SW.

And on the topic of Kennedy, like did Lucas have ANY particularly close business associates after the '80s? He basically set up whoever was to follow him up for failure. I'm not sure most Hollywood executives would have done much differently in Kennedy's place and what really disgusts me is when people act like she somehow bent the whole franchise to serve her feminist agenda when she had next-to-no creative input on the films (her one executive mandate was for TLJ to have a scene where Leia uses the Force) and Lucas's initial drafts of the sequel trilogy already had a female lead. Just as likely Kennedy went with it to ride the coattails of The Hunger Games if anything - and oh yeah I like how so many of these online commentators seem to have completely missed that window of time in the early 2010s when new movies starring famous male action icons were flopping left and right while Hunger Games and Divergent were making bank. I'd much rather have Daisy Ridley than someone like Sam Worthington, Jai Courtney, or Taylor Lautner thank you very much. Though Courtney was enjoyable in The Suicide Squad but that's another topic.

On a more relevant note, oh yeah I like how all these attempts to succeed older male heroes with younger female ones get so much pushback online but there was comparatively less of a fuss made about Courtney's Jack McClane being giving the spotlight in the fifth Die Hard over his father. I mean, okay, no one liked the decision, but people didn't get so fired up about it! I detect sexism.

LinkMarioSamus posted...

On a more relevant note, oh yeah I like how all these attempts to succeed older male heroes with younger female ones get so much pushback online but there was comparatively less of a fuss made about Courtney's Jack McClane being giving the spotlight in the fifth Die Hard over his father. I mean, okay, no one liked the decision, but people didn't get so fired up about it! I detect sexism.

For me, it depends on the character. Like if they made a "James Bond" franchise movie with the protagonist being Nomi, who was a whole lot of nothing, I'd absolutely be pissed. I'm not mad that she was the successor 007, just mad that after the hype she was an incredibly flat character who paled in comparison to every other female character in the movie (I would legit love a Paloma movie). Really the only interesting thing with her was the 007 number, and that resolved itself too abruptly.

Die Hard 5 was meh and Jack had little to do with that; he was decidedly generic for the most part, but was exceptional when having tension with John. However, one character could not have saved that movie from being anything more than a few loosely connected action sequences. I prefer Die Hard 4, which is his daughter Lucy's movie. The part where she is tied up and asks the bad guy if she can talk to her dad, only to say "there are only five of them left" is legendary. She knew she was only worth anything to the bad guy if she was alive. Though I don't know if her becoming an spy would have worked. It would have had to been done well and not felt forced.

With Star Wars, Rey was great in TFA and works as a Jedi - she was a compelling protagonist and a worthy disciple to Luke. However, her story in RoS especially could have been so much better than it was, like if she pretended to switch sides just to get a chance at killing Palpatine, saying "the best part about being a Sith Lord is the helmet. I think I'll keep it." or some legendary burn. Instead she became stale because Abrams allowed her to be, and to a lesser extent Rian Johnson and Daisy Ridley herself for trying too hard to "be empowering" in TLJ (I enjoyed that movie, but Rey was a downgrade from TFA). She was plenty empowering when she felt natural. Forcing it took away a big part of what made her character so appealing.

I think part of the problem is that we have male writers trying to create good female characters. We need more females on writing teams if we want more good female characters. There's a reason I always ask a woman to review my work. No Time to Die is a rare exception with the movies I'm referring to - Daniel Craig bringing Phoebe Waller-Bridge on was genius and I liked her presence from the moment she said that the script "needs to respect women - even if the James Bond character doesn't." She gets it.

But there are also many sexists out there who refuse to allow a woman to succeed their male hero. I'm not one of those, obviously. It just needs to be a good character. A male successor needs to be held to the same standard. Like with James Bond, for instance, anyone following Judi Dench as M was going to pale in comparison. Ralph Fiennes was fine, but doesn't hold a candle to his predecessor.

admittedly I live under a rock with regards to movies, but I'm not sure I knew there WAS a new Indiana Jones

The answer is yes.

And 99.8% of people watching a new Indy movie do not know or give a single fuck about Kathleen Kennedy. The internet is an echo chamber of extreme minority opinion.

Die Hard 5 was terrible and his son was a big reason why tf

i choose to believe that everyone thought the title "indiana jones and the dial of destiny" was as stupid as i thought it was and did not go to see it as a result

After Cannes this thing was a guaranteed dumpster fire

ivysnow posted...

i choose to believe that everyone thought the title "indiana jones and the dial of destiny" was as stupid as i thought it was and did not go to see it as a result

I thought it was called "Indiana Jones and the Even More Obvious MacGuffin than the Crystal Skull" tbh, because that's what it sounds like.

pjbasis posted...

Die Hard 5 was terrible and his son was a big reason why tf

The father/son relationship is why I didn't think Jack was terrible; by himself, I don't think I'd like Jack that much. But the movie really felt like someone took an existing action script and gave it a Die Hard coat of paint. Was more entertaining than the poorly-written cash grab that was Die Hard 2, at least.

I'm surprised, before this topic I assumed it was a relative success.

Seanchan posted...

And 99.8% of people watching a new Indy movie do not know or give a single fuck about Kathleen Kennedy. The internet is an echo chamber of extreme minority opinion.

This I buy tbh, just sick of hearing so much about it everywhere online. For how much anti-progressives complain about "logic", I see absolutely none of it in their choices of what movies to attack or not. Dial of Destiny didn't seem to put any special emphasis on Phoebe-Waller Bridge's Helena compared to, say, Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part 1 with Hayley Atwell's Grace or Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 did with Gamora and Nebula, yet somehow Indy was the one that got pre-release pushback for pushing "feminist crap" and not those two movies. Not to mention a recent Midnight's Edge video which seemed to bend over backwards to not file Barbie as "woke", which makes it super arbitrary what they decide is or isn't. I guess a lot of you are used to this but I'm really not.

The thing that truly bothers me about the whole Kathleen Kennedy thing is the insinuation that she's somehow trying to destroy Star Wars and Indy and remake them into her own image without virtually any concrete evidence of such, specifically how it implies that she wants to do that just because she's a she. As if women somehow are naturally like that, and it doesn't help that former WB CEO Ann Sarnoff was getting similar accusations levelled at her. Not to mention YouTube commenters outright stating stuff akin to said implications more blatantly.

This is the first I'm hearing anything about it beyond the fact that it was a movie that was going to exist.

I'm not surprised if it did indeed flop, given the amount of backlash to Crystal Skull, but the only real problem with Crystal Skull is that it was made so many years after the first three, and viewer expectations had changed.

Yeah Dial of Destiny had like no hype.

Calling it a "flop" is a bit harsh IMO... If you told me there was going to be another Indy film after Crystal Skull and it was going to gross around $180 million domestic while outperforming the new Fast & Furious and the new Pixar and the new Flash and basically tie the new Mission Impossible, I would have been darn impressed!

I think the problem was that there wasn't a good reason for another Indiana Jones film. Crystal Skull already brought Indy back for one last adventure after a long hiatus, and people thought 15 years ago that Harrison Ford was too old to the point that suspension of disbelief was stretched. Bringing Indy back for one last adventure again, for real this time, when Harrison Ford is even older didn't appeal after Crystal Skull was poorly received.

Ngamer posted...

Calling it a "flop" is a bit harsh IMO... If you told me there was going to be another Indy film after Crystal Skull and it was going to gross around $180 million domestic while outperforming the new Fast & Furious and the new Pixar and the new Flash and basically tie the new Mission Impossible, I would have been darn impressed!

It's flopping in that it's losing money. Otherwise I agree though.

Ngamer posted...

Calling it a "flop" is a bit harsh IMO... If you told me there was going to be another Indy film after Crystal Skull and it was going to gross around $180 million domestic while outperforming the new Fast & Furious and the new Pixar and the new Flash and basically tie the new Mission Impossible, I would have been darn impressed!

All of those movies flopped.

KamikazePotato posted...

All of those movies flopped.

Elemental didnt. Quite possibly the most insane box office success story of all time for a major picture.

Anyway the reason is budget. Indiana Jones cost 1.5x most of those. Apparently they got a very generous tax credit which significantly mitigates the damage but theyre still looking at a $100 million loss. The main reason the budget was so high was delays and filming during the pandemic with an 80-year old star. In normal times this is probably a modest success.

GavsEvans123 posted...

I think the problem was that there wasn't a good reason for another Indiana Jones film. Crystal Skull already brought Indy back for one last adventure after a long hiatus, and people thought 15 years ago that Harrison Ford was too old to the point that suspension of disbelief was stretched. Bringing Indy back for one last adventure again, for real this time, when Harrison Ford is even older didn't appeal after Crystal Skull was poorly received.

This is like the epitome of moronic Hollywood executives. Every prior Indiana Jones movie was a top three grosser of its year domestically so why should another one be any different, they said? Like Ngamer said though Paramount is running into a similar issue with Mission: Impossible with arguably even fewer excuses since M: I has never been as big a deal comparatively.

Also, from what I've read about the new Indiana Jones movie it seems to spend basically its whole running time justifying its existence. To make matters worse, virtually every creative decision that can be seen as distancing the franchise from Kingdom of the Crystal Skull has been read even by people who aren't anti-progressives as just falling into a lot of the same traps as the Star Wars sequel trilogy, such as cutting out Spielberg & Lucas (you see, they were responsible for a lot of what went wrong with Crystal Skull) despite the whole franchise being pitched on being a collaboration between them, and the general relationship between Indy and Marion being very similar to that between Han and Leia in the sequel trilogy (albeit nowhere near as grave this time since its not like their son is single-handedly responsible for the whole conflict).

On that note and not really relevant to Indy though, but considering how easy it apparently is to corrupt people to the Dark Side in Star Wars it's a wonder Luke held out for so long. I'm amazed at how I don't find the sequel trilogy to be as incongruous with the Lucas films as many seem to, but it could be because I didn't really get into Star Wars until 2018 as I've brought up many times before. For instance I don't find it that hard to believe the galaxy could fall into civil war again so fast after the original trilogy considering the entire prequel trilogy showed how incompetent government institutions seem to be in the franchise (plus real life). Then again, I feel like Anakin's characterization in the prequel trilogy undermines Luke seeing "good" in him in ROTJ even more than Luke's own characterization in the sequel trilogy does, and the ending of ROTJ never felt so final to me the way it did for many apparently. On a similar note I had no problems with Palpatine being resurrected in Rise of Skywalker, but the movie lost me immediately when it implied he had been pulling the strings all along which made no goddamn sense (and my main problem with the trilogy even before RoS was how nebulously defined the factions came off, which made it hard for me to really care about the conflict). The only movies I can think of which shot themselves in the foot so badly right away in such a fashion are Alien 3 and Black Widow.

UltimaterializerX posted...

Critics saw how garbage it was and thats a wrap.

Well thats the thing: Cannes critics panned it but when regular critics saw it it actually reviewed quite well:

https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/indiana_jones_and_the_dial_of_destiny

Audiences seemed to like it as well (definitely better than Crystal Skull at least) so it wasnt that it was garbage, more that it was wildly expensive and the release was very badly handed.

Of course while $800 million theatrical revenues is a realistic estimate for a typical $300 million film using box offices takes alone, the real number to break even is probably lower because Disney infamously demand very high cuts of the ticket prices from theatres (which is horrible) and they got a tax credit of about 25% which lowers the effective cost significantly. Then there are ancillary revenues. Of course even despite all that, its still lost $100 million and the best it can say is that its not the bomb of the summer which would be The Flash.

Did better than The Flash, Meg 2, Creed 3 and Shazam 2.

I wouldn't call it a total disaster.

I'm not gonna read anything LMS posted but I'm just gonna say nobody wanted this movie

Indiana Jones is beloved but not Star Wars level

they didn't learn their lesson form IJ 4